Kick-Ass 2: The Graphic Novel That Continues the Saga of the Vigilante Superheroes

Mindy later visits her father's grave and laments that even with all of her superhero training, being able to kill without a care, she doesn't know how to handle Debbie's bullying. In his cell at Rikers Island, Ralphie Genovese instructs his crew to find Kick-Ass and to locate his nephew, Chris. When Kick-Ass arrives at the safe house, Hit-Girl gives him a tour of the facility, explaining that the equipment was purchased with the money she and her father "Big Daddy" had liberated from various pimps and pushers over the years. Hit-Girl then agrees to train Kick-Ass as she was trained in exchange for him teaching her "how to be normal". Dave agrees and is officially sworn in as Hit-Girl's sidekick/trainer.

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Back in 2010, fanboys rejoiced at the release of a live-action flick based on Mark Millar's Icon graphic novel, Kick-Ass. The story was about a comic nerd who decides to try being a real life superhero. Though the box office was hardly super (a paltry $48 million), solid home video sales meant that a sequel was a no-brainer.

This graphic novel is one of the best I have read and it was impossible to put down until I had finished reading it, I would tell anyone who was a fan of the first one, the film or any comic book fans in general to give it a read. You will not be disappointed, and will get everything that was great about the first one turned up about 5 notches. The story line will have you reading the pages as fast as you can to find out what happens next, as the enjoyably, dark and gruesome tale leads up to an amazing climax, and one of the best that I had read.

About six months later, their Red Mist friend emailed Lucido saying that Mark Millar was looking for real-life people to dress up and portray characters from the comic book for supplemental covers and graphic novel art. The photo shoot went down during Comic Con 2011, in a random alleyway they found in New York.

The next problem is that much of the initial appeal of Kick-Ass was the book's shock value, and like anything that relies so heavily on shock, to the same impact it'd have to be even more shocking this time around. And it's not. The concept of a deadly little girl who employs more profanity than the drunken staff of a shipyard during surly hour was cute at first, but the novelty has long since worn off, and the surprising violence of Dave's early ventures into amateur criminal beating also doesn't have the same jarring effect it did the first time around. The book needs something new.

A further subplot involves Chris D'Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), former sidekick to Kick-Ass, who has gone into the family business after Dave murdered his mob-boss father in the previous film in a particularly spectacular manner. Chris refashions his mother's S&M gear into a costume, and reinvents himself as the world's first super-villain, adopting a name which, in the '80s, would have been dubbed on British television as "The Melon Farmer." These three plots plod along in a tale of vengeful one-upmanship to eventually converge in one of the least interesting action scenes of recent times.

At its most basic level, the film feigns concern towards how revenge can be a bottomless pit. Violence doesn't merely escalate in the film, it consumes all. The level of terror multiples geometrically, as one death begets two, and then four, etc. Millar's original comic is considered by halfwits as a post-structuralist work, but this sort of reading is only valid for armchair proponents of even the real-world history of violence being its own fiction. Of course, this is all rubbish. The uneven tone of the violence contributes to the confusion. During one memorable scene (for all the wrong reasons), a gigantic ex-KGB agent called Mother Russia dispatches ten police officers in increasingly violent ways as a sped-up, trance version of the Tetris theme plays. I am not sure what reaction Wadlow was going for, but I was sickened. This did not make me reassess my position towards vigilantism or violence, seeing as I am not a sociopath. I don't need a superhero film to tell me that kicking the living crap out of people is wrong.

Also icky is the sexualization of Chloë Grace Moretz, a trend that began in last year's "Dark Shadows" and continues here, where the hormonal vagaries of Mindy's body are brought to the screen in fairly graphic ways (I was surprised to discover that the boy-band who inspires her sexual awakening is in fact real). Grace has been good before, but here she seems to be mimicking emotions she was yet to experience, rather than acting. Considering how grating Christopher Mintz-Plasse's and how bland Aaron Taylor-Johnson's personae are, her subpar performance is particularly conspicuous.

By the end of "Kick-Ass 2," Dave is redeemed by the "perfect," virginally pure, specimen that is Mindy. This betrays a further fascist motif inherent in the narrative. Throughout the film, it is unclear quite what Dave is thinking when he stares at his perfect, Aryan sidekick. The eerie sexual prompting surrounding her takes on an additional political burden. By the end, Dave is defending Mindy, the racially pure, against the unwanted attentions of the outcast portion of society. And Mindy, like a cross between a Smurf and a Valkyrie, is wreaking vengeance herself. This is post-structural fascism, with the hint of the past fueling the engine of violence. But the two kiss at the end, so it's all good, I suppose.

As the leader of Justice Forever, a team of ass-kicking Kick-Ass-a-likes, the former mobster oversees the good work of misfit superheroes Remembering Tommy, Night Bitch, Insect Man, and Battle Guy as they beat up the bad 'uns that stand in their way - including the now extra-terrifying Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), now called reinvented as The Motherfucker.

Comic Book Movie uncovered these and more details on Kick-Ass 2 while attending a panel discussion that included Wadlow, who gamely answered questions about the upcoming adventure. The writer-director revealed he penned the screenplay over the holidays, and sought to find a place where the first movie and the second graphic novel intersect. Like its precursor, Kick-Ass 2 will take some departures from its source material, Millar's comic of the same name, as Wadlow explains:

It's three years after Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) hung up his tights as Kick-Ass, and 15-year old Mindy McCready (Chloë Grace Moretz) is starting highschool at Dave's school...in theory. In reality, whilst Mindy's guardian is trying to give her a normal life, she's skipping school every day to train and fight criminals as Hit-Girl. Dave, bored with his life after retiring from superheroics, begs her to take him on as a sidekick. After Dave gets back in the tights, he soon learns that he and Hit-Girl are no longer the only costumed vigilantes in New York, and joins Justice Forever, a group of like-minded individuals led by Colonel Stars-and-Stripes (Jim Carrey).

Hit-Girl spins off into her own blood-socaked saga! Mindy tries to settle down as a regular schoolgirl, but really wants to be dispensing justice to the scum of New York. She takes Kick-Ass on as her sidekick, and, in return, he is helping her to survive school - without spilling anyone's blood. But when Kick-Ass gets benched, leaving her to face the mafia solo, even Hit-Girl may be in over her head. 2ff7e9595c