Herbert West

Herbet West is the main character in the Re-Animator series of films and comics, based on an early story by H.P. Lovecraft.

He is a mad scientist who created a strange serum that allowed the dead to be brought back to life, at the cost of their humanity - often becoming violent zombies intent on murder and mayhem.. yet Herbert continually shows an obsession with overcoming the limits of life and death, thus continued to raise the dead despite the horrible consequences.

Herbet could, arguably, be considered a villain but he is not necessarily an evil character - in fact he seems to lack any sort of moral alignment - to him the important thing in life seems to be conquering death itself and he doesn't care what he has to do in order to achieve such goals.

Herbet West, like many mad scientists, has also been tasked with defeating his own experiments on a few occassions - though his madness always seems to ensure he'll make another batch of monsters in the future.