Mindy McCready

### Powers

Adaptive, Agility, Gadgets, Intellect, Leadership, Marksmanship, Stamina, Stealth, Swordsmanship, Unarmed Combat, Weapon Master

Mindy McCready, also known as Hit-Girl is a ten-year-old vigilante who fights crime with deadly force. Trained by her father another vigilante called Big Daddy, Hit-Girl became an assassin and a great fighter at a young age and started fighting crime.

## Origin

Hit-Girl (real name Mindy McCready) was raised by her father, Big Daddy, her mother being murdered by frustrated criminals. For an unnamed amount of time, Big Daddy has been training Hit-Girl to kill, allowing her to fight alongside him to avenge his wife's death by killing many criminals, ending with boss-man Johnny G. As a result of this, she has a high knowledge and interest of weapons. It is revealed in her diary that, because of their operation, Hit-Girl and her father move constantly, record time being six weeks.

## Creation

Hit Girl was created by both Mark Millar and John Romita Jr and first appeared in Kick-Ass #3 (2008).

## Character Evolution

Hit-Girl is a skilled and brutal fighter. Unlike most girls of her age she is very interested in weapons and can handle death well. She doesn't seem to be at all bothered by blood and guts. She also curses like a sailor and as previously mentioned likes Hello Kitty, comics and Clint Eastwood and John Woo movies. There are very few moments where she acts like other little girls her age and has often proved herself to be far more mature than her crime-fighting counterpart, Kick-Ass. She is also very determined. An example of this is when Kick Ass tells her that her father was just murdered, she responds by saying: "Finish the job, mourn later." However when Johnny G is finally dead, she turns to Kick Ass and asks him for a hug, covered in tears and blood.

## Major Story Arcs

### Life as a Super Hero

Hit-Girl has been trained thoroughly by her father. She has been trained to take a bullet (with a bullet-proof-vest on, of course), fight hand-to-hand, fight with both blunt and bladed weapons, and she has been taught about guns, inventors of guns, and even action movies and action movie stars. This is presumed to exist only for her training purposes, because she has not yet been seen using guns. The nature of Hit-Girl's training has made her particularly brutal and remorseless in combat.

Although the advantage of costumes and nicknames are obvious, it appears that most of it is influenced heavily by her and her father's love of comics. It is even shown that the only reason Big Daddy agrees to join forces with Kick-Ass and The Red Mist is to entertain his daughter.

She wears an improvised superhero-style costume and wields a pair of katanas in combat. She carries a selection of small throwing blades. She is also very skillful in the use of a flamethrower. In the last two issues, she uses a pair of Glock 23 pistols to slaughter mobsters en masse.

### Kick-Ass 2

As Kick-Ass Vol. 2 begins Hit-Girl is helping Kick-Ass to step up his game by giving him some fighting "lessons". They plan to work together with the new heroes and their team but Marcus has discovered Mindy's secret stash of weapons and grounds her. When he tells her the stress Mindy's disappearance put on her mother, Hit-Girl promises to stop the whole hero thing. So instead of helping Dave meet with a new team of heroes she has to sit things out at a birthday party under the close watch of her mom and dad.

Following weeks of increasingly menial activities whilst Dave continued pressing her to mask up again, Mindy learned about the murder of Colonel Stars at the hands of Chris Genovese. She planned to don her costume again and go after him but was foiled by Marcus and her own obedient nature, which he blamed on her father.

Later on she attended the funeral of Dave's father and apologized for not coming to his aid. Suddenly, Chris's forces raided the funeral and kidnapped Dave, forcing Mindy to come to his rescue. After learning the villains' plan to attack Times Square, she informed Marcus and promised to come home once the battle was over.

She engaged Mother Russia in combat but was quickly outmatched by the latter's superior strength and experience. Only the intervention of Battle Guy and Ass-Kicker gave Hit-Girl the window she needed to disable Mother Russia and take her head off.

When the police arrived and started arresting every costumed person on the scene, Hit-Girl provided a distraction to allow Kick-Ass to escape. Unfortunately, this led to her being captured herself when the corrupt detective Vic Gigante stood in the way of her getaway car. Marcus tried in vain to prevent her arrest and she was led away in chains despite the protest of the civilians she had saved.

### Kick-Ass 3

Mindy sent Dave a letter with instructions on how to break her out of prison. Unfortunately, the members of Justice Forever lacked the courage to go through with the plan and retreated before even getting past the walls.

Being abandoned by Dave saddened Mindy, as her psychiatrist reported that she would often cry in her sleep. She refused to see her mother, fearing for both her safety and reaction to Mindy's vigilantism. Much to everyone's surprise, when her mother finally did visit she announced that she was proud of her daughter standing up to criminals and their corruption and urged her to continue once she was free.

Just as she was about to make another escape attempt, she was drugged by prison guards on the orders of Rocco Genovese and handed over to Chris. Ironically, her old enemy instead gunned down his escort at the cost of being shot himself and got her out of prison in his car. The escape nearly failed when Chris didn't pay attention to the road and ended up driving off a bridge. Mindy pulled them both out of the wreckage, only to take Chris's phone and leave him for dead. Then she was nearly caught by a corrupt police officer and (finally) rescued by Dave, who took her to her old hideout to recover. Using information given to her by Chris, Mindy planned to raid the Genovese boathouse and slaughter every major mob boss on the East Coast. She parted ways with Kick-Ass for the last time as he went to save Ass-Kicker, leaving him with a wink and the words "See you in the funny papers, asshole."

Before leaving for the boathouse, she'd sent an anonymous tip to the police force, knowing that it would reach Captain Gigante and lure him to the area. After she killed Rocco, she was seemingly ambushed by Gigante and his fellow corrupt officers. She quickly turned the tables on them by setting off mines that she had placed under their cars, then crippled Gigante by punching him in the crotch so hard that his pelvis was shattered. She then coerced him into turning himself in by cutting off 50 pounds of his flesh, starting with his nose.

After destroying the New York Mafia and ridding the NYPD of corruption, Mindy left New York behind and never contacted Dave again, either because she hadn't forgiven him for leaving her in prison or because she'd accepted that his vigilante days were over. She continued to hunt evildoers across the globe and sent her mother flowers to let her know she was okay. Eventually, she came across the bullied son of a gay couple and gave him Dave's old suit, announcing her intention to train him as her new sidekick.

## Other Media

### Movies

In the adaptation of the Kick-Ass comic book, Hit-Girl was played by Chloe Moretz. In the film, she wears a more up-to-date superhero suit, and is shown to be incredibly proficient with all manner of weaponry, not just blades. Her main weapons are a pair of compact HK USP's. However, just like the comic, she is absoloutely deadly in combat. She treats Kick-Ass like a loser and is not above teaching him a lesson now and then. After her father is killed, however, she enlists Kick-Ass to help her get revenge.

### **Kick-Ass 2**

The insane act of Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) dressing as the superhero Kick-Ass, taking to the streets to fight crime, even without having any superpowers, has inspired dozens of people, who decided to follow the same path. Mindy Macready (Chloë Moretz) wanted to follow as the superheroine Hit-Girl, but Sergeant Marcus Williams (Morris Chestnut), who promised her dad he would take care of her in his absence, doesn't want her to lead a dangerous life. With this, Mindy is forced to lead the life of a girl of her age, leaving aside the heroics, as much as Dave insist that she do the opposite. Now she must deal with the dilemma of choosing between a peaceful life or wear her costume again to help Kick-Ass fighting crime.