The tradition of the hero in fiction is long and complicated. The first type of “hero” we find in literature, the Classical Hero of old epics, weren’t good, exactly: they were just big. They did great deeds, but they were also fatally flawed, and sometimes monstrous. Only later, during the Middle Ages and the Romantic…
Source: Gizmodo – This Video Series Asks, What Sort of Hero is Batman, Anyway?