Kick-Arse

[Richmond Clements]

Kick Ass is a cool, sweary romp that is a good adrenaline rush antidote to the safe mainstream comics. Less convoluted than The Boys, and still a lot of fun.

And racism? Just fuck off with that shit. Not all gangs are mixed race, and there actually are nasty groups of ethnic minorities out there - maybe Obama didn't get to them! Comics readers are usually above all that PC garbage.

Yup.
I was thinking about this racism arguement on the way to work, and if we accept it's rascist, then we must also say that every 9 year old girl is a mental abused, sweary sociopath.

[Colin Zeal]

Not a massive fan of Millar's work, but I thought Kick-Ass was actually alright. It certainly wasn't anything like as bad as the teenage boys wank-fest that was Wanted. As for the racism claim, I'm not sure it applies to Kick-Ass. I was unsure as to why Millar felt the need to mention quite so often what the race of some of the characters was.

[Professah Byah]

Racism is a subjective argument, I grant you - some people don't think the portrayal of the Irish in Titanic is racist, some people do.  Your Mileage May Vary.

The bit at the end of Kick Ass when the kid walks in on his dad, why exactly are we specifically told the ethnicity of the woman?  What's the point of that?  We can quite clearly see she's black - though it's not immediately apparent that she's the mother of a character killed earlier in the book.  Why do we need to be told the ethnicity of Dave's love rival when we've got eyes?  Or the Puerto Rican street gang - why did we need to know their specific ethnicity - wasn't the fact that they were drug dealers and gangbangers all we needed to be aware of for the story?
I think the feeling is that Millar is smart enough - and for all the criticism he gets around these parts, he certainly isn't an idiot - that he chose to put it in there because he wanted a certain reaction in the same way that Family Guy uses racist stereotypes as visual gags instead of actual jokes that are funny.  It's not just me commenting on it in the same way that there's not just one person saying it doesn't exist in the book at all, so we're back to Mileage May Vary territory.

I was thinking about this racism arguement on the way to work, and if we accept it's rascist, then we must also say that every 9 year old girl is a mental abused, sweary sociopath.

Millar isn't a child, he's a grown man who's made deliberate and informed creative decisions.  There's a difference between a pre-teen brother and sister calling each other fags and a fortysomething writer who's got plenty of publicity mileage out of airing his arguments with Paul Levitz over just this kind of situation doing it in the pages of a comic book deliberately conceived to be made into a movie.

[Christov]

Okay. I'm willing to say Kick-Ass isn't an utterly failed lump of shit.

BUT!

Once you have read other works with a similar feel, or even some of Millar's better pieces, your opinion of this will sink like a stone. It just isn't living up to the hype.

[Judge Fun]

Well, what would you you recommend as some of Millar's better works? I'd give them a go. I've only read Kick-Ass and his Twoth stuff, none of which blew me away. Any suggestions?

[Christov]

Superman: Red Son, Ultimates 1 & 2.

I'm surprised you haven't read them already really.

[Jared Katooie]

The second half of Ultimates 2 in unimaginably awful.

[Emperor]

Well, what would you you recommend as some of Millar's better works? I'd give them a go. I've only read Kick-Ass and his Twoth stuff, none of which blew me away. Any suggestions?

• The Authority although you'd be recommended to read Ellis' run on the series first (because it is frankly better) - the sad thing is you can really see the joins where Grant Morrison had a lot of input and the ones he clearly did under his own power. Contrast issue #28 with the sub-Ennis work (I almost called it parody but it isn't funny or subversive or, worst, deliberately a parody), like a man being sodomised with a pneumatic drill (you can also see it as his "I can write superheroes" calling card).
• Red Son because it has a lot of Morrison and others ideas mixed in and might be the best of his work.
• The Ultimates 1 which is solid and entertaining superhero fare with some fiiiiiiiine art by Bryan Hitch (who also did The Authority with Ellis and the preceding Stormwatch) it just doesn't seem to have much depth.

Beyond that I am using my Uwe Boll strategy - I might get around to reading his other work but his relentless self-promotion has pushed me to the point that I'd only do so if I could pick up a cheap secondhand copy (putting money in his pocket only makes the problem worse). My own fault for hanging round Bleeding Cool I suppose, if I stayed here I could avoid most of it

So many good comics, so little time, so there might not be any need to do that anyway - we'll see.

[Judge Fun]

I'm surprised you haven't read them already really.

I've only recently started reading comics other than 2000AD, you see. This is why I need recommendations for other things.  I've read a load of Alan Moore and Frank Miller, a few Bats and Sups, 'Hell House' (flippin' good) and 'Kick-Ass'. That's about it! It's a big scary ol' world of comics out there...

Cheers for those recommendations so far - I'll check out at least a couple of them. Maybe 'Red Son'...

[Professah Byah]

Red Son is good, there's some Swamp Thing issues that are reasonably well thought of, and Superman Adventures is fun if you don't mind continuity-free kiddy versions of comics, which some loath with an undeserved passion.  Fantastic Four... looks nice, but the best part of it is at the very end, when someone else took over to finish off the story.  Ultimates 1 is great thick-eared stuff and looks fantastic, Ultimates 2 is more of the same but goes up its own arse near the end with references to other stuff and culminates in a deus ex so utterly shameless it will either make or break the book for you - though it comes about ten pages from the end of a book you're already reading and presumably paid for, so it might not really matter by that point what you think of it.

Ultimates 2 is the ultimate example of Mark Millar storytelling, however - a book that's 90 percent build-up to a bunch of bad guys getting beat by the good guys pulling out a bigger gun.  My favorite bit is either Captain America fighting his Arabian lightsaber-wielding counterpart who's just stolen America, and Cap chops the guy's hands off (no subtext there, I'm sure) and shouts "HANDS OFF, ABDUL!"  Or the bit where Hawkeye shouts "Darth Maul wants his lightsaber back, motherfucker!", possibly the wittiest bit of lantern-hanging in the history of writing, or the Hulk's evil counterpart going on at length about how he's smarter, faster, stronger and more invulnerable than the Hulk, and the Hulk beats him by hitting him harder than he was hitting him before, or Quicksilver defeating his evil counterpart by running faster than he did before, yet not fast enough that he overtakes the sound from his own witty soundbites - which in comics terms actually isn't that fast at all.
And then the Riders of Rohan show up to save the day.

Really.

[Alski]

Big Dave?

Babe race 2000?

 

[Jared Katooie]

Read Hitman. It is written by Garth Ennis. It is very funny, and quite violent. It has brilliant characters and thrilling action.

I heartily recommend it!

[Alski]

Hitman is excellent. Pity it hasn't been given a decent tpb treatment so you can get the whole lot.