In a city where a demonic beast can darken the sun, where the most prestigious law firm caters exclusively to demons, vampires and other hellish spawn and where a goddess can take control of the entire human race just by smiling on television, only the mightiest champions have any hope of defeating the darkness. On Angel, these mighty champions are Faith, Wesley, Spike and Angel himself. The rest of the team are all good guys—they just don’t have the same clout. Whether it’s Wesley working his magic, Faith hunting Angelus, Spike dueling the Reaper or Angel taking on the Senior Partners themselves, we know that these four will always find a way to win. We’d back them to beat any evil they go against. What makes them the champions they are? They’ve all been bad guys.

In Angel’s world, the only way to become a champion is to start out as the enemy—or at the very least, sleep with the enemy for a while. Faith enters Angel’s world as that scariest of bad girls, a Slayer run amok, ready to hire on as a paid assassin or commit murder, torture and mayhem just for the thrill of it. Wesley first shows his dark side under the influence of Billy Blim’s woman-hating magic, when he becomes a terrifying sexual predator stalking Fred (“Billy,” A3-6); he then plunges into the dark by betraying Angel, kidnapping Connor and having an affair with Lilah. Spike has only just regained his soul and his conscience, after  …