When Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.’s comic book Kick-Ass premiered a few months back, I passed it by for a couple of reasons. First and most of all, I was tired of the whole “realistic” costumed vigilante story. Also, there was a load of hype around the comic which always makes me a bit wary. Placing a blurb which reads “The GREATEST SUPERHERO book of ALL TIME is FINALLY HERE!” across your cover also guarantees me to keep on walking by.
Even the fact that it was quickly announced soon after its debut that the film rights to the series had been snatched up didn’t excite me all that much. In fact, it further set off little cynical alarms in the back of my mind. Was the book merely a way to market the much more lucrative film rights to the character and story?
It wasn’t until last week when a draft of the screenplay for the Matthew Vaughn-directed big screen adaptation land on my desk did I start to take an interest. A quick read of the script’s first dozen or so pages, quickly got me hooked into the story of a teenage comic book collector who decides to put on a costume and fight criminals just because it strikes him as the right thing to do. I haven’t progressed much further into the script because I want to read the first few issues of the comic to see how they compare. Right now I have the first issue (third printing) waiting patiently for me to pick up copies of the second and third issues so I can sit down and read them all together. After that, I will dive back into the script and hopefully have a report on it for you.
Meanwhile, over at HitFix, there are three new pictures from the production. The first features Aaron Johnson as Dave Lizewski in his costume, ready for action. The second features Nicholas Cage and Chloe Moretz as a father and daughter who will follow Dave’s lead into the realm of superheroics. The third picture features Dave with some friends at the comics shop where he first begins to hatch his plan.
