Comic Books

KICK-ASS 2 #4

Red Mist takes on a new identity too vulgar for print and issues a command to all his super-bastards on Twitter to wreak havoc on New York.

Meanwhile, the cops are cracking down on all costumed activity and tracing the secret identities of all the heroes. Could Dave get a knock on his door, and has enough spit hit the fan for Hit-Girl to pick up her sword again?

Story by Mark Millar
Art by John Romita Jr.
Cover by John Romita Jr.

Price: $2.99
iFanboy Community Pick of the Week Percentage: 0.1%

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koryrosh09/29/11YesRead Review
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Avg Rating: 3.4
 
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Comments

  1. Hit Girl better be back this issue!

  2. Every time this comes out, I don’t expect to like it, but I always do.

  3. It’s on time!!! 😀

  4. Some more ultra-violence!

  5. Still vaguely interested…

  6. Holy crap this is shipping two months in a row.

    • I guess Mark Millar realized he needs to actually work in order to make money.

    • Oh come on, it’s John Romita Jr., not Millar. Millar isn’t the one drawing Avengers at the same time as this. The only reason this will be coming out on time now is that Marvel gave Romita some free time to work on this.

    • Excuse me, but Millar has a history of being late. Don’t believe me? Look at Nemesis (drawn by McNiven) and Superior (Yu). It’s late because it’s a creator owned comic and that creator happens to be doing his own magazine, comics, and creator-owned project while running at a speed somewhere between Kevin Smith and Jeph Loeb.

      What he lacks in punctuality though, he makes up for in quality.

    • Yeah, but it’s usually the artists fault because they have other commitments. Yu was late because Marvel had him do the Ultimates vs Ultimate Avengers miniseries. They are double shipping issues 5 & 6 next month to help make up for it.

  7. slight spoiler

    i’m temped to drop this just because of the rape scene …comics never bother me, all the 52 controversy is fine, the other the top violence isn’t an issue, but this book at crossed…both go to far with rape in comics

    • I think I might have to join you in dropping this. Normally violence doesn’t bother me at all and I really think i’m pretty open-minded when it comes to this stuff. However shooting small kids in the face and the rape scene was too much for even me. Dropped

    • Rape (famous one of the top of my head would be Babs in The Killing Joke) and murder (dead kids? Marvel Civil War started with an entire elementary school blowing up) are common themes in superhero comics in both Marvel and DC, so please do not act like this is something unheard of.
      Yes, Millar is very graphic with his stories, but honestly, what did you expect by picking up his book? Did you even read Kick-Ass or Nemesis? Graphic is what he does.

    • @jonny Agreed that this stuff happens in other comics but the difference between blowing up an elementary school on a panel and seeing someone blow the brains out of small children graphically in art is an entirely different matter. I would say it’s a safe assumption that you do not have small children of your own. I’m not saying that this should be pulled from the shelves but as a father of a small child this is the last thing I want to see when reading something for enjoyment, so I personally am going to drop this book because it’s too much for me.

    • No more graphic than when Fantomex shot a kid in the head because he thought that he would grow up into Apocalypse (Uncanny X-Force).

      And you’re right, I don’t have kids. I do however teach preschool and yes, there is some shock there and an uneasy feeling, but that’s the point. He’s a very bad guy and it makes the good guys winning that much more satisfying. Again, if any of you have ever read a Millar comic before then I don’t understand the sudden change of heart. It’s okay to have a teenage boy get stabbed, hit by a car, and have his ball electrocuted sadistically or to have a villain kill thousands of people just to get to one cop, or have a brother rape his sister to get to the father… or maybe even turn Hulk into a cannibalistic monster that terrorizes Manhattan, but show us something that can happen everyday in the real world and suddenly it’s too much.

    • @jonny Look man you obviously have a very strong opinion here about how graphically depicting the murder of innocent children is ok and that’s fine for you to have that opinion. I’m not even telling you it’s wrong but I am saying it’s wrong for me. Let’s go through the list

      1. I’m ok with fantomex shooting apocalypse jr because it’s written in a way that the child being shot is obviously the reincarnation of all evil and will bring the apocalypse killing billions.

      2. I’m ok with Kick-Ass 1 torture scene because it’s happening to a teenager who chose to become a super hero and is now dealing with all the problems associated with that.

      3. I’m ok with the Hulk becoming a cannibalistic monster that terrorizes Manhattan because that is obviously not going to happen in real life and is just a fun story.

      4. I’m ok with an art depiction of an elementary school being blown up in Civil War because it’s part of the story but it just eludes to the the death of children but doesn’t flaunt it in front of my face showing me every graphic angle.

      5. I’m NOT ok with watching the graphic depiction of a full page, setting up these sweet innocent children playing together and then seeing vivid depiction of these innocent children have their brains splattered across the page, because this CAN really happen and it disturbs me tremendously as a father who reads his son to sleep every night and has love for him that cannot be expressed in words.

      This disturbs me on level I dont think you can understand until you’re a parent. I’m not against the killing of children in stories outright as a rule if it’s part of the story but show that crap off panel or elude to it some other way, dont make me watch it. If you like this kind of stuff in your comics then that’s your decision and I’m not saying you should stop buying it. However you saying that I should be ok with seeing the graphic depiction of children being murder is misguided at best. I choose not to buy this book anymore because it disturbs me. To each their own but this not what I want in my entertainment.

    • I’m with FuryofFirestorm and thompsonlive. There are some things I can live without ever seeing. The brutal gang rape of a child (I remember her being in high school, so yes, a child) is one of them.

    • I think the cover says it all-THE MUST-READ BOOKS FOR ALL PSYCHOPATHS!-Fucken Millar is crazy. I totally Respect all point of views above and get where your coming from but this is really no different than all the other crazy shit Millar has wrote over the years. Sometime he’s alot more mild then this but he’s always pushing the limits. Millar wrote that Ultimate book where the new Red Skull tossed a baby out the fucken window. That was FUCKED UP-Getting a Millar book is like renting a porno. If you dont like seeing people getting fucked I would recommend you not buying it.

    • So then let me understand this… you are alright with kids being blown up because it wasn’t in detail. You’re alright with killing a then innocent because of the chance he might grow up evil. You’re okay with Hulk being a monster and eating people because it can’t happen in real life.

      So you’re saying that if you can’t see it, it stops [possible] evil, and if it doesn’t happen in every day life that it’s okay with you. Alright. Gotcha.

      Fact is, this is a comic about real life people trying to be real life heroes and villains. Gang rapes and murdering children happens in real life. I’m not glorifying it and I don’t think Millar is either. It simply highlights how evil the character truly is.

    • johnny, I don’t quite understand your need to be right on this issue. Everyone has their limits, and this issue crossed that line for some of us.

    • @jonny I agree with you that this is based on “real life” and that this stuff happens in real life but just because it happens doesn’t mean the only way to convey that to the audience is to graphically show it. You can achieve the same end result without having to show children getting slaughtered in front of your face. When I watch the news and hear about a rapist or child murder, I’m very well aware of how evil the person is just by the description of what happened. I do not need the news to play me footage of the vile crime being commited to prove to me that someone is evil, the same concept applies to entertainment media. Now obviously viewing this stuff doesn’t bother you which is fine and you should continue to read it if you enjoy it. However for a lot of us it crosses an emotional line we are not willing to go past. Nothing you say is going to make these images less disturbing to me, and when something disturbs me like the imagery in this does then i’m not going to continue reading it and you shouldn’t expect people not to be disturbed by something just because it doesn’t disturb you. Everyone is different and for me that difference is resulting in the loss of support for this title.

    • I’m just a dick is all. I know we all have out opinions, I’m just annoyed with people who complain when they picked up a comic like this and didn’t expect something over the top and morally questionable.

    • Two things

      1. This is fiction, even though stuff like this happens in real life.

      2. They are supposed to be the bad guys. Some books have “cool” bad guys you root for. Not here.

      This book isn’t for everyone. It’s disturbing upsetting and mean. But I still love. If you want to see read something really ugly, check out Millar’s Unfunnies. There is one book that was so nasty I hated it.

    • Dropping for the same reason.

    • I can understand how some people had a problem with this, it definitely disturbed me. However I think it is interesting to see such depths of evil portrayed in comics. As some people have said, terrible things like this do happen in real life and yet most comics never go near touching stuff like this. I’m not sure Millar is the right person to write about things like this, he seems to get too much enjoyment out of violence, but it is interesting to see a comic that doesn’t pull up. Also the rape ‘scene’ is disturbing but we don’t actually see anything occur. I thought the children getting shot was much worse.

      Also I think by now people should know what to expect from a Millar comic. Most of his creator owned stuff seems designed to simply to out do himself. I am starting to tire of him in general but I at least know what to expect when I buy his book.

  8. this is my pick of the week based on one line from hit girl

  9. Millar books always have over the top violence and crazy ass villians- Shit he had Wesley from wanted gun down a whole police station of cops just cause he had some free time-Picking up a Millar book with his history you should know what your getting into 4/5

  10. so basically, this is an all ages book? =p

    Just reading the comics. Holy Shnikee…this is def not for me.

  11. So…Mark Millar is one of my favorite writers. But these last 2 issues of Kick-Ass have not done it for me. I’m going to finish off the series, partially for the sake of having them all in my collection, because flipping through seeing 5 and 6 missing would drive me up the wall, but more for the sake that I think he might be able to turn it around. I get the fact that Millar is an “edgy” writer, he writes deeply disturbing stories. I get that. These last two issues have seemed more like cheap shock value as opposed to disturbing storytelling. I’ll go ahead with the cop out argument of comparing Mark Millar to Garth Ennis. The thing about Ennis writing villains is that you want to see how the “heros” are going to kill them in the end of the book. With Millar you’re just waiting to see how the villains will more than likely triumph. Which I think is where many people get turned off. In my opinion, Millar should have kept writing superhero books, he’s really really good at it. Both Wolverine stories he penned are in my personal top 10 Wolverine stories of all time. However, Nemesis, Kick-Ass, and Wanted, all just work off of one basic idea “Superheroes could never win because Supervillains are willing to go further” and that’s great, but the fact remains that most people want to see evil get punished in a terrible way, by arguably “good” characters like Jesse Custer or Frank Castle.

  12. Millar has really taken the fun out of gang rape. Good thing he killed some kids even it out.

  13. Ugh. I hated this. Time for me to bail on all things Millar. I like authors who push boundaries and cross lines, but there needs to be some kind of point to it, some kind of thought put into it. Millar just seems to be trying to be as vile as possible without regard for storytelling. You win, Millar, I won’t buy your books sight-unseen anymore.

  14. Nahhh, that was too much. When i turn the cover of anything having Kick Ass written on it, i expect it to be violent and i’m okay with it. I even expect it to be more violent than most of the other stuff i read, and thats still okay. But now i reached the point where i not only bored be, i bothered me because there was nothing else happening and Millar pushed it too far. The few “thats what would happen if shit where real” moments weren’t enough to entertain me. I hope he gets back on track with some more character moments in the upcoming issue, but at this point i only expect hit-girl to slaughter anyone. Kick Ass 2 was better than i expected it to be, but now it has become what i expected to get before i read the first issue. Violence for the sake of it and no real story.

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