Kick-Ass 2 - Mark Millar with John Romita Jr

 

I'm, once again, surprised and a bit disappointed that I have not written about Kick-Ass before, as I have read the first compendium and have seen at least one of the movies (I'll have to re-visit those, also). The basic premise is that a teenage comic book geek decides to become a real life hero and dresses up in a scuba diving outfit (or something similar) and tries to fight crime and fails miserably (he ends up in the hospital on his first time out) before meeting Hit Girl, who trains him to the point where he can be reasonably effective. They actually take on the Mafia and win, but not without consequences, of course.

In this compilation, Hit Girl's step-dad, who knows that she is Hit Girl (whose dad trained her to be as effective as she is), begs her to stop for her mom's sake, and she does. Kick-Ass continues his fight though and inspires others to join him in creating a super-team - of course, no one actually has super powers and they just rely on some fighting skills (they actually recruit older, former military into the fold) and weapons. Unfortunately, Kick-Ass' nemesis, Red Mist, a rich kid who has the money to buy some seriously fucked up muscle, returns to the scene causes quite a bit of chaos, violence, death and mayhem before Hit Girl decides enough is enough and returns to the fray to stop Mist and his team of villains (and villainess) once and for all.

Definitely a kind of fucked up and depraved concept in the amount of violence and death that is caused, but also the comic tries to show the difference an individual can make - at least in comic book fantasies! Millar and Romita do a great job though - really good stuff!