Times are changing, and because of that, we may see our favorite heroes on the page and screen change with them. One case of that is in the “Kick-Ass” comics, with scrawny, wanna-be hero Dave Lizewski being replaced with a much more capable and skilled Patience Lee. No doubt the new take on the series will get some sort of big screen (or small) adaptation, and author Mark Millar already knows who he wants to star.
After a feature about the new comic came out on EW, Millar took to Twitter to answer the question coming at him the most: “Who do you want to play Lee?” Millar said that though there are a few names, the one that jumps out the most is THOR: RAGNAROK actress, Tessa Thompson.
The new story will focus on Lee, a mother and Afghanistan war veteran who decides to jump into the green wetsuit and fight crime. As for the feature, EW got their hands on several exclusive looks at the upcoming book that reunited Millar and John Romita Jr., who worked on the original run of stories together. You can take a look at some of the images below, and you’ll soon realize that even this more experienced fighter will still get her own ass kicked.
The first issue of the comic will arrive on Valentine’s Day (February 14, in case you more lonely people forgot), and Millar talked about how much this character differs from Dave in the original run, which was adapted into a movie with Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the lead.
The big difference is that she’s immensely capable. I have a lot of fun playing with this in the story because Dave Lizewski was a good-hearted, ordinary loser who came home every night with broken ribs or a black eye and wasn’t especially well-trained. He just had good intentions. Patience is completely different in that she’s just back from Afghanistan and finds her life in a very unusual situation, one in which it makes sense for her to suddenly be dressing up in a green wetsuit and carrying a couple of sticks at night. Their personalities are just completely different, and being in her 30s and a mother gives the whole thing a completely different edge too.
He continued be talking about how the kinds of heroes portrayed on screen change with every decade, from the sweaty, muscle-y, one-dimensional action stars of the 80s to the nerds of today.
This is a military vet as opposed to a bored schoolboy, and she feels more in keeping with the more capable hero archetype of this decade. The ’70s lead was a man in touch with his feelings, the ’80s leads were hard-bodied and one-dimensional, the ’90s leads were animated funnymen, and the noughties leads were nerds. Dave Lizewski perfectly encapsulated the Tobey Maguire/Jesse Eisenberg era of leading men, but Patience is the very capable grownup we admire and want to be in this decade.
When it comes to an adaptation of this new comic book we can expect it to be a high priority for a movie version. Last year Millar's Millarworld brand was sold to Netflix with hopes of adapting some of the properties for the streaming service. The rights to Kick-Ass and Kingsman were not among the titles Netflix got, as those already belonged to other studios (Universal distributed the most recent Kick-Ass movie, with Fox handling Kingsman). Millar did say in the interview that director Matthew Vaughn (KICK-ASS) "went nuts" for the comic when Millar sent him an issue, but said it would be a better TV series than a movie, to which Millar agreed.
Now, I loved the original run of books with Dave and Hit-Girl. Many comic book geeks related to the idea of a little weakling donning a superhero costume and fighting real criminals. It made the series so endearing on a story level and jaw-dropping on an ultra-violence one. But this is an interesting new direction to take the Kick-Ass comics as a way of doing something new. Thompson proved herself beyond capable of handling herself in an action movie, and she would probably knock the role of Patience Lee out of the park. She's a hot name right now, and should a movie go into the works I have no doubt she would be approached to star. Come on, there's more than enough Valkyrie to go around.