Kick-Ass: The New Girl (originally published simply as Kick-Ass) is an American comic book limited series created by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.. Published by Image Comics and set in the Millarworld, the series is a stand-alone sequel to the duo's Kick-Ass: The Dave Lizewski Years, following Afghanistan war veteran and single mother Patience Lee, who first dons a costume resembling that of Dave Lizewski (of whom she has never heard of) to rob high-profile criminals and clear her family's debts; in a twist ending at the conclusion of the first volume, Patience is revealed to be a war criminal, assuming control of the New Mexican criminal underworld as its boss, the supervillain Kick-Ass, after assassinating the previous bosses. In the second and third volumes, Patience struggles to keep her criminal lifestyle a secret from her family, while evading assassination at the hands of rival crime syndicates.

The series, originally published between February 2018 and October 2019, was written and illustrated by Millar and Romita Jr. for its first volume (six issues), before the new writer-illustrator team of Steve Niles and Marcelo Frusin took over for the remaining two volumes (twelve issues), who would also return for the 2020–2021 sequel limited series Kick-Ass vs. Hit-Girl, republished as a graphic novel in May 2021 as "Kick-Ass: The New Girl Volume Four",^[1] in which Patience finds herself hunted down by the retired superhero Kick-Ass' former partner Mindy McCready / Hit-Girl. The series has received a universally positive critical reception, with Patience's character arc compared to Breaking Bad's Walter White.^[2][3]

Premise

In the first volume, following her return to Albuquerque, New Mexico from the Afghanistan war, newly single mother and former black ops soldier Patience Lee dons a costume resembling that of Dave Lizewski to rob high-profile criminals and clear her family's debts; after being initially mistaken for a vigilante superhero by the crime boss Hoops Lucero, Patience kills him and his fellow bosses before taking their place as the head of the New Mexican criminal underworld, beating her brother-in-law Maurice into a coma on realising he knows who she is.^{[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]}

In the second volume, Kick-Ass finds her status the undisputed queen of the criminal underworld from rival crime syndicates, building herself an army to go to war with Hector Santos, who sends both assassins and eventually a freed Violencia after her, the former donning a Juggernaut-inspired suit of armour, before Maurice begins to stir from his coma.^[13][14][15]

In the third volume, after the bloody defeat of Violencia and Santos, with an entire criminal empire at her fingertips, and bags of blood money, Kick-Ass goes to war with the Mexican cartels and Russian mafia, before executing Maurice in his hospital bed before he can expose her identity to her sister.^[16] Across the globe, having learned of her existence, Hit-Girl plans on taking Kick-Ass and her entire empire down, leading into the fourth volume.^[17]

Characters

Reception

In other media

In January 2018, Mark Millar expressed interest in Tessa Thompson portraying Patience Lee in a prospective third Kick-Ass film, with Thompson stating that she was "highly interested" in the role;^[39][40] by October 2018, Matthew Vaughn indicated the character would be featured in the planned reboot of the Hit-Girl & Kick-Ass franchise.^[41]

References

External links

• Kick-Ass: The New Girl at Image Comics