You Heard the Alien.

I don’t know why I suddenly started thinking about ‘Invader Zim’.  This was  Nickelodeon show back in the early 2000’s.  It was great and popular and somehow only 28 episodes if you count the pilot.  The show is about Zim who has been sent to conquer Earth and is really bad at the job.  He’s the protagonist, but also the villain since he has ‘evil’ intentions and the antagonists are trying to stop him.  This got me thinking about effective stories where villains are the protagonists, which I may have done before.  So, how can I look at this differently?

Honestly, I think one of the best ways to use a villain as a protagonist is to go with a comedic story.  You can keep them evil, but make them inept or surrounded by assistants who end up destroying plans.  ‘Pinky & the Brain’ fall under this too.  Come to think of it, this always seems to involve conquering the world.  That might be another aspect since it’s a huge, nigh impossible task.  There isn’t much depth to the goal even if the plans are incredibly complicated.  The villain doesn’t even want to kill people or cause utter destruction.  All they want is to conquer the world.

Making them smart stupid could work too.  By this, I mean they are smart enough to come up with incredible plans.  You see the logic in their ideas and are amazed at what they can invent to reach their goals.  Unfortunately, they’re kind of stupid in that they don’t plan for what you realize are obvious issues.  That or they are so arrogant that they undo themselves at the final moment.  A personal favorite is when they add an easily hit self-destruct button.  Either way, the audience can get behind them because there is a feasible chance they might succeed.  You know they won’t since that would end the story, but you keep having hope since they show glimmers of genius.

Comedy is hard to write, but I think focusing on a villain who is going to repeatedly fail in amusing fashion has a slightly easier path.  With villains having a pass to be over the top, they can have great reactions to events.  They can exaggerate their responses and have meltdowns without losing any of their credibility.  Slapstick and a chaotic chain of disasters against them are other angels for laughs.  The audience can even respect the villain since they refuse to give up or even learn from mistakes.  Not all mistakes, but you’ll see that they rarely do the same plan twice.

The more I write about this topic, the more I think it’s a really small niche.  I don’t know if that’s because it’s limited or not many people have tried it.  A lot of villain stories will go serious and dark in the hopes of getting the audience to have sympathy or understanding towards their actions.  ‘Death Note’ was kind of like that, which might be why I couldn’t get into it.  Not that I hate a serious villain protagonist, but there was something missing to get me hooked.  It could have been a level of comedy, which is definitely a personal preference.  I’d have to check out more villain-focused stories with both comedic and serious versions.  Seriously though, are ‘Invader Zim’ and ‘Pinky & the Brain’ all there are for this niche?

What do other people think of this?  Also: