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By Steve Morris

With just over a week left until Mark Millar’s Kapow Comic-Con returns for 2012 (you’re going, right? See you there — I’ll be the handsome guy with glasses, you can’t miss me), it might be worth going over all the latest announcements the man himself has been making recently. From convention guests to comic-book announcements, he’s been characteristically busy over the past few days, with many an update popping up on his twitter feed.

Most of these are related to his Icon series Kick-Ass, which seems to have become his primary focus over the past few weeks. With the completion of the first and second mini (which is actually the third part of the story – we’ll get to that in a second), Millar’s been ramping up to the imminent launch of his spin-off story, ‘Hit-Girl’. Drawn by John Romita Jr (co-creator of Kick-Ass, who replaced initially announced artist Leandro Fernandez on the title at Millar’s request), this is a five-issue miniseries starting this month. It stars the eponymous underage Chloe Moretz lookalike antihero as she goes about the business of, y’know, murdering people in the name of justice.

Issue #1 comes with a cover from Phil Noto, released only a few days ago by Millar, which pretty much sets the scene for what’ll be to come from the series. It’s a little reminiscent of Game of Thrones, which is rather appropriate as I imagine people are going to get their heads lopped off at random, in true HBO fashion. The mini is set between the events of Kick-Ass and Kick-Ass 2 (which, it’s just been announced, is in development as a film by Universal), you see, meaning fans waiting for some kind of trilogy conclusion to the Red Mist/Kick-Ass battle will have to wait until later on in the year to get their satisfaction and swears.

Hit-Girl sees the main character trying to make it by at school, without snapping and killing people. After seeing her dad die and going on a murderous rampage of revenge as betrayed tweenagers are wont to do, this change of pace is something Millar has been wanting to try for a while now, as it’ll let him delve into the character and explain her origin story for readers. There’ll be an exclusive art preview over on CBR later tonight, so you can get yourself up to speed then.

Does that help? Now when you bump into Mark Millar after being dazzled by my bi-focular good looks at Kapow, you’ll have something to talk to him about! That’s in-between your trips to go see the creators of Arkham City on panel, Audiences with Nick Frost and Warren Ellis, waving at Emma Vieceli, meeting and greeting Jonathan Ross, Scott Snyder and Oliver Coipel, and ‘treating’ C.B. Cebulski to a look at your art portfolio, of course.

Aaron Filler, MD, PhD, FRCS is the author of Do You Really Need Back Surgery?, and an evolutionary biologist who studied under Stephen Gould, Ernst Mayr, David Pilbeam, Russell Tuttle, and Irven DeVore.  Filler is now a medical director at the Institute for Spinal Disorders, Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles. In the article below he looks at what makes humans- “human.”

OED: “Human”– Adjective - Of, belonging to, or characteristic of mankind, distinguished from animals by superior mental development, power of articulate speech, and upright posture. (more…)

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