KICK-ASS

Mark Millar and John Romita Jr

MSRP $14.99, 144 Pages.

Published by Marvel Entertainment.

A "realistic" look at what would happen if a teenage boy put on a costume to fight crime. Not for the weak of heart.

Have you ever wanted to be a super hero? Dreamed of donning a mask and just heading outside to some kick-ass? Well, this is the book for you - the comic that starts where other super-hero books draw the line. Kick-Ass is realistic super heroes taken to the next level. Miss out and you're an idiot! Wolverine: Enemy of the State's team of Mark Millar (Civil War) and John Romita Jr. (World War Hulk) reunite for the best new book of the 21st century. This title collects Kick-Ass numbered 1-8.

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Customer Reviews

PERFECT! FUN!

Rating

I loved it. It got me into comics and now I'm buying every week. Just amazing very funny and bloody I suggest it if you're getting tired of no blood. Not for kids unless you're a bad parent or you trust them.

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Outstanding!

Rating

Great story and great art. I remembered John Romita Jr.'s work from the Punisher War Zone comic awhile back, and of course, the story was quite entertaining. I read the book first and saw the movie and enjoyed both of them immensely. I thought the movie portrayed the book quite well with some subtle differences which didn't bother me overly much.

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Read this after seeing the movie.

Rating

After watching the special features on Kick-Ass, I knew I wanted to read the comic, that went from comic to screen play so fast, as in before the comic was complete (3/8 of the way). As dark as the movie is... the comic is darker.

I am a fan of both the movie and the book, They were different. And it was interesting to see what they changed from the comic. (red mist is just one example)

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How does a little girl get a flame-thrower? eBay.

Rating

Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr.'s "Kick-Ass" is hyper-violent, subtly humorous, and thoroughly enjoyable. It's not quite as brilliant as Millar seems to think, but it's certainly a bloody good time. The novel (or series, what-have-you) follows Dave Lizewski, a comic book fan who decides to don a crime-fighting costume. It's not as simple as he thinks, however; when he meets Big Daddy and the ten-year-old Hit Girl, he realizes that real-life superheroes exist in a kill-or-die world, and there's a lot of blood, a lot of pain, a ton of lies and betrayal, and very few happy endings.

The graphic novel is a little too self-aware at times, and Millar's writing is only so-so; some dialogue sticks out as memorably funny, but the rest gets buried beneath Romita's amazing illustrations, and the overall concept: What kind of person becomes a superhero? The answer, of course, is that only screw-ups, only people who've lost everything or are mentally unbalanced become masked crime-fighters. Millar never really explores this line of thought, but he gets kudos for presenting it, and that's really the point: we're left to create our own theories.

Now, like a lot of people, I came to the novel via the movie, so I figured I should include a little bit about how they compare. Truth be told (and as a fellow writer and a life-long reader, it pains me to say this), I preferred the movie. The novel has a few things the movie doesn't (namely, the masterfully graphic illustrations), including a darker undertone about Big Daddy and Hit Girl's origins. However, the movie capitalizes on the humor, which serves as a wonderful counterbalance to the violence. This IS funny stuff. Millar seems to realize that, but never fully explores it; he references it here and there, but the humor--just like any intelligent theories/concepts--takes a backseat to the violence. Millar is out to shock you. The film does so, but brings caries more fully-realized aspects of humor and concept. That being said, fans of the film--and comics in general--will get a kick out of "Kick-Ass." There's certainly nothing else like it out there.

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KICK-ASS by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr.

Rating

Kick-Ass (2010), written by Mark Millar and illustrated by John Romita, Jr., collects the full initial run, issues 1-8, of the eponymous Marvel comic. Here, Dave Lizewski, a regular, unremarkable teenager, becomes a "real-life" superhero, a job for which he is dangerously ill-equipped.

Millar's premise is to look at what "real" superheroes might be like, psychologically and in practice. And that's fine, except that he quickly takes things way over the top and progressively introduces more ludicrous elements, notably Big Daddy (a poor man's Punisher - if you somehow didn't get it, Millar makes the connection for you several times) and Hit-Girl (a ten-year-old ninja who single-handedly takes the entire comic and transplants it squarely to the realm of the ridiculous).

If Millar had stuck to answering the question, "What would a `real' superhero look like?" Kick-Ass would have better. But what's "real" about this except that the "heroes" get beat up all the time, and that they're all mentally disturbed on some level? Not much. By the end, in too many ways, Kick-Ass is just another comic book.

Millar makes a point to turn as many comic tropes on their ears as he can, particularly the Peter Parker-in-high-school ones. But it all tends to be too self-aware, and Kick-Ass often reads like a hyper-violent version of Brian Michael Bendis's Ultimate Spider-Man (if Peter regularly monologued about his sexual frustration). It doesn't help that Millar's writing isn't nearly as clever as he seems to think it is, and a number of his innumerable comic book references feel downright amateurish.

The characters aren't great - Dave is a generally unsympathetic horny teenager who does stupid things - and nobody else gets much development. The plot is decent, although none of its "twists" is particularly surprising. Millar also tends to gloss over or outright ignore any story elements that would keep things from moving at a brisk pace.

2003's Wanted told us loudly and clearly that for Millar, there's really no such thing as bad taste, and he reinforces that understanding here. Under Marvel's Max label, he's free to be as vulgar and gratuitous as he wants to be on every page (and usually is). It's like Millar can't restrain himself, can't keep himself from going over the top whenever and however he can, and it really limits what Kick-Ass could have become.

Romita's art is great as always, with one exception. Hit-Girl never looks right - her proportions are distracting, as she's basically a gigantic head on a tiny stick body. Romita does a solid job with the degree of violence (this level of gore isn't something we're used to seeing from him), although some of Hit-Girl's dismemberments get pretty out there.

On the whole, Kick-Ass is readable but mediocre because it's more interested in being a violence-porn version of mainstream comics than in exploring the more realistic themes that it merely plays at.

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