Jacco said:
The rape scene you talk about in the comic was, for all intents and purposes, only there to be there. There were numerous ways he could have handled it that would have been more acceptable than how it turned out.
Not really. I see the purpose as twofold, one within the narrative and one meta;
Firstly, within the story the purpose of the rape scene is to strike deliberately at Kick-Ass. It plays right into the idea of the book, as characters follow common comic book tropes
because they're common comic book tropes [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StuffedIntoTheFridge]. It's done because it's a more graphic version of what a comic book supervillain might do, and ************ is actively
trying to be a comic book supervillain. That isn't to say it's a great artistic decision, but from a character perspective it does make sense.
Secondly, it reinforces to the audience that ************ isn't the goofy kid
playing at being a bad guy that he was in the first book. He's deliberately turning himself into a horrible ****. The first Kick-Ass, hyperviolence aside, was basically a tale of kids playing at being heroes and villains. ************'s rampage is the signal that he's not playing anymore, even if Kick-Ass is.
Please note that this is not a defense of Millar or Kick-Ass 2, as I didn't really enjoy the book, and I found the rape scene in particular extremely disturbing. I'm just saying that the scene was hardly thrown in just for the sake of having a rape scene; it's included as part of a character arc for the villain. Whether or not there were better ways for it to be done is up for debate, but to call the scene gratuitous isn't really accurate.