This is no way to get things going if you are going to pick up Amateur Super Heroics. In fact, I might suggest that this looks like total failure. This is the climax of issue one of Kick Ass (soon to be a major motion picture in theaters from Lions’ Gate). The basic plot isn’t really that much, no real motivations except heroics (maybe dead mommy issues) and the desire to do something. The “real” world has a share of the “Duff Man” styled super heroes running around being fat in tights. Kick Ass looks to say “those are the posers, this is what happens when you really want to do something”
Things improve for our protagonist by issue two:
I can’t say I was really into Kick Ass when it first came out, I had a full plate of Invincible and other standard superheroes and “alternate superheroics” (The Boys, Black Summer, Etc) do read. So when Kick Ass wasn’t right there for me to read, I missed a few issues and then forgot about it. It was violent and gritty, but “The Boys” showed superheropes getting their orbits cracked by a little scottish Simon Pegg. How could Kick Ass compete? A Movie is a good start.
The Intro seems to mirror the first pages of the Comic and the extended trailers looks REALLY amazing and the clips convinced me of Nic Cages commitment to the material. It looks like Kick Ass will be setting the “Violent as a Japanese Guro Horror” bar for 2010, but really, I hope it’s not just ridiculous violence like Machine Girl or Tokyo Gore Police.