Kick-Ass 2 Director Convinced Mark Millar to Change The Comic's Ending

Warning: Major spoilers ahead for Kick-Ass 2, out in theaters on Friday.

During our recent conversation with Kick-Ass co-creator and aritst John Romita, Jr., the artist mentioned that Kick-Ass 2 director Jeff Wadlow was receiving his art pages as they were being completed, giving him source material to work with as early and often as he and writer Mark Millar could manage. "Jeff Wadlow was getting my scans of the pencils as I was doing them and he did stick to it. There was a lot more material for him to go by," Romita, Jr. told us, adding that he wished there had been more source material for Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn to go to in the first film. It seems as though Wadlow took advantage of that early access in an unexpected way--to persuade Millar to change the ending. "As Mark was finishing the Kick-Ass 2 comics, he sent me the outline for the last issue," Wadlow explained to IGN in the video interview embedded below. "And I saw that [The Motherf---er] died, and I went nuts because just as a fan, I was like, 'You can't do that! If you're even thinking about a third one, you cannot kill him.' [Millar] was like, 'He does these terrible things, he's got to pay a price.' I was like, 'Mark, you can make him suffer--in fact, you should make him suffer but you need him in the third one because I believe and I think most of the fans would agree with me that Chris D'Amico is the third part of the Kick-Ass franchise triangle and without him, I don't think it really works." He added, "It was so much fun to see Chris go to the dark side, I think it will be even more fun to see him swing back."