Comic Reviews: Kick Ass #1

Kick Ass #1
Where are we?:  Kick Ass is the story of young Dave Lizewski, your average high school teenager in this world.  He decides to be a superhero.  Did you catch the part where I said, “this world”.  Dave could live on your street, you could be his friend.  He has no powers, no radioactive spider, no last son of a lost world.  People don’t fly or shoot beams of energy.  Everyone in the book is as normal as you or I.  Dave decides to become a superhero.  His reasons are best summed up by saying, “why does everyone want to be Paris Hilton and no one wants to be Spider-Man?”  Well, that’s because Paris Hilton has a better publicity agent than Peter Parker.  Seriously, one is a low budget porn star that has never done anything else of note, and the other saves the world on a daily basis.
Dave begins to train, he does research (reads more comics), then he promptly gets his ass handed to him.  It is a brutal beating.  John Romita Jr.’s art not only graphically shows the beating, but the pacing of the fight causes your heart to jump with each panel.  The only thing saving the reader from going off the deep end is the knowledge that this is a flashback scene.  Hints are dropped to make us wonder just how successful Kick Ass become, and who are the “others” that he speaks of?

Rating:  Buy twice, once for the single issues, and again when the GN is released.