Kick-Ass 3 #8 isn’t just the end of this particular volume, it’s the finale to the Kick-Ass saga as a whole. With Hit-Girl finally freed from prison, she and Kick-Ass have one final mission to carry out before they can ride off into the sunset. That mission? Nothing less than killing every mob leader on the East Coast. Frank Castle would be proud.

I was torn with this finale issue for the same reasons I tend to be torn about the series in general. For a book ostensibly about real-world superheroes, there’s a lot of ridiculous nonsense going on. You really have to focus your suspension of disbelief during the scenes where Mindy guns down, blows up, and slices hundreds of gangsters with the ease of superhuman ninja. As ever, Kick-Ass is crude, violent, and a little too proud of itself every time Mindy utters some foul-mouthed insult or the characters reference pop culture tidbits. And while John Romita, Jr’s storytelling is solid, his inability to convincingly render children and teenage physiques has always been a problem.

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