Kick-Ass has come out of retirement, with Dave Lizewski putting the costume back on once more – for what could either be the beginning of a new era, or the character's final adventure. Mark Millar's Big Game series has been full of twists and turns, shocks and surprises, but its most exciting moment yet comes as the original Millarverse hero returns to his iconic green outfit, becoming Kick-Ass once more.
Big Game #3 – written by Mark Millar, with art by Pepe Larraz – is the pivot point for the five-issue limited series, as the action of the first two issues peaks with more brutal deaths, while the remaining characters maneuver into position for an explosive conclusion.
With many of the Millarverse's heroes off the board, Kick-Ass' return comes at a crucial moment, but it could mean doom for Dave Lizewski.
The Former Kick-Ass Regrets Retiring From His Superhero Career
So far, Big Game has seen Millar quixotically expanding his shared continuity and contracting it at the same time, as he reveals the connections between his various stories, only to kill off most of his titles' protagonists. The opening issues of the series has seen the Fraternity of Super Criminals, led by Wanted's Wesley Gibson, focus its efforts on exterminating the new generation of superheroes that has risen in the decades since the villainous group destroyed the world's heroes, wiping their existence from the collective memory. Dave Lizewski, as Kick-Ass, was the spark that reignited superheroic activity – but as Big Game opens, he has long since retired.
Wanted's Wesley Gibson Is Dave Lizewski's Dark Opposite
The fourth volume of Kick-Ass, released in 2014, concluded with Dave Lizewski giving up his life as a costumed crimefighter, just as other heroes were beginning to emerge around the world. As Big Game shows, the intervening years did not go as Dave expected; over a decade later he regrets giving up his Kick-Ass persona "every single day." As Mark Millar writes Dave's narration in Big Game #3, he is having a mix of FOMO, and the early-adulthood realization that he found his calling in life, and then turned his back on it. Perhaps most tragically at all, as Dave informs the reader, he doesn't "even read comic books anymore."
In Big Game, Dave is finally compelled to suit back up in response to an emergency broadcast from the President, asking all heroes, and former heroes to form a "massive team" in order to face "a terrible threat." Telling his girlfriend that it is going to be like "Crisis on Infinite Earths, or one of those big Marvel summer events," Dave does not realize than many of the heroes he expects to team with have already been neutralized by the Fraternity's agents, including Nemesis. Big Game #3 delivers an iconic moment, as Dave Lizewski embraces his heroic destiny once more – but it could be the start of his final adventure.
Wesley Gibson, leader of the Fraternity, was an ordinary citizen at the start of Wanted, much like Dave Lizewski is now. However, while Dave rejected his calling as a superhero in order to settle down and live a "normal" life, Wesley did the opposite, rejecting a return to his average, banal existence in order to embrace his lineage as one of the world's greatest villains. Now, Mark Millar's Big Game has set up a confrontation between the two. Given the nature of Millar's work, and the events of Big Game so far, it may be hard to imagine a future of the Millarverse where Wesley Gibson and Kick-Ass coexist.
Big Game #3, featuring the return of KICK-ASS, is available now from Image Comics.
