All Things Kick-Ass: The House Review

Every once in a while, I'd say, maybe every two or three years or so, you come across a franchise that does more than deliver the standard comicbook hypersexualized thrills, the rampant, even saturating, supermasculinity that bursts forth like the stuffing of a Chipotle burrito from every page, a franchise that hits you square in the jaw with a 2x4, steals your shitty car, and doesn't even bother to pay for dinner.

A franchise, that in not so many words, kicks your ass.

Sure, we've all seen blood before. If you're a trauma surgeon reading this, you see blood everyday. Hell, we're in America, if you're a kindergarten teacher you see blood everyday. But not like this, oh no, never like this.

No one has ever seen blood like this.

You see, in the world of Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.'s Kick-Ass graphic novel and Director Mattew Vaugn's film adaptation of the same name, everything bleeds.

Now, I'm not sure if this was just my ignorance as to how many things in this world are actually capable of bleeding, or if this was just my ignorance as to how much blood an adult human body actually contains, but I shit you not, this was by far the most brutal testament to the art of exsanguination I have ever seen.

Dare I say it, the amount of blood in this franchise rivals even that of Ninja Scroll, a feat considered by most to be nigh-unreachable. (That is, just short of painting every frame completely red.)

The interesting thing about this title though is what it's really about, something that I think the final cut of the film misses entirely as it diverges from the graphic novel completely about half-way through, and what it's about, is quite simply, the comicbooks themselves.

You have the main character, Dave Lizewski, a raging comicbook fiend like yours truly, who decides that he's going to be a superhero (Kick-Ass), and that ultimately superpowers and glorified origin stories don't matter, as long as someone is looking to do some good in the world. Of course, this was before the little idealist got knifed in the gut and flattened by a car, but hey, it's the thought that counts, right? He read the books and thought, however misguidedly, that he could do it himself. It was downright American of him.

Then, definitely not to be forgotten, you have the duo of the epically (remember how I define that word?) foul-mouthed Hit-Girl, an eleven year old killing machine and expert ball basher, and her father, Big Daddy, a staunch neo-conservative and fellow comicbook fiend who has a penchant for blowing people's brains out with a high-powered sniper rifle. He turns out to be an even worse comicbook fan than Dave, actually, far worse, but you don't find that out until the very end in a twist that for some reason the film decided to omit.

Why, though? In fact, everything else in the graphic novel is identical to the film, except for Big Daddy, the result of Dave's romantic arc with the female lead, and a few costume alterations. The Big Daddy in the film is a goofy, Adam West inspired character, played by none other than the master himself, Nicholas Cage. The thing is though, the Big Daddy of the film is all well and good on his own, it's just that he stands so opposed to the very serious, no-laughing-matter Big Daddy in the graphic novel.

You see, in the film, Big Daddy was a former cop who couldn't be paid off by the film's antagonist, Johnny G, a mobster kingpin, and so the mob attempted to kill his pregnant wife. The hit succeeded, although the baby was saved, and, through her father's police training, went on become Hit-Girl. In many ways, the origin story of Big Daddy and Hit-Girl in the movie were typical genre conventions of the comicbook origin story paradigm: Good Cop pisses off some mobster/wealthy/powerful asshole, asshole kills loved one(s) of Good Cop, Good Cop, having lost faith in the regular criminal justice system, takes up the mantle of superhero and vows to kill said asshole. The film follows the standard formula perfectly.

However, the Big Daddy in the graphic novel is better, and not just because the author of this review is some super-obsessed fanboy comicbook purist, oh no, the Big Daddy of the graphic novel is better because he's deeper. He's deeper because instead of the one-man-against-the-entire-mob origin story being true like we see it in the film, when we see the same explanation for the existence of Hit-Girl and Big Daddy, we find out later that it was all just a lie! The big Daddy of the graphic novel made it up! He was no different than Kick-Ass! He had left his wife, kidnapped and brainwashed his daughter, and bought all of their arms and armor through selling his collection of vintage comicbooks on eBay! He was trying to live the life of a superhero traveling around fighting crime with his kid side-kick!

Oh, how wonderful the irony was. It was something breathtaking.

As a matter of fact, it was the irony that led me to a very interesting parallel, a parallel to which, in my honest opinion, any self-respecting comicbook fan can relate: What do Big Daddy, Don Quixote, and Madame Bovary all have in common?

They were all driven insane by reading too much.

Don Quixote, by far the most famous of the three, was driven insane by reading too many chivalry novels, and convinced himself of all sorts of delusions regarding his "knightly missions". Madame Bovary, a character devised by Gustave Flaubert regarding the over-saturation of romantic novels amongst women, was driven insane by thinking that courtly love was a real phenomenon, eventually committing suicide over her inability to gain the "princess" status she thought she rightfully deserved. And finally, we come to the last of the three, Big Daddy, a character who has driven himself into longing for an unattainable life, the life of a superhero, by reading too many comicbooks, a longing that ultimately killed him, as he realized all too late that the good guys don't always win, or at least, they don't always come to the rescue of friends in need.

Now, I cannot tell you that Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. set out to write Kick-Ass as a commentary on the effects of fandom in its most ridiculous, yet frighteningly feasible, sense, although as one can see the parallels to other delusional characters are most certainly there.

This could be perhaps why the Kick-Ass graphic novel ended the way it did, with Dave essentially hanging up the cape, so to speak, and Hit-Girl re-uniting with her mother: it was a way of showing that while the life of a superhero is grand, or at least supposed to be, it is best left to the pages of comicbooks themselves.

Overall, I give the Kick-Ass graphic novel 8 out of 10 Natural 20s, and the Kick-Ass film 7 out of 10 Natural 20s, as the ramifications of the potential depth of the novel largely outshines the flashiness of the film.

(In all honesty though, go see the film. The actress who played Hit-Girl, Chloe Moretz I believe her name was, totally steals the show. She did a fantastic job.)