Kick-Ass (Hardcover Collection)

Many factors caused me to resist reading the Kick-Ass comic books as they were released: I had heard that they were overly violent, there were long expanses of downtime between issues, and now they're making the comics into a movie that looks fairly cheesy. I'd heard a lot of exciting things as well, though, about how the comics create a realistic, modern story of a superhero, so when the collected version came out in hardcover, I decided to give it a chance.

Some of my concerns were justified, some of them not at all. The story itself is nothing short of incredible. ((Spoilers ahoy)) Some comic book nerd decides to put on a costume, more or less on a lark, and train to be a superhero. He doesn't have some dark origin story, he just loves comic books. So he goes out to try to protect his neighborhood, threatens some thugs, and then the brutal violence of the comic rears its head: he is beaten, stabbed in the gut, and then hit by a car. He spends the next several months in the hospital and in physical therapy. ((End spoilers))

The images are gruesome, and definitely not for those who can't stand to see violence, but I respect the artistic choice to show what would really happen to someone foolish enough to fight crime with no super powers or advanced military training. Beyond the realism of the violence, the book does a great job of showing how a real-life superhero might become famous through popular websites like YouTube and MySpace, and through coverage on the news and late night television. The characters also all have real-life origin stories which make sense in a world that, up until that point, only had superheroes in comic books.

Overall, I was incredibly impressed by the book, and the quality of the writing and plotting was such that I felt the graphic violence was justified by the content. I was dismayed to find, however, that in the back of the book was a compilation of the "Greatest Hits" from the stories, which was essentially all the most disgusting, violent images of the book all in one place. Why would someone add that to their comic? It undermines the intelligence of the rest of the book to cater to the violence-porn audience.

I give the book and story 9/10 asses kicked, but I give the decision to include the "Greatest Hits" pages at the end 0/10 asses kicked. Any comic book reader who can get past the extreme violence will find a lot to love about this story. Anyone who cannot should give it a wide berth.