So we really should talk about Kick-Ass. Opening in Australian cinemas next month – April 8th to be exact, fanboys – Kick-Ass is the latest comics-to-movie adaptation to hit our screen (and the first of many this year as we’ll see this year including The Losers and Scott Pilgram vs. The World not to mention the thundering Iron Man 2 at the end of April) but one with a neat little twist.

Whereas previous films in the adapted graphic-novel cannon have stuck firmly to the one-note camp adventure side of comic books – here’s looking at you through ruby quartz glasses X-Men III – Kick-Ass is a new beast altogether, one which skewers the by now familiar mythology behind super-hero comics whilst still retaining that sense of fun, excitement and adventure that comes with the territory of peeps in capes doing awesome stuff.

The cinematic treatment for Kick-Ass comes from Stardust helmsman Matthew Vaughn who has evidently been faithful to his source material, the original eight part (thus far anyway) comic series from scribe Mark Millar and veteran artist John Romita Jr., seemingly imbuing his film with the same sense of wit and ballsy fun as the books.

The best part of Kick-Ass the book (besides Romita Jr’s wonderful art which you can see some of below) was indeed Millar’s razor sharp script which lampooned the overzealous and undersexed comic book community while simultaneously reaffirming its existence with, well, a kick arse book. Kick-Ass’ titular hero (or Dave Lizewski out of the mask) talks and acts exactly like an awkward teenager would and the conversation Dave has with his fellow comic devotees about becoming a real life super-hero is so dead on it’s scary.

And so at last we have Kick-Ass big screen transfer, now bulked up with some nice star power courtesy of Nicholas Cage, Mark Strong (who is like in friggin’ everything now) and the dude who played McLovin’ and hell, there’s even a tie-in soundtrack featuring Mika. Go figure. From the first taste of the film in the delicious red band trailer which you check below, Vaughn has refused to pussy out of bringing all the outrageous violence, smut and swearing pre-teen girls that made the book so wonderful to the silver screen like so many nervous industry figures would’ve suggested, and it looks to be all the better for it.

With its viral spin, tongue in cheek ‘tude, Kick Ass is clearly a story that could only be made now. It’s the superhero flick for both sets of people that love and loathe the genre, and just a couple of weeks out from the release we are bloody excited idolising the very first post-modern super hero. Get ready for a lot of ‘Kick-Ass kicks arse’ style review puns in its wake because there’s no doubt in my mind that this film will do just that.