I had watched the movie shortly after it came out. For the first 2/3 or so they're largely the same. There are some minor differences as Dave Lizewski decides for no real reason to buy a wetsuit and become a superhero. What he should have realized is if you don't have powers from a spider or being alien or cosmic rays, you need some actual training. He gets his ass kicked but doggedly keeps going and runs into actual superheroes in "Big Daddy" and his daughter Hit Girl who are actually trained and have real weapons and everything. Meanwhile, a gangster's son takes on the identity of "Red Mist" to get close to the heroes.
Where the two properties diverge is after Red Mist exposes who he really is. In the movie Big Daddy and Kick-Ass are captured and their execution put live on the Internet before Hit Girl saves Kick-Ass but her father is killed. Then they gear up and take on the gangster and Red Mist, Kick-Ass literally blowing up the gangster with a rocket launcher.
In the book, everything happens a lot quicker with no execution on the Internet and no real gearing up. Basically some bad guys come in, Hit Girl is shot and falls out a window, Big Daddy is killed, and then Hit Girl saves Kick-Ass and they storm the gangster's penthouse to kill him.
The biggest difference, though, is the secret origin of Big Daddy. In the movie it is pretty much a comic book origin: he was a good cop framed by the gangster, went to prison, his wife commits suicide, his daughter is born, and after he's let out of prison 5 years later, he takes her and starts training her to be a killer. Eventually they start killing gangsters to take revenge.
In the comic book, Big Daddy confesses before his death that he was just an accountant who decided his daughter should have an exciting life and so abducted her and by selling old comics funded their training and weapons and so forth. His wife is still alive and in the end, Hit Girl goes back to live with her.
So that really changes the whole complexion of things. In the movie, Big Daddy's quest is righteous in that he's taking revenge for the gangster putting him in prison and indirectly killing his wife. Even enlisting his daughter in his crusade doesn't quite seem as terrible and irresponsible because at least it's for a good cause.
In the book it's really horrible and irresponsible that he would take his daughter and force her into this life basically just for kicks. Sure they're still doing the same thing of taking out criminals, but the motivation is a lot weaker. If Bruce Wayne had decided to train and take down criminals not because his parents were killed but just for kicks, would we love the character as much? Probably not.
The idea of righteous vengeance has existed since the Bible with its "eye for an eye" philosophy. It's probably existed since the first caveman killed another caveman for stealing his fire. Whereas killing a caveman for his fire is called murder. But if that caveman stole his fire from someone else and another caveman kills him, does that make it better? Slightly, I guess.
Anyway, this change does largely change the whole meaning of the story. In the book, in one of those "Nixon goes to China" things, Millar seems to be taking crazy comic book fans to their logical extreme. I mean if fans would dress as characters to go to conventions or movies or whatever, then the final evolution would be fans actually trying to become those characters. Like I said, it's kind of ironic that Millar, who made his fortune writing some of the best comics of the last 25 years like Red Son, Civil War, and Old Man Logan for DC/Marvel and indie comics like Wanted, The Secret Service, and Jupiter Ascending, is writing a story that's basically saying comic book nerds are a bunch of crazy dorks. That message is dulled in the movie by making Big Daddy someone who actually has both a reason and training for his quest. He's not a crazy comic book fan but a real-life comic book vigilante hero.
But there are a lot of sequels and spinoffs of the books, so I guess fans didn't mind too much that Millar was essentially making fun of them. Whereas there were only two movies that underperformed at the box office. There are always rumors of sequels or maybe a streaming series, though I'm not sure which version they might use for a reboot series. I like the movies but the books are decent too. Though of course both feature coarse language, blood, and gore.
BTW, to get back to something I said in my mini-review, the art tends to make the young characters look like little kids or little people. I mean look at the cover. Do those look like teenagers to you? To me they look more 8-10. I'm just saying.
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