Customer Reviews

Kick-Ass: Creating the Comic, Making the Movie

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Length:: 0:25 Mins

It's a really good book for those who want to find out how the comic became the movie, in such a short time. It's loaded with commentary from Mark Millar, artist John Romita Jr., director Matthew Vaughn, the actors and production crew. They go on about the characters, casting and story and the funny incidents that happen during production, like Hit-Girl losing her teeth, or making weapons using stuff bought online.

High resolution film stills, set photos, comic panels and other production art fill the pages. Some of the pictures are so huge you can see the pores on the skin. There are also additional art drawn for the movie, like the drawings of villains by Nicolas Cage. Most of the blood in the book actually come from the comic panels. I haven't read the comics but the beautiful comic drawings entices me to check them out.

Note that there might be a bit of spoiler revealed but not really a big deal.

Slapped on the back cover is a parental advisory label warning of explicit content. Some of the funny quotes happen to be vulgar ones -- delivered by a kid no less -- and there are some nudity (small stills) as well. This book, just like the movie, is for the mature audience.

This book is an entertaining blend of outrageous fun and the mundane.

(More pictures are available on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

I am at somewhat of a disadvantage. I have never read Kick Ass, the comic. That, however, does not detract from my enjoyment of the Titan book celebrating the comic and the upcoming film.
The concept of Kick Ass is marvelous. With no power comes no responsibility. Well, that is kind of true. David Lizewski, is a comic book fan, who asks the tough question. Why don't people do this in real life? It can't be that hard saving people from villains, and the like, can't it? Experience is the best teacher, and what the heck, what's a few broken bones. Heal, and get at it one more time, right?
Yep.
It is extremely rare for a comic book to be created the same time as a film is in pre-production, especially for a new property. It doesn't hurt that Mark Millar already had a professional reputation for production already, I guess. With John Romita Jr tapped for art on the comic book, and his experience in film work to date, it was really a natural progression for both.
This book reflects an all around look at the process. Input from actors, writers, artists, designers, and scads of art taken from production notes, the comic books, and random sketches. Design wise, I am amazed at the finished product, it represents an extreme view of what might be a franchise. It is varied, interesting, and even includes fake blood splats on the page numbers. Can't imagine what this would have looked like had Titan taken the safe route.
As the film is due soon, there are production stills, photographs of sets and stars with and without makeup/costumes, script snippets, and some great comments from Nick Cage. I can't imagine not meeting Adam West, as he had, and not coming away impressed!
Kick-Ass, Creating the Comic, Making the Movie is an invaluable look at what can happen when a property strikes the right balance between comic and film. Once the film is available, this book will sit alongside Kick-Ass, the Movie and be a complete package!
[...]

Ever watch DVD "making-of" featurettes for movies you aren't all that crazy about? Sometimes, if they're thoughtfully done instead of just being a PR reel, they can help you learn more about certain creative and technical processes. But if you're an admirer of the film, so much the better. Well, that's pretty much the case with Kick-Ass: Creating the Comic, Making the Movie. In fact, if you're fan of either of the pop culture incarnations mentioned in the title, you'll be in heaven. But even if you're lukewarm on the property itself, there is much to recommend about this handsome companion volume.

With its inventive layout, well-chosen text, and overall intelligence of presentation, the book resembles a super-extended feature article in a glossy magazine. A magazine that happens to boast a topnotch design department, that is. Imagine Entertainment Weekly doing a couple of special issues on Kick-Ass, then increase the length, trim size, and paper quality so they're closer to art-book level and you'll get a sense of how inviting this book is. Of course the real fun in such magazine pieces is exploring all the factoids, asides, and revealing quotes that are tucked away in the sidebars--and one of the main virtues of this book is that it reads like a compilation of such sidebars, all the boring parts having already been cut out.

That should partly explain the above reference to "well-chosen" text. But it also bears mentioning that the text itself, although built around an engaging autobiographical strand from Kick-Ass cocreator Mark Millar, is really an artfully edited collection of interview snippets conducted by Mark Salisbury, Stacy Mann, and Jeremy Smith. As a result, the colorful spreads are peppered with stand-alone paragraphs with intriguing heads like "[director] Matthew Vaughn on The U.S. Ratings System" or "[movie cowriter] Jane Goldman on Hit-Girl and Swearing."

Yet Kick-Ass: Creating the Comic, Making the Movie isn't simply a bunch of pull-quotes quickly thrown together to create a trade paperback movie tie-in. What really gives the book value as a true reference work are all the interesting primary source materials that are scattered throughout. There are reproduced pages from both the film and comic scripts, emails between Millar and Vaughn, and even blog posts from Chloë (Hit-Girl) Moretz. And of course there's tons of production stills from the movie and generous helpings of art from cocreator John Romita, Jr., including sketches and other material that appears never to have been published before. What makes all of this more notable from a media studies angle is that with Kick-Ass we're not dealing with a conventional page-to-screen adaptation but rather a concept that pretty much evolved as both graphic narrative and film at the same time, so that ideas that surfaced in the movie development context found expression in the later issues of the comic miniseries.

Don't look for a lot of highbrow analysis about the themes in Kick-Ass or how the film fits into the whole revisionist superhero trend of the past few years (e.g., Hancock, Special, Watchmen). And that's something we should probably be thankful for. After all, this is a book that puts the creators' perspectives front and center and listening to the talent sound off about the profundity of their own work is what makes so many DVD commentaries unbearable. Yes, to some extent the book is bit of a love-fest, but it never goes over-the-top with self-congratulation. Besides, as Kick-Ass's many fans already know, there's a lot to love about this title.
-- Peter Gutiérrez

This book, put out by Titan Books, London, tells the whole story in a few words and a lot of pictures and illustrations, of the making of the movie Kick-Ass. The idea for this movie was rejected by numerous big name studios so the creator of the comic series and his associates decided to do it themselves. Its like David going up side of a whole army of Goliaths and eventually coming out on top! Its good memorabilia to keep for later times. Get it!

Any fan of Kick Ass the movie will want this book. It gives a deeper look into what went into making this unique film.

Kick-Ass: Creating the Comic Making the Movie accompanies the movie based on the best-selling comic book by Mark Miller and John Romita Jr. It tells of a high school student and comic book fan who is also the superhero Kick-Ass, who encounters a violent nemesis on the Internet. Color photos from both comic and movie accompany insights into plot, development, and more. Any comics or graphic novel collection needs this.

This review is focused on the art of recreating costumes from the movie Kick Ass.

This is one of the best visual reference books for costumes from a specific movie that I have seen in a long, long time. Usually a publisher will take the stock promotional photos doled out by the Movie Studio and reprint those in a half-baked movie book. Not this book though. This book has only a few of the promotional photos from the press kits in it and a ton of new photos (high gloss and full page) showing the characters and costumes from the movie. Props and set pieces are not featured very heavily, but that can be looked over seeing how many character photos are in this book. A good many behind the scene full-page photos are in this book also, allowing you to see different angles of the costumes, and therefore give insight into the creation of certain costumes. This is very helpful to the costumer.

Most of the photos in this book are full page images, or at least "full height" to the page. Very few images are 1/4 and 1/8th of page size. The Writers and Publisher really wanted to give the fans something visually pleasing to look at. Woohoo, that's a bonus for costume research!

A lot of the full page images help you identify Makes and Models of the firearms used in the movie. The printing of the book is very tight and clean, so on a number of photos you can make out machine stamped letters on guns for identification. Kudos to the publisher for not using screen-captured images only, which tend to be lower resolution that SLR camera images.

There are a few quotes from the costumers and designers of the movie. They give a little insight into specific costumes, but nothing mind blowing. This was an overall Making-of Book, so one cannot expect detailed interviews with the costumers and prop makers. The amount of quotes from the staff are average for this kind of book.

Detailed close ups on characters faces give the costumer a lot of information about the masks that the actors wore. This is a fantastic reference point to the book. I will warn the costumers to be very cautious of the textures in the photos though, the publisher at times lays a dot matrix pattern over some images, and this distorts the original image a little. You will have to see past the photo effect and make out details on your own. One of the most noticeable uses of this is a full page close up on Red Mists face, which focuses on his skin tight, paper-thin mask. The added dot matrix pattern makes it look like the mask has a texture on it, but really that mask is super slick.

Overall this book is a god-send to the costumer recreating any costume from the movie Kick Ass. And, at a base price of $19.95, this book is a must have for any superhero costume maker. You cannot go wrong with owning this book. Heck, I am going to go buy a second copy now, just to loan out to friends.

The groundbreaking comic book KICK-ASS by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. is an amazing blend of geeky humor and unrelenting violence. It has the reader laughing at one panel and then gasping at the next, shifting easily from Big Bang Theory-style quips to graphic bloodshed and dismemberment of the kind not seen since the days of EC Comics. I bought the hardcover collection of the first 8 issues of the series in preparation for the upcoming live-action movie.

THIS is the book I should have gotten first.

This companion volume is a comic movie geek's dream come true. It provides back-story on the creation of the comic book, insight and interaction with filmmakers and actors, and image after image from rough scribble notes to storyboards to publicity photos that practically grab you by the arm and guide you through the crazy and wondrous journey of hard-hitting graphic novel to larger-than-life motion picture.

Movie companion books of the past were all too often little more than magazine special editions with very little substance and pages that read like extended advertisements. Not so here.

KICK-ASS: Creating the Comic, Making the Movie is a thorough undertaking, with 175 lavish pages of text, illustrations, genuine content, and glossy, original photos [stills, candids, character studies], all crafted to make your eyes pop. In a good way.

Costume designs, script excerpts, blow-by-blow on-the-set stories, commentaries from the comic creators and the filmmakers. You name it, it's in here. You'll especially enjoy all the attention to detail, such as direction given to title actor Aaron Johnson when he was told to stay out of the gym in order to keep his character skinny.

Most of all, you'll enjoy this book. It is a gem and a delightful candy-colored eyeful of lunacy and comic-to-big screen craziness. As I type this, the film has another few weeks before its release. I don't know if it will be a hit or a bomb, but I do know this: You will truly want to kick yourself if you miss out on getting this book.