Last week I was trying to find out the origins of anti-heros, when suddenly Ι tripped over a milestone of literature. Lord Byron, the fairly known poet of the Romanticism. Till the dawn of our complicated era, heroes used to be clean, one-faced, just or unjust, fair or unfair, good or evil, merry or deeply melancholic, pure souls or deviously fabricators. Indeed poetry and literature found the complex anti-heroes very early if compared to the film industries.
Heston-like heroes conquered the big screens for too long. This media had to fall and rise and again fall and again rise more and more complex in terms of character construction and visualisation. From the purely pure character, to the charming but dark main hero-surely it was a long ride till writers invented a person that was full of faults and drawbacks.
I personally find very charming a detective that is empathetic both to his enemies and allies. Somebody that is not a typical anti-hero. Anti-heroes are succesfull in their fatal way. Real heroes are not. Women that surround them aren't monroe like robots.
They are just dangerous because the protagonist cannot even protect himself, while trying to deliver the goods to his girl. A hero that can die even from the first page because of his human behaviour. How entertaining is a person like the one described? Probably a lot. He is just uncommon if compared to the pantheon of anti-heroes that raised the last generations of readers. Max is probably an acrobat of the last kind. He is educated like a byronic hero but not sophisticated at all. He is not magnetic and for sure not amazingly attractive. Nobody knows his deeds. He fights alone, he wins or looses alone, while Misery City sleeps with a pillow full of ignorance. His day starts when the sun sets and ends with a lonely Max trying to understand the patterns of his life. He can die. For sure each day maybe his last. No money to spend for fancy vehicles or gadgets. Maybe there's no need for them. After all when you know that you are not the hero nor the anti-hero but just a struggler that fights every night only to avoid his personall hell, probably nothing matters at all.
