Text: Manolis Kranakis
‘Kick-Ass ‘ comes to rewrite the history of comics and to prove, against all odds, that everyone has a super hero inside.
If it is true that most important things come out of the simplest ideas, then why no one came up with what was born in 2008 in the minds of Mark Millar and Matthew Vaughan? Creators of both ‘Kick-Ass’ comic and movie, based their main idea on the reasonable question by a comic fanatic teenager on why nobody has ever become a ‘real’ superhero. ‘Kick-Ass’ has been the first case
ever when production rights were obtained even before the first print issue was out. This was due to Mark Millar and Matthew Vaughn simultaneous creation of a comic (finally released under Marvel’s shield) and a script (eventually owned by Brad Pitt’s studio) and thus attracting the necessary publicity to the film making it a guaranteed hit.
Anarchic, vulgar and violent, ‘Kick-Ass’ is something more than the advertising tricks mobilised before the film hit the theatres; a famous of which was the youtube video of an apparently coincidental filming of ‘Kick-Ass’ engaged in a heroic act. Vaughan’s film is a tribute to comics’ pop culture and their movie adaptations so far as they have been accepted in the everyday reality by millions of teenagers around the world. Without a trace of shame for everything ‘inappropriate’ said by the fifteen-year-olds and the ‘don’t try this at home’ happenings during the perpetual struggle between good and bad, ‘Kick-Ass’ is both the beginning for a new era in comic books as well as a new way of transferring them on screen. A new way that can free of guilt, attacking the
myth of indestructible superheroes and really relate to a teenager who dreams of being the next saviour of the world.
