John Romita, Jr.

I read this 4 years ago. I just read it again. My opinion has evolved. It's late and I'm too tired to explain why, but it's a neglected masterpiece.

I don't have the energy to finish many books these days. I don't know why. Something broken inside of me. But comics? I can read. I can finish. The obvious answer would be that I can finish them because they are silly & dumb. But that can't be right, because I can't finish the dumb ones.

I can still finish the great ones, though. The ones that show more speak with that quasi-cinematic vocabulary. The comics that are frozen films, with light and sound replaced by drawings and text. Moving without moving, speaking in silence, and all the rest.

I suppose it's a kind of childhood magic. The sort of thing that seems so strange as an adult thinking now which was perfectly ordinary back then.

It's not nostalgia. The comics I liked back then, overwhelmingly, tend to disappoint me now. It's more that the juxtaposition of the way I see now and the way I saw then creates it's own aesthetic effect, a kind of anti-nostalgia.

A moment of freedom from the past? A new past? I don't know. I don't know why this works for me now, while so little else does, but it does. And I am grateful. show less

Disturbing. (Duh.) I found it a better read than the first book, possibly because Hit-Girl is simply way more interesting than Kick-Ass can ever be. She's completely messed up -- but how do you call her "damaged" when her abilities have rendered her virtually invulnerable? Sure, she takes down a mob boss -- and several dozen of his closest associates -- and, okay, the entire population of death row (she was in the neighborhood, so she figured she'd "save the tax-payer a little cash"). But show more she also conquers the female population of *middle school.* Using pretty much the same skill set.

I guess I'd have to call her my favorite right-wing extremist. show less

The fact that the two children on the cover are covered in blood is almost fair warning -- as much as they could put on a picture everyone will see. This is one of the most graphic, grisly comics I've ever seen. I had to ask a friend if I'd been out of the comic scene so long that this was now the norm. He assured me it wasn't.

The extensive gore is the point of this narration. Kick-Ass is a young man who wants to be a superhero. This story is trying very hard to show what that would mean in show more real life. It means that real fights are messy and repulsive, and that people who die in those fights don't do so neatly. It means that courage and determination mean very little against superior fire power. It means that if you've never fought before and you decide to jump into the ring without training or backup, you're going to get the crap beaten out of you. It means that violence is, well, violent.

It means that many comic books have been lying to us by glossing over this last point. That's what makes them so entertaining. And it's what makes reading Kick-Ass so difficult.

One more point. I don't know how she's portrayed in the movie, but make no mistake: There is nothing cute about Hit Girl. Her upbringing has been so saturated with violence that she smiles sweetly as she crushes a man to death.

Well, we know she's a freak as soon as we find out that she's being -- yep! -- homeschooled. By a father who "tells her everything she needs to know": extensive details about weaponry, what to do when a junkie pulls a forty-five, and the dictionary definition of a Democrat ("a ****ed-up prick who will march for the right to murder babies, but hold candlelight vigils for serial killers"). Yes, I understand why how her father raised her was important to the plot; but I'm never thrilled to find yet another story with the message that when you need the ultimate freak, find a homeschooler.

Anyway. This story says what it needs to say extremely effectively. What it needs to say is quite disturbing. Don't pick this up lightly, and do NOT give it to your kids without reading it first. show less

A young boy decides to become a REAL superhero, mostly because he's bored, and thus is Kick-Ass born. He ends up working with a 10-year-old cocaine sniffer with some killer sword moves, her father, Big Daddy, and a pothead (otherwise known as yet another "asshole," more like Kick-Ass himself, rather than someone actually becoming a vigilante) named Red Mist. Clever, funny (Kick-Ass's friends from school coin a new cuss word and Kick-Ass later hears it from the mouths of the gangsters he's, show more well, killing) and very violent. Highly enjoyable. show less