MPH (Miles Per Hour) is a Britishheist-action-thrillercomic booklimited series written by Mark Millar and illustrated by Duncan Fegredo. Published by Image Comics, the series is set in the Millarworld,[2][3] with its events being first referenced in 2014's Kick-Ass: The Dave Lizewski Years – Book Four.[4] Described as "The Fast and the Furious without cars",[5][6] the series follows a group of early-20s criminals who on discovering a drug that gives them super-speed, use it to go on a series of grand heists, while pursued by a government agency with a mysterious speedster of their own. The series, originally published between May 21, 2014, and February 18, 2015, was collected as a graphic novel on April 22, 2015.[7] Characters from the series would later return in the miniseries Big Game in 2023. Receiving a generally positive critical reception, both a comic book sequel and feature film adaptation of the series has been in development hell since its initial publication.
Premise
When Motor City criminal Roscoe Rodriguez stumbles upon a street drug called MPH, he gains the power of super-speed, using it to break out of prison and with his friends form a group of working class criminals to go on a series of high-octane urban adventures as bank robbers, while pursued by the forces of DENO and the mysterious Mr. Springfield.[8][9] While the initial announcement of the series described it as a six-issue series following teenagers, the final five-issue series saw the majority of its protagonists be in their early-to-mid 20s.[10][11]
Characters
Connecting variant covers of MPH #1 (May 2014), depicting the Runners: Baseball (Jiggy Cruz), Chevy, Rosa Cruz, and Roscoe Rodriguez; art by Duncan Fegredo.
The Runners
Roscoe Rodriguez – A low-level criminal obsessed with vision boards who breaks out of prison on gaining super-speed from the experimental drug "MPH", one pill of which provides the user a day of the power, which Roscoe uses to make him and his loved ones rich by becoming high-profile bank robbers and America's Most Wanted. Originally named "Roscoe Vasquez" throughout the development of MPH, the character was renamed by Mark Millar before final publication to have a more alliterative name.[2]
Rosa Cruz – Roscoe's girlfriend, a Jeet Kune Do expert with whom he shares his super-speed, who tries to keep her younger brother "Baseball" out of the criminal lifestyle after the death of their other brother, Roberto.
Chevy – Roscoe's best friend, with whom he shares his super-speed. Having previously been secretly in love with Rosa, he develops a god complex from his use of the pills, coming to blows with Roscoe and Rosa after they give away their money.
"Baseball" – Rosa's sixteen-year-old little brother, a would-be gangster whom she rescues from a life of crime. Baseball's full name (and in-turn Rosa's surname), "Jiggy Cruz", was revealed in the final issue as the result of a charity competition held by Mark Millar to allow a fan to name an MPH character after themselves, a competition Millar had previously used to name characters in Kick-Ass, Nemesis, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Starlight, and Jupiter's Legacy.[12][13]
DENO
"Mr. Springfield" – The world's first and only known superhuman, an apparent pre-cog who crashed into Missouri at super-speed in 1986 before being arrested by the government, who has been living in luxury house arrest under the confine of DENO in Arizona for the past 29 years.[14] Mr. Springfield would return in a cameo appearance in the 2023 limited series Big Game.
Special Agent Cutler – An agent of the United States Department of Extra-Normal Operations (DENO), assigned to Mr. Springfield.
Professor Henri Troyat/Orlov – The former Chief Scientific Officer of France's superhuman development program and inventor of the "MPH" pill, who disappeared in 1984 and has been living in-hiding ever since (bar attending the occasional jazz festival). A fictionalised version of the author of the same name, Mark Millar revealed in an interview in January 2014 that the character would return in another then-untitled title set in the Millarworldsharedfictional universe the following year, which turned out to be Huck, written by Millar and illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque.[15]
