Being completely amazed by the first series of Mark Millar’s ‘Kick-Ass’, and feeling terribly disappointed with the awful Matthew Vaughn film adaptation, I was not sure what to think with the second series of the booming ‘Kick-Ass’ franchise. Had Mark Millar been influenced by the film adaptation to an extent that would make him alter the story for the sake of another movie, or to please the movie fans? This was the main question hanging over my conscious whilst I was walking home from the comic shop today.
Let it be said that I am not a huge fan of Millar’s work, this is in my case due to the usual delays on his comics, the often underwhelming cliff-hangers, and his frequent failed attempts at epic pay-offs, which are ususally too caught up in themselves for their own good. But through all my mild dislike for the man’s body of work as a whole, ‘Kick-Ass’ is by far the best thing he has written in my opinion.
My verdict on this issue, you ask? Awesome. Bloody awesome. This is something that you must pick up (and for $2.99, why the hell wouldn’t you?!). It especially pleased me to see that in answer to my worry in the first paragraph of this review, it would seem as though Mark Millar had not seen the film adaptation of his first series! Thank the heavens! Millar is sticking true to the original series and keeping it as it was; a direct continuation from his first run.
Mindy (Hit-Girl) is back living with her Mum and Marcus Williams, and we see the issue start with her training Dave Lizewski (Kick-Ass) so they be an effective team, even though Mindy should be at school. Her step-father, Marcus (who is a cop), finds out what she is doing during her days and confronts Mindy when she arrives home. He makes her promise to stop it all, and to live a normal life, to which she promises. Millar then does his usual thing of telling us the ending of the story and then building up towards how it all happened. If you didn’t read this issue, then I won’t spoil these sneak-peak reveals, but let’s just say we all knew that Red Mist would be back with a vengeance didn’t we? Yeah, we did.
One thing I should mention is that the world of ‘Kick-Ass’ has changed a bit, in that there are now a lot more masked ‘heroes’ doing the same thing as Dave throughout the world. The rest of the issue shows Kick-Ass on patrol with another one of these masked heroes who calls himself Doctor Gravity. There is a really cool fight scene where Kick-Ass quite impressively kicks the shit of out these two thugs who jump him whilst on patrol. I guess the training from Hit-Girl has been paying off, something which was really cool to see from this is how much Dave has changed and developed as a character since the first series. Kick-Ass 2 #1 ends with Dave meeting Doctor Gravity, who offers Kick-Ass to join a super team he’s been trying to put together. In Dr. Gravity’s underground ‘lair’, he introduces Kick-Ass to the other members of this team. Let me tell you now readers, that these guy look the business. These are hardcore heroes from their costumes alone. They call themselves, ‘Justice Forever’.
The ending of this issue made me so hungry for more, that I actually went out and bought a chicken burger with large fries to satisfy this craving. That is genuinely no joke either, but not that it’s relevant.
Romita Jr’s artwork is just as nice as ever, and although I’m not a huge fan of his work either, this was still pretty impressive. The colours are beautiful and have a slightly more watered down tone to them than the previous series did. Millar did a generally solid job with the dialogue and made some pretty funny statements as well, such as Kick-Ass saying upon being beaten up by Hit Girl in training, that he feels like ”Rihanna after a quiet night in“. I found that pretty funny and ballsy.
This series is going to be awesome, I can feel it. I know Millar has the stones to pull this off, and to pull it off well.
Rob Andrews
Rob@ComicImpact.com