Kick-Ass Volume 6

Kick-Ass is a superhero comic series written by Mark Millar with art by John Romita Jr., originally published under Marvel's Icon imprint. The protagonist is Dave Lizewski, an ordinary high school student in New York: he has no superpowers and was not born a hero—he is simply fired up by comics, buys a diving suit online as a "costume," and tries to fight crime on the streets. His first outing leaves him badly injured, with metal plates in his body, but after recovering he refuses to give up; the name "Kick-Ass" spreads online through videos filmed by passersby and even sparks a wave of imitators. This volume is the sixth in the series, part of the collected main storyline. At this stage the story has moved from early street adventures to Dave being drawn into a more dangerous urban criminal underworld: he meets the fierce young girl Mindy McCready, a.k.a. Hit-Girl, gradually becomes entangled in a confrontation with gang forces, and begins to weigh the cost of "being a hero" amid real casualties. Unlike typical superhero stories, this series portrays "an ordinary person with no powers forcing himself to be a hero" as both earnest and brutal, with direct, visceral fight scenes where humor and bloodshed often sit side by side. Dave gets hurt, is overwhelmed by fear, and makes choices in embarrassing circumstances—which is what sets the series apart from mainstream Marvel works.