PopSyndicate.com

Millar and Romita Jr. are at it again, with one of the best new titles in a while!

If you’re reading this review, that means that at some point in your life, between your first breath and this very moment, you wanted to be a superhero. I know you’ve probably been reading comics for years and in all that time, you must have fantasized about being one of the heroes (or villains) that you read in all their four-color glory. I know I have. I still do. But both of my parents are still living happy lives. I’ve never been near radiation that doesn’t come from a microwave oven. I’ve never been the last survivor of another planet. It still doesn’t stop the fantasy though. Who wouldn’t want to make a costume and utility belt and a really awesome car and use your mind and your fists to beat down all the evil we see in our world?

This is Mark Millar’s and John Romita Jr.‘s gift to our fantasy world-- Kick-Ass, the tale of an extraordinarily ordinary young man who makes the conscious decision to put on a costume and fight crime in the real world. But this is not like that lame-ass, glossed-over show Who Wants to be a Superhero?. This is the dirty, gritty, vulgar, violent and hilarious Mark Millar that I’ve loved since The Ultimates and Wanted. Since I read this first issue of this comic, I’ve had this weird smile on my face, because it’s just so damn fun. Fanboys have been living vicariously through our fantasy heroes for years, and with this book, we’re going to be doing the same thing, only we can feel the awkwardness and the goofiness and the physical pain that our hero, young Dave Lizewski, experiences because for the most part, we’ve felt that stuff ourselves on a much more personal level than with, say, Superman or Spider-Man.

This is a comic for lovers of comics. In the way that Millar poked a bit of fun at our expense with Wanted, he chooses to go the other way here and give us a character that loves comics and sees no shame in wanting to make the world just a little bit better by fighting crime wearing a wetsuit from eBay as a costume.

Dave Lizewski isn’t even old enough to be an everyman. He’s a fanboy who loves comics, especially Astonishing X-Men (God bless him), debates with his other fanboy friends about the lameness of comic-book movie adaptations, and masturbates to fantasies of his MILF-y high school biology teacher. He recently lost his mother to an aneurysm, and his father is a lonely man who works the night shift. He realizes that his life is already on autopilot to mediocrity and he wants it to mean more. Hence the wetsuit and his first assault on crime… a doomed one.

I’m just loving this book more and more as I think about it. And it sure as hell doesn’t hurt that John Romita Jr. is doing some of his most fantastic pencils in a long time on this book. Sure, it’s not as big or as dynamic as his recent work on World War Hulk, but it’s more real. The emotion is felt and seen. Millar also gives us some glimpses into the future of this character, and the world when he makes a seemingly throwaway mention of ‘others’. Will Dave inspire by example? In this book, anything seems possible except for the impossibility of super-powered heroes and villains.

I’m so glad that Marvel is expanding its Icon label. Sure, books like Criminal and Powers are great, but as adults, we want variety. We want more… and this is more like it. It’s a book that really does kick ass.

Kick-Ass #1
Created by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.
Written by Mark Millar
Pencils by John Romita Jr.
Inks by Tom Palmer
Colors by Dean White
Letters by Chris Eliopoulos

5