Having obtained electric superpowers as a teenager, Johnny Bolt who grew up idolizing the heroes of the Union of Justice has since grown up to be a lower tier supervillain. Having been released from Supermax, Johnny reunites with his psychic girlfriend Casey in San Francisco and finds himself falling back in with his old crew of other lower tier villains. Kasey worried for her and Johnny's future convinces Johnny to meet with her mentor, Carmine, a former heat gun based supervillain who is recruiting other no name supervillains for a major heist for Count Orlok's helmet at the Union of Justice.
Supercrooks is an adaptation of the 2012 comic book miniseries written by Mark Millar from Marvel's Icon imprint. With 2008's Wanted becoming a major hit, its success lead to studios optioning other Mark Millar comic properties such as Lionsgate's Kick-Ass films and 20th Century Fox's Kingsman movies. Since Mark Millar's company, Millarworld, was acquired by Netflix in 2017, Millar has been churning out more comic book miniseries to serve as templates for feature films and television series, as well as retrofitting older properties whose rights and options lapse from studio inaction. Such is the case with Supercrooks, the 2nd film/tv project made for Netflix following the adaptation of Jupiter's Legacy and sees Millar and studio Bones reverse engineer the original standalone mini into a side-story for Jupiter's Legacy following earlier failed attempts 10 years ago to turn the property into a feature film to be helmed by cult Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo. The end result is reasonably entertaining if not particularly exceptional.
One of the criticisms with the original comic miniseries was in a perceived lack of personality to the characters who were mainly defined by their superpower (barring some exceptions). That criticism has been addressed with the 4 issue comic miniseries now greatly expanded to a 13 episode anime TV series giving much more detailed character histories or character building scenes to the story as well as establishing ties to Jupiter's Legacy. For the most part I think the writers do an okay job of integrating the story into the universe of Jupiter's Legacy, but there are some hiccups such as with an expansion of Johnny Bolt with the first episode primarily showing his teenage years and failed attempts at being the superhero, Electro Boy, which lead to less than appealing results with his major debut leading to an accidental electrocution at a public swimming pool which lead to a escalating chain reaction of events that left many injured and/or presumably killed (which in typical Mark Millar fashion is done in a darkly comedic manner) and strangely there's never really any fallout from this scene and Johnny's criminal divergence from aspiring superhero to supercrook is done almost in the blink of an eye when he inadvertently activates an ATM machine with a stray charge. The first episode really doesn't have much reason to exist aside from establishing itself as taking place in the Jupiter's Legacy universe, and except for a minor callback in episode 10 (and kind of at the end of episode 13) there's nothing all that important in the first episode.
Once the plot does get rolling, the show sticks pretty closely to the "Ocean's Eleven with Superpowers" premise of the original comic, but the actual events of the comic aren't covered until episode 10. Episodes 2-9 focus on an original caper for the cast which the show uses to build up the relationships and interplay among the cast and fill in some of the gaps left by the original miniseries. Overall I'd say it works pretty well and it does lead to some entertaining action sequences that are stylishly done. On occasion there are some noticeable gaffes in logic such as an earlier sequence where Johnny is going on a crime spree through San Francisco with his crew of three other guys (who've been greatly expanded from the no-names they were in the comic) and one of the superheroes they come across is a character named Rubber Ball who despite possessing the attributes of Rubber is still vulnerable to Johnny's electric abilities, admittedly there's no other scenes like that that call that level of attention to themselves (at least in that manner), but that's a pretty glaring error when the show forgets the relationship between rubber and electricity.
Outside of my gripes with these elements, the show captures the appeal of the source comic pretty well. The show does a good job of translating Millar's abrasive sense of humor, with the Diesel brothers in particular scoring some humorously over the top violent scenes as their regenerative abilities often leave behind a....mess for lack of a better word that makes some of the Evil Dead movies look restrained by comparison. Dai Sato of Cowboy Bebop, Wolf's Rain, and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex helped to adapt the comic alongside Millar, and despite some quirks with adapting the material, Sato gives a sense of identity and life to the series that feels very stylish in that "retro" fashion his other work is known for.
Supercrooks is a solid adaptation the miniseries. While it maybe adds a little too much to the somewhat anemic comic book (ironically giving it the opposite problem), there's a lot of style and energy on display in the show that makes it an engaging watch. As with other Millar projects of this type, it boasts the same acerbic humor and over the top violence that is present in much of the writer's work and that will be a major deciding factor in your enjoyment of this. The ties to Jupiter's Legacy don't really add much on a story level, but they're reasonably unintrusive to the core narrative. Flawed, but mostly enjoyable.
