With ‘Kick-Ass‘ getting a new lease on life as a new hero dons the costume, we’ve just learned from creator Mark Millar that her real name is Patience Lee. Not quite the high school student that Dave Lizewski was, Lee is a black woman, a veteran, and a mother. I would have suspected that the first ‘Kick-Ass’ imitator would have been someone else in high school, but it looks like Miller has some solid reasoning as to why Lee feels this is the right choice. Not only that, but we’ve got some new artwork from the upcoming first issue to share with you.

The best part about Lee as ex-military is that “she’s immensely capable.” This will be a completely different take on the character as “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” while going into this one we’ll have an entirely different skillset backing up our new hero.

Specifically, Millar shares that:

“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. 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. I hadn’t even realized it until I’d written it, as these things are very subconscious, but the nerdy Dave just feels wrong for now, and the very effective, meticulous Patience just feels right. It would be boring seeing a teenage superhero just screwing up again. Seeing someone who’s really good at this and wearing that costume is actually really exciting and gives the comic a really different flavor, especially where we go with it.”

While we all saw that Dave “had good intentions” it was quickly quite clear that he had no training and took quite a beating throughout the series. While I don’t think Lee is going to get out of her new mission without a scratch, I’m pretty sure she will leave quite an impressive body count in her wake. Of course, as a mother “it adds an extra dimension to the risk every time they pull on their mask and get into trouble” which means that is a critical dynamic that will be played on throughout the series.

When going with a job for Lee that she was doing before being a hero, it seemed like a no-brainer to Millar as to the type of job she would have had:

“There’s something a little bit super-heroic about public service jobs, whether it’s fire-service, police, medics or military. You wear a uniform to stand out from the crowd, you tackle emergencies, and you’re not always known by your real name, prefixed instead by Doctor or Lieutenant or whatever. So it seems a natural fit for her, a logical career progression, but that’s one of the big mysteries in the story because she’s not actually a comic fan and has her own reasons for doing this. She’s completely different from Dave in that regard, and people are going to be surprised by what we’ve done here. It’s completely fresh.”

I was initially a bit iffy on the idea of doing a soft reboot of ‘Kick-Ass’ but I’ve always had faith in Millar’s work and honestly, this concept seems like a perfect fresh take on his classic character which I’m looking forward to seeing more of! Honestly, part of me is kind of envisioning this as a new take on ‘The Punisher’.

You can check out some of the preview pages below!

Are you looking forward to the new ‘Kick-Ass’? Do you think that the fact she is ex-military will ramp things up to an entirely new level? Share your thoughts below!

Source: Entertainment Weekly