It’s been almost 20 years since Speed Racer last made an impact in American culture. To reintroduce the character, the challenges are straightforward. Speed Racer lives in a very specific kind of world, and though that world contains a few ridiculous elements, it’s first and foremost an adventure. Wait, one more thing. The people who would naturally pick up the book are likely the people who don’t just remember the movie, but watched the original series.
But you want new readers. Start with Free Comic Book Day, as Mad Cave Studios has done. Bring in a writer with a track record of making old properties fresh without sacrificing anything that made them beloved in the first place. Combine him with an artist who can take manga/anime style of the 1960s and rebuild it for 2025. That sounds an awful lot like David Pepose and Davide Tinto.
Speed Racer #0 has all those elements and something more. If you can pick it up at Free Comic Book Day, you’ll get a complete story that builds Speed’s immediate world while hinting at where it could take you. Pepose and Tinto remember that Speed Racer had elements of The Fast and the Furious before that franchise existed. Their “Palm City” is a true industry town — everyone is into racing, some legal, some not. Our hero Speed Racer does both.
Speed’s younger brother Spritle now serves as an unofficial narrator, running a channel on “Viewtube” that highlights Speed’s exploits. Of course he has his “simian sidekick” Chim-Chim with him, here more like a capuchin than the chimpanzee he was originally. But they’re not the only points of view, as Inspector Rodrigo looks over the city trying to bust the street racers.
Perhaps in the ongoing series we’ll get Racer X’s voice added to the mix, though creators Mark Russell, Chris Batista, and Sabrina Cintron may be carving a separate corner of the universe for him. They provide an “episode zero” for the black-masked racer/secret agent, and though the back-up feels too quick, Russell’s too good a writer for the Racer X mini-series to be anything less than exciting.
This is everything a Free Comic Book Day book should be. Instead of making you feel like you’re playing catch up, you get everything you need to know here. Other characters are glimpsed, and though long-time fans will recognize them, they’re not important to this particular story. Basically, a kid could be satisfied reading just this issue. Except they’ll want more. Mad Cave Studios will be happy to provide.
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