Just get this off my brain an onto the proverbial paper. For about half a week now my brain has been tauntin me with a "My Daddy is cooler than your Daddy" fight (I'll go into that some other time) between my two fav psychotic child vigilantes: Damian Wayne (Robin) and Mindy Macready (Hit-Girl). An it probably wouldn' be so bad if my brain wouldn' also connect the convenient character similarities as well. So here's my "little" rant-ish thing about em, spent most of the day tryin to find the right words, so here goes nothin.
Also this has SPOILERS if ya don' know the basics of Damian or the majority of Kick-Ass, don' read any further. Also, a bloody pic or two... Ya've been warned~
Lets start with Damian, alleged son of Bruce Wayne an Talia al Ghul (I say alleged since Bruce disappeared before he could tell the DNA results to anyone but Alfred, an he wont tell~). Currently the Robin to the Dick version Batman, Damian is a 10 year old boy trained in the art of assassination, by the League of Assassins, an probably one of the most spoiled brats on the face of the planet (what a surprise when mommy didn't even enter his life till he was 8 years old, an he was only introduced to his daddy because mommy wanted to ruin his father's plans~). His lack of tact or any form of people skills don't exactly help his cause to try an please/prove himself to Bruce, as he often bites at people without any actual care at what the painful/deadly reaction might be. Since he is still a kid, even with his training by the League of Assassins, in just about all weapons known to man, he still manages to get his ass kicked quite hard, to the point of actually having his spin and all internal organs replaced with completely new ones. Lets see how the kid will survive now that mommy wont fix him when a villain breaks him completely after he pisses em off with that arrogant mouth of his~
Next, an no less awesome/psychotic, is Mindy, aka Hit-Girl. Now to cover her I'll have to go over movie an comic versions... luckily she herself doesn' change much between mediums, the only real change is in her's an Big Daddy's back story. She's a 10 year old girl raised by her Big Daddy, Damon Macready, who in the movie is a former cop who lost his wife to suicide while he was in prison... or comic book wise is an accountant that got bored with his life, kidnapped his newborn child in order to give her a more interestin life (Yeah... as big a difference there as there was in costume choice between mediums~). Maybe even more so than Damian however, her interpersonal skills are sevearly lacking, swearing worse than any sailor you'll ever meet, unhindered by her father's very distant way of raising her into a little vigilante for justice. Mindy was also trained by her father in lethal measures to deal with the bad guys, with just about any weapon they could get their hands on, an can more often than not be found standing in a puddle of the enemy's blood, guts, an disfigured body parts with a smile and some snide remark.
So far so good, have two clearly similar, though mental perturbed individuals due to their unusual backgrounds and upbringings. Nothing amazing there.
Besides in rare occasions, neither of the two has ever shown to have any qualms with death or killing. Damian however did agree to Bruce's order to not kill when he joined him, though before said arrangement he proved that he has no problem killing ruthlessly and makin a show out of the dead body, by decapitating Spook an stuffing a grenade in his mouth an showing said head to Tim(Robin at time)... and then attempting to kill Tim to take his place beside his father. Mindy on the other hand, as stated above, is allowed to kill freely. Though the comics and movie show that she is trained in other weapons, she mostly shows off with her two large swords (a double bladed, detachable staff in the movie), displayin her ambidexterity and sharp tongue, while making the deepest, bloodiest cuts you'd ever seen from a super powerless child. As Kick-Ass had to accurately stated, "She was like John Rambo meets Polly Pocket" (Kick-Ass vol.4).
Neither show remorse for their own kills, however both have shown weakness for a very few deaths around them. Damian shows next to no remorse for Bruce's death (more of a need to take his father's place as Batman), but at another point, he an Batman stumble upon the bodies of brutally killed children, which seems to disturb him enough to get a visceral reaction out of the ruthless assassin boy. Mindy's remorse hits her much harder. When Big Daddy is killed, the comics explain that after getting her spectacular revenge on the men that killed him (in a very different way than the movie version), she then decides to stop fighting crime, "[her] ambitions died with her father " (Kick-Ass vol.6).
Another starting similarity is that though they both work with, and are the sidekicks of powerful adults, they seem to lead the assault into almost every fight (Though with kids like these two, I wouldn't want to get in their way either). With Dick as the current Batman (still have trouble seein it), an Damian under his care, he has shown that though he may not have Bruce's training style, personality, or necessity for obedience when it comes to on-the-job orders, his style may actually be better for Damian, a spoiled child who tends to lash out at orders. And though he may not keep him on a short leash, there is still the notion that he does have some small form of control over the kid when it is absolutely necessary. Big Daddy Damon however has shown that his leash is only his ability to snipe out anyone that even tries to touch his lil' girl, in both forms of the story. He watches the battle from a distance (with a sniper riffle and a sandwich) an either plays trivia with the vigilant child, or reminds her of her extensive training. While Damon encourages Mindy to use whatever means necessary to win (innocent school girl in the movie, secret drugs in the comic) Dick tries to instill in Damian that not all of his actions (mostly the violent or wordy ones) are necessary or ideal for the situation.
So to conclude this before I decide to kill both these nut job children for all the ideas they instilled in my head, Damian an Mindy: so alike it's rather scary that both DC an Marvel came up with the same general idea of children trained to kill by their parents. Now it's really a question of what happens when they get older. Will Damian ever learn to act like a proper Robin or end up like Jason and his grandfather, dead from his own misguided attempts at proving himself an then reselected in a Lazarus Pit only to want to kill those who crossed him? Will Mindy stay on the sidelines forever or will she reappear in a shower of blood?
Don't know, don't care, as long as they stop tauntin my brain with crazy ideas!
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