Kick-Ass #3

This is the part where the Cat in the Hat comes and cleans up, right?

The Obligatory Warning: coarse language, impalings, beheadings, cross-section-y violence. Also, there are SPOILERS in the following review. SPOILERS. You've been warned.

Kick-Ass, Civil War scribe Mark Millar's new original miniseries, has already made a splash. Issue 3 will probably do the same, because now there's a body count and a nine-year-old girl who's apparently been watching Clockwork Orange in her spare time. In the last three pages, she stabs a drug-addict, and cuts another's head in half.

Yes, the violence has gotten gory, but it's not clear why. Millar's written stories where violence was used in a simplistic, pornographic fashion (the atrocious Wanted, for instance), but he seems to be doing something else with it in Kick-Ass. Is it a commentary on how violenct comics have become? Or society's sick interest in garish voyeurism? Or is he just manipulating readers all the way to the bank? It isn't clear yet, but this reviewer is still skeptical.

The bulk of the story, at least, continues to be entertaining. Millar has said he wants Wanted to be as "realistic" a superhero story as possible. The way Dave uses myspace and youtube to bulk up his reputation is believable, and there's a hilarious scene that quickly dismisses traditional superhero rooftop jumping.

John Romita Jr.'s art continues to be phenomenal. He can draw emotions I didn't know existed. Admittedly, my medication only allows me three facial expressions a day, but still...the guy knows his stuff. The wide-eyed innocence, giddy hatred and bloodthirsty nonchalance that appear on the faces of Romita's characters make it seem like he'd be as well suited to a good piece of naturalist fiction as to a superhero comic. Only, Madame Bovary never gutted a guy with a katana, so maybe not.

One thing about Kick-Ass perplexes me above all others. In this issue, and the first two, Millar has written "A few words from the writer" columns in the back of the comic. In all three columns, he's discussed his own small-time, grass-roots effort to get Kick-Ass off the ground. Millar paints a picture of Kick-Ass as a sleeper hit that almost didn't get published. It's not that I doubt Millar, but such a story seems a little weird when it's followed by six straignt pages of Marvel Comics ads. It also seems strange that Marvel's golden boy-- the guy who wrote Civil War, which gave Marvel Comics scads of mainstream press-- would have difficulty publishing anything with anybody.

Worth the money? Though the art is stunning, I'll say no. Because I'm not fully convinced that Kick-Ass isn't just messing around with the reader.