Comic's greatest hype man Mark Millar returns this week with his latest creator-owned title, Supercrooks. Along with his Superior artist Lieinil Yu, Supercrooks showcases down and out villains that can't catch a break, mainly because they keep trying to pull heists in a city that is filled to the brim with superheroes. A cool mix of old school crime thrillers and super powers, Supercrooks has a great underlying theme, even if the story is a little cliched at times.
This opening issue starts with a bank heist orchestrated by Johnny, a villain with "electrical powers" who's looking for cash for his upcoming wedding. After being trounced by The Gladiator (who delivers some pretty funny lines to the cops afterwards), he's thrown back in jail for five years, missing his wedding, honeymoon, and his life outside of crime. After being released, Johnny goes to see his ex-fiance, Kasey. Also a super-villain (but with psychic powers), she currently works as a diner waitress, and is none too happy to see Johnny walk aback into her life. Right as she's about to kick him out though, their old mentor Carmine, a.k.a. The Heat, shows up beaten and bruised.
After using a low level psychic to try and rip off a Vegas casino, Carmine owes the casino owners a lot of money. The kind of money that would force Johnny to rethink his new vow to stay on the straight and narrow. Of course, Johnny knows that if he tries to steal from a bank within the city he'll be caught immediately. So, desperate for cash to help his mentor (and to make some extra money for himself), how is he going to get what he needs? Go to Spain of course! With no heroes around to stop them, how could his plan go wrong?
Mark Millar's script is pretty solid, and I was actually pretty surprised by how good the story was in this book. I was under the assumption that I already knew the plot behind this story, but after reading the issue, I was really impressed by it. The characters shown here are really well-defined, and there are a lot of funny asides that Millar throws into the dialogue, like the crack one prison guard makes after hearing why Johnny decided to rob a bank on his wedding day. Leinil Yu's art is impressive as always, balancing both the borderline over the top superhero antics at the beginning and the quieter moments at the end where Johnny ponders how he's going to get the cash he needs. All in all, Supercrooks looks to be another mega seller for Millar, and of course, will probably be optioned for a movie (if it hasn't already).
Yes, Kick-Ass 2 finally been released. It's been a long road, but Millar and John Romita Jr.'s sequel is finally over, and it's been a pretty extreme ride from issue one, with this issue being a non-stop battle royale between Kick-Ass and Red Mist's teams of heroes and villains.
Let me get this out of the way now: this issue is BRUTAL. Nearly every fight you wanted to see from issue one is here, and they play out in pretty fun and unexpected ways. Kick-Ass and Red Mist's fight, for example, starts off as you would expect, until it does a completely hilarious turn that I honestly wasn't expecting, but really enjoyed. It's last moments are also fairly poignant, and make you flash back to when these two characters first met.
However good these fights were, I felt like there wasn't quite enough resolution at the end of the issue. A lot happens in the last few pages, and then it ends. Of course we have the Hit Girl spin-off coming next month, which will hopefully fill in some of the questions I have from the book's ending. Kick-Ass 2 was a little uneven at times, but it was still a worthy companion piece to the original story. I just wonder how the hell they will make this one into a movie.
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