Antihero facts for kids

An antihero is a main character in a story who does not act like a traditional hero. Examples of antiheroes are Marvel Comics The Punisher & Deadpool, Sega's "Shadow The Hedgehog", DC's Batman, Catwoman of Batman, Sweeney Todd, Light Yagami from the Death Note manga/anime series, Billy the Kid, Robin Hood, Kratos from the God of War video-game franchise and Prince Hamlet from the Hamlet play by William Shakespeare. Most of the time it means a character in fiction, television, or movies. Sometimes it is used to mean a living person or person from history.

Images for kids

Revisionist Western films commonly feature antiheroes as lead characters whose actions are morally ambiguous. Clint Eastwood, pictured here in A Fistful of Dollars (1964), portrayed the archetypal antihero called the "Man with No Name" in the Italian Dollars Trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns.
U.S. writer Jack Kerouac and other figures of the "Beat Generation" created reflective, critical protagonists who influenced the antiheroes of many later works