When I was a kid, my Dad and I would spend hours discussing our favorite sci-fi movies, old episodes of Star Trek, or the intricate nuances of comic books. It was during one of those conversations that I noticed something odd. For all the time we spent discussing Batman, or Luke Skywalker or Captain Kirk, we spent much more time discussing the Joker, Darth Vader, or picking apart the political structures of the Romulan Empire (OK, my Dad's a geek, too). When I asked him why we seemed to gravitate toward the villains far more than the heroes of these stories, I remember his answer as if it were yesterday:

"Villains are more fun."