New Mark Millar comic Kicks Ass

Mar 5 2008 By Richard Mooney

LANARKSHIRE born, comic book legend, Mark Millar’s new comic launched last week.

‘Kick Ass’ is by Millar and his collaboration artist John Romita Jr.

The setting is a world without superheroes or super powers. The concept is primarily about normal people who decide to try their hand at being heroes and dawning their homemade tights (and/or capes). It’s being marketed as gritty, filthy-mouthed and more importantly, real.

Although the series will be published by Marvel’s Icon imprint, the series could not be further set apart from the Marvel Universe.

Millar had to generate interest for the comic by himself though by means of viral marketing. This is a technique rarely seen in the comic books industry, but has been used to huge success in Hollywood, with the likes The Dark Knight, Cloverfield and The Blair Witch Project. Also Millar gave fans a chance to appear in the comic if they linked it to various across various internet messageboards.

Two Lanarkshire bands have also volunteered to create the soundtrack for the comic book as well. From Millar’s home town are experimental hardcore rock band So She Said and from Motherwell, The Usual.

Award winning film maker Wilma Finnigan, also from Coatbridge, was brought into edit the infamous viral marketing video into shape.

The original video called ‘New York Superhero Caught on Camera’, told the story of a college student who was attacked by four nameless assailants while more than 15 people watched. This is until a mysterious “self proclaimed superhero” leapt to his defence and kept the attackers at bay until the police arrived.

Wilma, an old friend of Millar’s, agreed to knock the original footage into shape after an ex-Special Forces friend of Millar’s shot it in New York.

She is part of an award winning husband and wife team who have produced 6 low budget features films in Scotland.

Finnigan said: “Mark approached me round about the end of October or November and he had this idea for a viral campaign. He got a friend of his in New York to shoot the raw footage and I did the editing. The dialogue had still to be done, Mark’s friend only shot the action, so Mark did the dialogue for the video.

“I manipulated the colour on the video and the dialogue is spoken by Duncan, a friend of ours called Martin Greechan and myself. We went to Dunbeth Park and recorded it there, so it’s all Coatbridge voices on the clip. Duncan is the one shouting ‘I won’t leave him’ and I’m the female voice on it.

“After that I edited it all together and put it up on YouTube. I had to go through a few edits. The raw footage went up first, then the following week there was another version that had text on it, telling a bit more of the story, and that was posted under a different username. I did all of them and set up the MySpace page for it as well.

“Mark had thought it all through. The original footage that got posted up and left for a week, that got about 2000 hits. The following week when the edited version went up, I think that ended up getting just under 50,000 hits. It was really successful.

“The good thing about things like YouTube and MySpace, it’s such a good medium to work with. I reckon most people look to the Internet now, it’s a modern-day entertainment arena, maybe even more so than television. We put a lot of our own trailers up on YouTube. Our film My Life As A Bus Stop (link) is up online, although we had to put it up in parts. I think it’s a positive thing because it’s so hard to get your film distributed these days.

“Mark was looking for something raw and gritty, and the dialogue was written by him, but I think to some extent the kind of improvisational work that we do worked quite well with it.”

Finnigan recently completed a Masters in Screenwriting and is currently lecturing at Glasgow, whilst also working with her husband to get their next project off the ground.

She added: “I love it, I really like what Mark does. When I was younger I used to read a lot of comics, I read a bit of manga now, but really the only comics I read are Mark’s stuff.

“We were neighbours, but we didn’t actually get really friendly until after he moved away, although we did know each other to say  hello and talk to. He’s actually got a part in one of our films, My Life As A Bus Stop.

“We’re working on a coming-of-age film, it’s called Cola Dan, about a 16-year-old schoolboy, but we’re looking to get funding for it and we’re in talks with Scottish Screen at the moment. It’s in the early stages, but it’s all written.”

Kevin Murray, guitarist and backing vocalist for So She Said, is the only comic books fan in the band and is responsible for their link with Kick Ass.

The 18-year-old said: “I’m a member of his MillarWorld board and I used to read all his old stuff for DC. I saw him talking about Kick-Ass on his website, so we just got in touch with him and spoke to him about what we do, then we sent him the song and he really liked it.

“It’s quite a violent comic and he’s using our song Tell Me About Carson Daly, which is a pretty good fit.

“It’s been really good for us, we’ve had a lot of hits on our MySpace page from it already, and a few of the comic convention websites in America have been in touch with us to ask if they could use our song, so it’s been really good for us. We’re getting a lot of publicity and anything else that spins out of it is a bonus.”

Paul Docherty (18) is the lead guitarist and understands why Millar is using internet sites like MySpace to try and raise the profile of Kick-Ass.

He said: “I get what he’s doing. MySpace is great for us, it gets you noticed and it’s an easy way for people to get in touch with you. It would be difficult to reach out as far as we have without MySpace. We’ve had some American websites contact us to see if they can use our songs, and that’s down to MySpace.”

Bassist Darren Lowe, 16, hasn’t read a comic in his life, but is going along for the ride, he said: “He’s been brand new with us, he always gets back to you really quickly and he’s a great laugh. We’re really happy, he’s had a lot of success, his comic Wanted is being turned into a big movie so it’s great to be associated with that kind of thing. We’ll just go with it, if anything more comes out of it then that’s a bonus.”

Kick Ass #1 has received great reviews by fans and critics alike, it is out now in stores nationwide.

Mark Millar is 37 years old and is widely recognised as one of the finest comic book writers of modern times. A movie based on his graphic novel, Wanted, hits cinemas this summer and stars Angelina Jolie. For more information on Mark you can visit his personal website here.