Why I'm not looking forward to Kick-Ass

Well put. [Link]

It's clear from Kick-Ass's opening scenes that Dave Lizewski is supposed to be, if not an everyman, at least an everyfanboy. What does it say, then, that the character with whom the readers are so clearly supposed to identify is such an unlikable jerk? It's as if Kick-Ass is telling superhero fans and comics readers how sad and miserable its author imagines their lives to be. It's not as bad, in this regard, as Millar's earlier series Wanted. That story ends with a direct-to-the-reader sermon about "your level on the pathetic-o-meter," concluding with a splash page of the protagonist's sneering face beneath the caption "This is my face when I'm fucking you in the ass." Reading Kick-Ass is a similarly masochistic exercise. The story seems to be saying: "You're just like this guy. He's pathetic. You're still reading? Wow, you are pathetic!" It encourages a cycle of self-loathing that attempts to support the ugly picture of fanboys that Kick-Ass paints-and the more the readers eat it up, the more correct it becomes.

Moreover, Kick-Ass suggests that the entire kind of fantasy that superhero fans enjoy is foolish, that there's something inherently perverse about both superheroes as characters and the people who enjoy them. This is ultimately worse than Garth Ennis's widely-documented dislike of superheroes, culminating in his anti-superhero book The Boys, because Ennis made his name in other genres. But Millar wrote, and continues to write, very mainstream superhero comics, many of them quite good. But stories likeKick-Ass imply that he despises the entire imaginative exchange between superhero readers and superhero stories. What else could be the purpose of tearing down the genre's mythic idealism and so aggressively establishing so-called "real world" rules in its place?

There's a lot of missing the point of superheroes. They are not super because of their powers. They are super because they are better people than we are. Even when they are flawed heroes like most Marvel characters, they still do the right thing even - not just even, especially when it is hard. They are paragons to aspire to be like, not just super powered power fantasy.