Have you ever noticed that, despite its obvious shortcomings of never winning and whatnot, evil is really, really cool? No, not true evil like Hitler evil or Stalin evil; they weren’t cool at all. What I’m talking about is Hollywood evil, cartoon evil; in other words, fictional evil. It’s always so much better, so much cooler than good, isn’t it?

I remember as I child all the cartoons I watched had very strong “good guys” and “bad guys." The good guys were all right, I guess you were supposed to cheer for them, but it was the bad guys who were really interesting. My favorite cartoon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, had hero characters who were supposed to be super cool. They said things like “bodacious” and “radical” to illustrate their high degree of hipness, but it was a novelty that wore off very quickly. The turtles were probably the best attempt I can remember at good guys being cool, other cartoon shows didn’t pull this off so well.

The bad guys, the Foot Clan, maintained their cachet. The Foot Clan were led by the Shredder, a bad mother in a suit of armor adorned with a bunch of knives – pretty sweet – who controlled an immense army of anonymous ninjas who were all dressed in purple outfits and brandished a variety of different weapons (they were called foot soldiers, which was a clever pun I didn’t get for years). I must admit that when I saw the movie version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I was very disappointed to see the Shredder remove his mask to reveal a skinny Japanese guy with a couple scratches on his face. He lost his entire mystique. There were other bad guys too-- the Shredder’s two lieutenants were a mutated rhinoceros and wart hog. They were very much like the turtles in that they spouted off hackneyed slang, but they were evil, and they used guns. I think we can agree that this is an improvement.

It wasn’t just cartoon shows I was enthralled with as a child. I loved Star Wars. You could not find a finer example of a situation where the good guys lack coolness while the bad guys wallow in vast amounts of awesome. Our hero in Star Wars is Luke Skywalker, a whiny, skinny, little blonde guy. He’s supposed to be a Jedi but he couldn’t really do anything cool until the last movie, and even then only beat Darth Vader by getting all pissed off and flirting with evil. It was also apparent to me, even as a kid, that’s Luke’s last name is supposed to be cool, but, sadly, isn’t at all. Luke is assisted by a couple of cooler characters, Han Solo and (without a doubt the coolest good guy ever) Chewbacca. They're not evil, but they're not exactly wholesome, and they're a lot more interesting than some whiny redneck kid. But Han Solo and Chewbacca are not the focus of the film, and we suffer behind Skywalker.

Darth Vader, on the other hand, is a super-badass entity covered in shiny black armor with audible breathing and the ability to crush someone’s windpipe with a simple motion of his hand. How do you deny that? His voice is provided by James Earl Jones, of CNN commercial fame. I read that it took three different actors to play Vader: one for the body, one for the face, and James Earl Jones. Darth Vader, like the Shredder, controlled an anonymous army of white armored storm troopers who, despite being completely inept with their guns, looked really sweet.

Even as I got older, I always cheered for the bad guy. One thing I found out was that Hollywood even made movies where you were supposed to cheer for the bad guys. I discovered The Godfather. I never wanted to be Italian more in my life; sadly I was born Irish-Polish-German-French, so I don’t think I could ever get into the mob. Once again we see a powerful man, either Vito or Michael Corleone, who just seemed to ooze cool. They controlled an army of anonymous Italian wiseguys with names like Paulie and Luca. Who wouldn't love to have an army of goons at their disposal? Best of all, you were supposed to root for these evil bastards! What more could you ask? Evil was presented to be so appealing with people like Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, who seemed to attractive to really be bad. And they were supported by Robert Duval, who played my favorite character, Tom Hagen, the attorney (EVIL!).

Even they guys who should have been good guy in The Godfather were bad. The cops were friends with the drug dealer, and assisting him to assassinate Vito – you never felt bad about wanted the police to lose to the mafia.

Today I see evil as it is: people blowing up buildings, murdering mothers and unborn children, stealing old peoples’ pensions, and creating oligarchies for themselves. The romance is gone, which is probably a good thing. Sometimes I wish I could still see the bad things as being good just because they were attractive, but it’s hard to do that now because real evil doesn’t ever seem to be as attractive as it is on television. It’s hard to make Hitler or Stalin seem like loveable characters, I can’t help but not liking a guy who kills seven of his own children after making them carry their own coffins into the house, and I can never foresee my children arguing over who gets to be the CEO that ships thousands of jobs overseas to increase his profit ratio. Maybe I’m just short sighted, or maybe there never were any Shredders, Darth Vaders, or Vito Corleones. It’s a shame.

Editor's note: I would like to agree most emphatically with the esteemed Mr. Indish, and add that in the mid-80s Transformers cartoon, the Autobots were a bunch of strokers while Megatron and Starscream were actually pretty cool and had an interesting dynamic going. –KP