Keep your fight scenes, your mysteries, your romances. They’re easy to find in the DC Universe. If you’re in search of a rarer flavor, there’s nothing quite like a great heist. Luckily, that’s a niche getting filled right now in perhaps the most ambitious heist story DC’s ever attempted, Greg Rucka and Nicola Scott’s Cheetah & Cheshire Rob the Justice League. After reading the first issue, you’re probably going to want some of that sweet heist action to tide you over. We’ve got you covered. Here are seven of our best heist comics you can find in your DC library (all currently available now on DC UNIVERSE INFINITE).
The Batman Adventures #10, “The Last Riddler Story” (1993)
You might be surprised to hear that one of the most essential Riddler comics is from a tie-in series to a cartoon show. The Batman Adventures #10, like most Riddler stories, ends with Eddie Nygma in the Batman’s grasp and on his way to Arkham. So why is this man smiling? Because for the Riddler, the heist is never the point—it’s the contest of wits with the most cunning minds that Gotham City has to offer. It’s about besting Batman on the field of intellect and mentally eluding the World’s Greatest Detective.
In this theft of a jeweled eagle, the Riddler’s usual clue proves, for once, too complex for even Batman himself to solve. It’s only through brute force and sheer luck that Batman is able to capture his foe after the heist has already taken place. Knowing that Batman was unable to solve his riddle the proper way, “The Last Riddler Story” is presented as the final one you’ll ever have to read: Nygma’s happy ending, retired from his life of crime, having fully gotten away with the only prize he ever truly coveted.
Jonny Double (1998)
Jonny Double is a four-issue Vertigo miniseries that established the chemistry of Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso before their epic 100 Bullets saga. This reinvention of an obscure private eye from DC history presents us with a neo noir caper where our aging detective gets himself caught up in a young hipster heist scheme where it’s holding onto the score afterwards that gets you.
Asked to look after a rich man’s daughter with a propensity for trouble, Jonny stumbles into a plan to impersonate the heir of Al Capone in order to abscond with his private bank account…only to discover that the presumed long inactive account has been receiving regular hefty deposits. When this “free money” isn’t as unclaimed as it seems after all, Jonny learns the hard way to “never trust anyone under thirty.”
Superman #168 / Detective Comics #756, “With This Ring” (2001)
Cheetah & Cheshire Rob the Justice League may be Greg Rucka’s biggest score yet, but it’s not the first heist he’s pulled in the DC Universe…and not for lack of ambition either. Working with Jeph Loeb and featuring a rare Batman/Lois Lane team-up across two different titles—Loeb’s Superman #168 and Rucka’s Detective Comics #756—this story’s dynamic duo sets their sights on breaking into the White House for an invaluable prize: President Lex Luthor’s Kryptonite ring. Their biggest problem? Not the president’s secret service, or any devious traps designed by Luthor himself, but that Superman is staunchly against this caper. Can the Dark Knight and the world’s greatest reporter sneak around Superman? And what happens when the answer is “absolutely not?”
Catwoman: Selina’s Big Score (2002)
Let’s come clean. If we really wanted to, we could have made this entire list just a rundown of Catwoman stories. All the greatest heist stories in the DC Universe are built around Catwoman. That’s what her book is for. That’s what makes it stand apart from all the other Gotham titles. She doesn’t fight bad guys or save the world. She steals. And that’s what makes Catwoman one of the most consistently fun titles in the DC library. But if you’re only going to read a single Catwoman comic, it’s got to be this cinematically scaled masterpiece by Darwyn Cooke.
In Catwoman: Selina’s Big Score, an interlude chapter between Catwoman comic runs, Selina is presumed dead and uses that cover to put together a high stakes, one-off caper that should set everyone she folds in for life: the heist of a train full of dirty money across the Canadian border for heroin trade. Apart from Cooke favorite Slam Bradley, and a quick flashback cameo from Batman, this story doesn’t lean too much on its DCU backdrop, nor does it need to. Instead, it presents Selina as the center of her own universe, setting a style guide which has informed the ambitions of every Catwoman story for the past twenty years. If you’ve ever wondered what the ideal standalone Catwoman movie would look like, it’s all laid out right here.
The Losers (2003)
The most surprising thing about this military heist series from the heart of George W. Bush’s presidency is how sharp, cogent and applicable its political commentary still is, twenty years later. Deeply critical of the oil industry and the military industrial complex, The Losers stands as one of the best among Vertigo’s efforts to revive the DC war line in the 2000s. The secret: despite the context of the original Losers, it’s not about fighting a war—at least, not in the traditional sense. Andy Diggle and Jock’s Losers are a group of soldiers burned by the government after a clandestine mission gone wrong, presumed dead and out for revenge against a corrupted regime.
Arc after arc, the Losers pull off impossible heists in government facilities, oil pipelines and across the globe to clear their names and get one over on Uncle Sam’s dark money masters. When the rich and powerful determine the win conditions, it’s up to the Losers to change the game.
Injustice: Gods Among Us #31-#33, “Clash of the Titans” (2013)
One of the most surprising success stories of the past two decades in comics is the unstoppable momentum of the Injustice: Gods Among Us video game tie-in series. Originally envisioned as a limited storyline setting the table for how that dark timeline of a tyrant Superman began, this Tom Taylor-written series took off with a force greater than anyone could have anticipated and would be followed by years of sequels and spin-offs. The secret? Stories like “Clash of the Titans,” the explication of a traumatic encounter only hinted at in the backstory of the video game that led to the death of Green Arrow.
In this story, told over Chapters 31-33 of the original series, Taylor, Tom Derenick, Jeremy Raapack and Bruno Redondo contextualize that loss as a casualty in the most significant early victory for the resistance against Superman’s regime: the recovery of the Super Pill formula from the Fortress of Solitude, equalizing the playing field for the resistance. There have been many stories before and since about breaking into the Fortress (see Batman: Fortress, or even the new Superman movie), but none with such dramatic stakes that it would open the eyes of readers to story, character and world potential far beyond what was initially presented in a fighting game from the Mortal Kombat guys.
Birds of Prey: Megadeath (2023)
Although often considered a separate genre in its own right, the jailbreak story is, itself, a kind of heist story when seen from the right perspective. “The score” just happens to be a human being. Such is the case with Kelly Thompson and Leonardo Romero’s Birds of Prey: Megadeath, which set the pace for a Birds of Prey run that’s still going strong. The target in this case is Black Canary’s long-lost but fan-beloved sister-daughter figure, Sin—a captive of the Amazons on Paradise Island for reasons that are at first unknown. To liberate the girl she loves, Black Canary puts together an, also at first, inexplicable team of Cassandra Cain, Big Barda, Zealot and Harley Quinn. Their goal is to break into Themyscira, somehow defeat an army of Amazons, including Wonder Woman, and liberate Sin from an angry demigoddess.
As this lineup was solicited, many balked. Well, they balked at Wonder Woman’s skeletal Pegasus and giant sword too. If there’s one recurring lesson at DC in the past few years, it’s always trust that Kelly Thompson knows exactly what she’s doing.
Cheetah & Cheshire Rob the Justice League #1 by Greg Rucka, Nicola Scott and Annette Kwok is now available in print and as a digital comic book.
Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly "Ask the Question" column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DC.com. Follow him on Bluesky at @AlexJaffe and find him in the DC Official Discord server as HubCityQuestion.
NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Alex Jaffe and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.
