Writer: Mark Millar
Artist: John Romita Jr.
Publisher: Icon/Marvel
Price: $2.99
Release Date: 27th February

With only a leper’s handful of comics out in 2007, this year sees a number of Millar-related comics hitting the stands. Alongside his mainstream Marvel work with Fantastic Four, Wolverine and 1985 lands another of his Millarworld titles – Kick-Ass. Showing once again his grasp of subtlety with the title, Kick-Ass sees Millar reunited with his one time Wolverine artist, John Romita Jr in a book that is being put out through the Marvel imprint, Icon.

After obtaining a inked and lettered version of the first issue, I can report this comic lives up to its title in that it involves a lot of ass being kicked, but perhaps not in the way you might imagine. Kick-Ass centres around the exploits of wannabe superhero, and nerdish teenager, Dave Lizewski. Essentially narrating the his origin story, Dave takes us through the reasons behind wanting to buy a wet suit off Ebay and wearing it under his school clothes, but doesn’t quite get around to why someone would want to electrocute his testicles.

The aim of the title is to take realistic super-heroes to the “next level”, and the Millar publicity machine has been working overtime on this little series, faked-up vigilante videos on Youtube, a soundtrack, retailer advertising incentives, etc. Whilst this realism aspect is touted, it’s not utterly realistic (I doubt you could sit in class with a wet suit on without squeaking…) but I don’t see that as a bad thing mainly because it’s funny and ridiculous, brash and just damn good to look at. The sense of humour that runs through the book is Millar’s acerbic black humour, opening with a wannabe superhero trying to find his wings, through to Dave declaring Whedon’s X-Men run as making “Buffy look like shit”.

Whereas Millar’s Fantastic Four has a sprinkling of Millar’s patented pop culture references, Kick-Ass is crawling in them. Mainly they are used to try and ground the protagonist, explaining his likes and dislikes, his social situation and so on. They only jar because you just don’t like some of the focal points of the references, either to films or bands or celebrities – but that really isn’t the aim. What really centres the book is the basic concept that a teenage boy wants to dress up and go and right some wrongs, create some justice – Christ, just feel something exciting instead of being nobody.

John Romita Jr’s artwork is consistently excellent, I refuse to believe the man can draw a bad comic book, and you only have to look at recent output to prove it - Amazing Spider-Man, Eternals, World War Hulk - and it continues here. Effortlessly covering the social aspects of high school to a wetsuit clad vigilante taking his first steps into the criminal element, every page is delightful, I look forward to seeing the coloured version.

And so Kick-Ass looks to be a great book. The only elements that will raise some questions are to how the story will develop; this really is a scene-setting issue with only a couple of hints of what might be down the line; and what American teenager actually likes the Stereophonics? Consider this comic the antithesis of Ultimate Spider-Man #1 and enjoy the ride.

Discuss this topic here.