Book: Kick-Ass 2
Pen: Mark Millar
Pencil: John Romita Jr.
Oh, Mark Millar, what have you done!
Kick-Ass 2 is everything the original was not and nothing what its predecessor was. Here’s a sequel that was begging not to be told, but Millar and Romita went and told it anyway. We are poorer for it.
Once superheros had their origins, the next logical step is superhero team ups. Fair enough. Our buddy Dave Lizewski aka Kick-Ass and the pint-sized dynamo Hit-Girl (Mindy McCready) decide to take their partnership seriously and were practicing their moves. Mindy’s stepfather, Marcus, asked her to give up her alter ego for good. Kick-Ass decides to join a group of other costumed ordinary-heroes in a group called Justice Forever, led by former Mafia henchman-turned-born-again-Christian Colonel Stars. They may be a little too violent, but their hearts are in the right place.
Well, you can’t just do good, can you? Our former pretender Red Mist turns up with a new name and wreaks havoc including a beheading, a rape, a prison assassination and assorted murders. Kick-Ass gives it all up, but the villains didn’t get together for fun. But their latest salvo unleashes the Hulk, sorry, Hit-Girl. The body count races up and we soon have a bloody battle in Times Square.
Kick-Ass was gutsy. Kick-Ass 2 just has a lot more guts spewed around. It takes violence to a silly level, even by Millar’s standards. What is worse is it is lifeless. Deaths and rapes mean nothing in the context of what’s happening. Millar and Romita are playing ‘who can shock you more’ and they forget that they don’t have a good story to back them up.
There are a few money shots, mostly involving Hit-Girl, and a few jokes, mostly about a shark in a tank. But when the violence is so mind-numbing you don’t stop to think. You know there’s something wrong about a short series if the biggest plus you can take from it is that it ran for only seven issues.
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