One of my first pieces for Geeks of Doom 2 years ago was something for May the 4th called Luke Skywalker and the Hero’s Journey, tracing the Star Wars character’s path from the call to the return. Based on Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Luke was a textbook hero, with all the possible pitfalls along the way. Always looking for Campbell in modern heroes for teaching or for fun, I recently came across this awesome infographic from Venngage that breaks down the hero’s journey for 6 key characters in pop culture in a brightly colored, easy to follow swirl – Simba, Harry Potter, Frodo, Luke Skywalker, Neo, and Peter Parker.

I think this works for television heroes as well, and makes it so simple. Let’s try it on Barry Allen (Grant Gustin). I know he’s a comic book character, but I want to stick with The CW’s The Flash. Continue reading for more and to see the infographic.

Simba, Neo, Shrek, Shaun, Nemo, Moses, Hercules, Westley, Peter Parker, and almost every cinematic (and literature-based) hero can trace all or most of his (or her!) path to Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, described in The Hero With A Thousand Faces published in 1949. No character more so than Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) follows this monomyth, as George Lucas attributed Campbell’s book to having had a strong influence on him when crafting his iconic character, as seen in the original Star Wars trilogy.

Seventeen stages divided into three sections, there have been a number of variations written since – countless response papers, books, and documentaries that narrow the number of steps, that add some other steps or sub-steps, that change the order around, and so on. But there’s nothing like checking back with an original theorist and looking closely at our own “farm boy.”