In Big Game, Dave comes out of retirement after being granted real superpowers by the Magic Order to take on the joint forces of a time-travelling alien armada from the past and Wesley Gibson's Fraternity of Super-Criminals, before joining the superhero team The Ambassadors as Codename: America.
He is released weeks later, with metal plates all over his body and with his nerve endings having delayed reactions to pain, making him almost immune to conventional beatings.
Kick-Ass becomes an inspiration for hundreds of people, most of whom are content to simply make web pages and costumes, but some of whom actually go out and effectively fight crime.
Red Mist, however, turns out to be the son of mob boss John Genovese which leads to Big Daddy's death and the torture of Kick-Ass at the hands of various gangsters.
Kick-Ass joins a new superhero team calling themselves Justice Forever, which includes his friends Marty and Todd, and his new crime-fighting ally, "Doctor Gravity".
Led by the repentant born-again Christian "Colonel Stars", the group launches a campaign against the local crime families of the city.
He now works frequently on gang-busting with his new-found team, as well as his long-time friend Marty as "Battle Guy", sharing inside crime-fighting jokes with him during his school life.
The massacre leads the police (led by Detective Vic Gigante, who secretly works for the Motherfucker as a mob informant) to scapegoat the super-heroes for the deaths.
The Motherfucker then attacks the funeral, detonating a bomb in Kick-Ass's father's coffin and has gunmen open fire upon the crowd of mourners, including Hit-Girl and her family.
Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl team up as they raid the Motherfucker's lair and find out that the villain plans a second massacre in Times Square.
Using social media, Kick-Ass alerts all of the heroes still free to meet with him in Times Square to fight the Motherfucker's minions.
Elsewhere, Mindy confides to her psychiatrist that she has circumvented the prison's security so as to allow her to wander around and kill problematic inmates at night.
In response, Rocco orders the killing of everyone found in a mask, resulting in the deaths of four Justice Forever members and the kidnapping of Dave's roommate Todd.
[3] Ten years later, Dave comes out of retirement after being granted real superpowers by the Magic Order to take on the joint forces of a time-travelling alien armada from the past and Wesley Gibson's Fraternity of Super-Criminals, before joining the superhero team The Ambassadors as "Codename: America".
[3] On Paul's request, Mindy later allows him a sabbatical from the mantle to spend more time with his mother while she travels the world on her endless war against crime.
[6][7][8][9] After his first unsuccessful attempt at being a superhero ends in being beaten, mugged and hit by a moving car, Dave has several metal plates and braces surgically implanted within his body during the course of his hospitalization and recovery.
In Big Game, he is instilled with one of the Ambassadors' super-suits by Cordelia Moonstone, granting him peak human strength and limited flight via the suit.
On being recruited by Hit-Girl, Paul receives hand-to-hand combat training from her, learning to avoid attacks by her "tossing tennis balls" at him.
He is beaten to death and hanged by Chris Genovese (aka The Motherfucker, formerly Red Mist) while in prison after he tells the police that he is Kick-Ass.
They divorce as he abandons her once she returns from her Army tour in Afghanistan, leaving her a single mother to their son Jordan "Jordy", and daughter Grace.
Aaron Johnson, who plays the character, says that Kick-Ass is a "sensitive guy" who lost his mother and is a "nobody" at school, so he creates his superhero identity "as this whole different persona".