After a brief stint at Dark Horse, Mark Millar is continuing at least part of his comics library back to Image Comics with an all-new, door-stopping compendium paperback collecting the complete OG Kick-Ass saga, Kick-Ass: The Dave Lizewski Years.
The 720-pager behemoth will contain the entire original four-part ultra-violent tale created by Millar and John Romita Jr. including Kick-Ass, Vol. 1 #1-8, Kick-Ass, Vol. 2 #1-5, Kick-Ass, Vol. 3 #1-6, and Kick-Ass, Vol. 4 #1-8.
Kick-Ass’s publishing history is something of a complicated tale. It launched from Marvel’s Icon line, a brief attempt in the early 2000s to give creators a place for their original creations. A hyper-violent film adaption followed, from director Matthew Vaughn and screenwriter Jane Goldman, with launched the careers of Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Chloë Grace Moreitz – and putting comic book films even more into the cultural conversation with its controversial, bloody, tooth-shattering, kidney crushing mayhem.
On the film side, a Kick-Ass sequel was less well received – although Vaughn has announced various confusing versions of his plans for a new trilogy of films called Stuntnuts – but Vaughn and Millar would go on to collab on the three film Kingsmen series (four if you count Argyle).
In print, the Kick-Ass franchise moved over to Image in the ‘Teens, as part of the larger Millarworld franchise which included tons of limited series written by Millar with various artists. In 2017, Millar sold Millarworld to Netflix, in one of the most comprehensive deals of the early streaming wars – but it did not include the Kick-Ass franchise, as the rights were already tied up with Vaughn and Universal. All of the comics, including Kick-Ass, stayed at Image with this franchise launching an array of sequels and spin-offs starring Hit-Girl and other characters.
But in 2023 Millar moved his entire Millarworld publishing catalog over to Dark Horse, possibly as part of Dark Horse’s own publishing deal with Netflix. They never got around to publishing Kick-Ass collections though so….back to Image we go! Mark Millar – or the r’oaster rat” as we call him here at The Beat – is never one to let a deal slide by, and his career is nothing if not a tribute to the power of owning your characters.
Whew! Got all that?
All that tangled history aside, the collection lands this summer, available at local comic book shops on Wednesday, August 12 and independent bookstores, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, Indigo, and Waterstones on Tuesday, September 8.
The Kick-Ass Compendium will also be available across many digital platforms, including Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, and Google Play.
In the Kick-Ass Compendium, readers find out what happens when Dave Lizewski asks himself, “How come nobody’s ever become a superhero before?” and makes his teenage superhero daydreams an ass-kicking reality. Dave is an ordinary New York City teenager obsessed with superheroes. But one day, he takes the plunge, dons a costume, and begins prowling the streets of his city to protect the innocent. He soon realizes, however, that the danger is far more real than what he reads about in comics…
