Supercrooks

Johnny Bolt is a supervillain who is relentlessly trying to make money by doing robberies in league with other masked criminals like him. Systematically each of their shots fails due to the intervention of the superhero who manages to defeat them. In his latest robbery he is stopped without problems by the superhero The Gladiator and is sentenced to 5 years in prison. After exiting he returns to his ex-girlfriend and ex-supervillain Kasey who now works as a waitress. Despite having psychic powers, she now wants to lead a normal life and doesn't want Johnny back in her life. During their meeting, an elderly supervillain friend of theirs named Carmine also arrives who finds himself forced to raise $100 million to give to a Las Vegas casino because he was caught cheating paired with a guy with foresight. Johnny has a new plan to make a lot of money and that is to change country from the United States to one where there are not hundreds of superheroes who then in the end always win by making theirs triumph.

The chosen country is Spain, which apparently does not have superheroes and is the ideal country to implement the Bolt plan. He manages to convince many of his fellow supervillains, some of whom are not even active anymore. The group consists of Carmine, Kasey, The Phantom (no longer active burglar), TK McCabe (ex-supervillain with telekinesis powers), Forecast (ex-supervillain able to change the weather), Roddy and Sammy Diesel (two semi-indestructible wrestlers fighting clandestine matches). After arriving in Tenerife, Johnny manages to surprise another element in his group of criminals, it is the superhero The Gladiator. He is blackmailed as a homosexual and a frequenter of men he met online to whom he often sends erotic photos of himself. If this news were fed to the newspapers, his reputation as a great American superhero would be ruined. At this point Johnny reveals what his plan is and why they are in Spain. His goal is to rob the greatest supervillain of all time who is on the Iberian Peninsula enjoying a golden pension, unpunished for all his crimes. His name (or perhaps nickname) is simply Il Bastardo and freezes the blood of anyone who knows his cruelty and his criminal deeds.

With the help of all the members of the gang, Johnny manages to break into the safe under the villa of the Bastard and robs him of a briefcase that contains values for 800 million dollars, 100 each at the end of the heist. To keep the supervillain at bay, Kesey thinks about it with his psychic powers which creates the illusion of being in his residence when in reality he is in another place. As for his bodyguard with superman superpowers, the Gladiator takes care of him, beating him in a duel making him brain-damaged. To avoid retaliation by the Bastard, the gang of Supercrooks carries out the robbery wearing the costumes of the supervillains to whom Carmine owed money, who are then tracked down and killed by the criminal boss, furious for the wrong suffered. On the other hand, Johnny's reasoning is simple: why put on your own costume (and therefore make yourself recognizable) when you can use someone else's, thus changing your identity?

Millar promoted sales of the book by holding a contest for bookstores: To the store that purchased the most copies of Supercrooks #1, Mark Millar would personally visit for a book signing. The National Book Store in Manila, Philippines won the contest.[1] Millar held the signing in May 2012 alongside his Supercrooks collaborators, Filipino artists Yu and Alanguilan and Indonesian colorist Gho.[2] The first issue reached #51 of US comic book sales in March 2012, selling approximately 34,673 copies through Diamond Comic Distributors.[3] World-wide sales of the first issue and additional copies sold after the first moth reached up to 59,600 sales.[4]

The comic series scored an average rating of 7.7 for the entire series based on 29 critic reviews aggregated by Comic Book Roundup.[5] The book was generally praised for the artwork by Yu,[6][7] but some reviewers found the characters unlikeable and forgettable.[8][7] It was compared both positively and negatively to Ocean's Eleven with superheroes.[7][9]

Supercrooks adaptations were attempted on two occasions prior to 2017. Before the book was published, it was first optioned to be a film directed by Nacho Vigalondo in 2011.[10] Later, in 2016, Waypoint Entertainment obtained the rights to develop a television series adaptation.[11]

After Netflix acquired Millarworld in 2017, it announced in March 2019 that it would develop an anime series adaptation titled Super Crooks,[12] which debuts November 25, 2021 and serves as a prequel to the comic, before overlapping with it in the final episodes.[13] In June 2021, Netflix also announced another television series adaptation, this time live-action, using the same Supercrooks title as the comic, as a spin-off continuation of the simultaneously-cancelled Jupiter's Legacy adaptation.[14]