"Kick-Ass 3" by Mark Millar

BOOK TITLE: Kick-Ass 3

AUTHOR: Mark Millar

YEAR: 2014

GENRE: Graphic Novel

SUBGENRE: Superhero

GRADE: Pass

Following the events of Kick-Ass 2, Hit-Girl is locked in solitary confinement while Kick-Ass and his friends try to rebuild what’s left of their superhero team. New girlfriends, real world priorities, lack of preparation, freeloading teammates, and dissension among the team all play a factor in slowing down progress for Kick-Ass and his ambitions of keeping New York City safe. A team of superheroes is needed now more than ever since mafia boss Rocco Genovese is back in business and plans on uniting every east coast gang to form one big mega corporation that also includes corrupt cops. Can Kick-Ass and his crew get their ducks in a row? Can Hit-Girl escape from prison and reunite with her friends? These questions won’t get answered without a few splatters of blood and some broken bones along the way.

It’s been a long time in between reading Kick-Ass 2 and Kick-Ass 3. I had completely forgotten by then how delightfully brutal Hit-Girl can be. Even in solitary confinement, she manages to murder everyone who crosses her, smuggle a bottle of Jack Daniels in her cell, and play with Hello Kitty cards all in the same day. When she unleashes her litany of tough guy swear words, she can back up every single one of them and go completely overboard in the process. Granted, I’m not a big fan of her anti-liberal remarks, but that’s only a tiny part of Hit-Girl’s overall character. She’s a badass in every sense of the word. If she can’t slice heads off or smash genitals into powder, she’ll outsmart her foes with explosives and guns. Lots and lots of guns. You mess with her, not only are you dead as a doornail, but you’re going to feel it in the afterlife as well.

The other thing I liked about this graphic novel is Kick-Ass’s struggles with balancing his superhero life with his personal one. There are times in the story where he seriously considers settling down with his new girlfriend and forsaking his superhero persona altogether. He blames himself and his obsession with Batman for his friends and loved ones being killed left and right. While capitulation isn’t a desirable trait in a superhero, it’s certainly an understandable one. It’s all a part of the normal life versus exciting life debate that goes on not only with fictional superheroes, but aspects of the real world as well whether it’s the music industry, Hollywood, wrestling, or professional sports. For a graphic novel that loves hardcore violence, it certainly makes you think a little bit every now and then.

Speaking of hardcore violence, it’s peppered everywhere in this comic book and I love it to pieces. Splatters of blood, crunching bones, sloshing organs, you name it, it happens. There’s even one painful scene where Hit-Girl punches a corrupt cup on the groin so hard that his whole pelvis explodes. It’s later learned that the poor guy lost sixty pounds since then. I don’t know how, but it sounds brutal nonetheless. There’s another scene where Hit-Girl slashes a gangster’s head in half horizontally, which reminds me of something that would happen in Kill Bill. In fact, if you took Kill Bill, Hostel, the Saw movies, and Blood Drive, put them all in a milkshake blender and watched the red juices overflow, that’s pretty much what Kick-Ass 3 is like. It’s gruesome as hell, but in a fun and delightfully sadistic way. Would this be considered a guilty pleasure?

Kick-Ass 3 lives up to the awesome reputation the first two installments did and wraps up the series in a nice little bundle. The ending is satisfying, no stone is left unturned, and everybody goes home happy. Well, I don’t know how happy anybody can truly be after everything Kick-Ass went through for three graphic novels, but there’s at least a modicum of solace in his new life. A passing grade goes to this excellent piece of badass violence! Great work, Mr. Millar!

"Superman For the Animals" by Mark Millar

If the thought of cute, cuddly, fuzzy animal babies being brutalized disgusts you, then “Superman For the Animals” will either be one of two things for you. It will either be a call to arms against animal cruelty or a series of brutal images to shy away from and save for another reader. Either way, this comic book will disturb you. You probably don’t even have to be an animal person to be disturbed by the disgusting shit that happens to these defenseless critters. The main character, a shy teenager, hangs out with a bunch of kids led by a sociopath who tortures animals just for fun. This leader of the pack shoots a dog in the leg, kicks pigeons out of the way, suffocates a goldfish, and would have dumped a cat off of a highway bridge if it hadn’t been for Superman’s intervention. Despite being the title character in this story, Superman is not the main hero as one would expect him to be. It’s the shy kid who joins the group that ends up being the most productive hero. He eventually has to learn to stand up for these animals and not rely on superheroes to do it for him. Standing up to your enemies is hard enough. Standing up to people you consider your friends is even worse. If it can be done, though, the person will be stronger for it. One way or another, the animal torturing teenager needs to be stopped. Surely, you would like to see some justice done toward this sociopathic kid, right? Don’t get your hopes up to high. The worst that happens to him is that he’s forced to see a therapist to sort out his fucked up mind. As an animal lover, I believe this is not enough. That kid needs to be locked up in prison for the rest of his fucking life. If he’s willing to do this to cute, cuddly critters, imagine what he’ll do to humans if given the opportunity. That’s normally the first step for serial killers: they start off with animals and slowly progress to killing humans. If you’re not going to read this comic for the harsh justice that needs to be served, you can at least read it to see the main character grow into a respectable human being. In order to redeem himself for hanging out with an animal torturer for this long, he goes to a pet shelter and volunteers his time there. Superman wasn’t going to make this choice for him, but he did steer him in the right direction. Sometimes all we need is a little push.

　

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“I loved you in the sunshine. You chase the moon with a spear. Tardy afternoons in utopia. Kiss an ugly turtle and make it cry. Sever the head of cornucopia. We rape the earth and don’t know why it strikes. Do you believe in stormy weather? Hurricanes play musical chairs with homes and chattels. The whirling dervish tornados reek all disaster. See-saw tsunamis, give and take, what’s the matter?”

-Serj Tankian singing “Cornucopia”-

"Kick-Ass 1 & 2" by Mark Millar

Have you ever felt like putting on a superhero costume and going around fighting villains in brutal street wars? Buy copies of “Kick-Ass” and “Kick-Ass 2” before you make any sudden decisions. What can you expect from the two-part series? Brutality. Lots and lots of brutality. These kids (Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl) are barely old enough to know how to drive a car and already they’re engaging in hellacious fights with villains who aren’t afraid to die. Broken bones, electrocuted genitals, torn flesh, massive bleeding, gigantic bruises, and a litany of other monstrously violent battle scars cover the bodies of every pubescent superhero who tries to make a name for himself. But it’s all in a day’s work for Kick-Ass and crew. You’d think that he would get used to all of these beatings by now, but as the story progresses from part one to part two, the brutality multiplies to greater volumes. The worst of the beatings happen to people that Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl care about such as parents, friends, love interests, etc. It was almost enough to make them want to quit being superheroes until the villains pushed a little too hard a little too much. With this cluster-fuck of violent behavior going on in these beautifully drawn graphic novels, you’re bound to have some critic out there complaining that they “normalize” all of the adult content that takes place. I remember reading a review that complained about Hit-Girl swearing at such a young age in the Kick-Ass movie. I see these reviews and wonder if these critics even know the difference between fantasy and reality. In the fantasy world, violence, swearing, sex, and drug use are beautiful things. They have to be in order to keep the reader’s attention. In the real world, martial arts violence is brutal and upsetting. This kind of debate was going on with “A Clockwork Orange” and the same arguments could be made in that conversation. Reading comic books like “Kick-Ass” and “Kick-Ass 2” is a form of escapism. We escape from one world of dullness and enter a world of fantasy and wonder. That’s how fiction works. If people tried being superheroes in real life, the pain that Kick-Ass felt after having his balls electrocuted would pail in comparison to what the would-be heroes would feel. In some ways, “Kick-Ass” is a fair representation of what vigilantes can expect if they become too independent of the police and military. It’s an ugly world out there, I agree. But it’s not worth having fried balls over. Leave that to Kick-Ass and his crew of head-stomping superheroes!

　

***JOKE OF THE DAY***

Q: What’s it called when the earth shits itself?
A: Gaia-Ria.