Speed Racer #0: FCBD Advance Review (Spoiler-Free)

The Speed Racer A-story in Speed Racer #0 spends almost no time on the new series’ main character. Indeed, his face isn’t even fully visible until the final page. Instead, Pepose takes this opportunity to do a lot of world building. He lays out the city’s status quo and hints at potential themes and storylines. Though this kind of preview sounds like it has limited appeal, Pepose is able to generate a measure of urgency by incorporating it into a dialogue exchange between a veteran police officer and a rookie. Pepose establishes them as antagonists to the racing culture that Speed Racer is a part of and thus antagonists to Speed Racer himself. Since readers are likely to automatically sympathize with the titular character despite not learning much about him, this story carries more tension than a primarily world building story usually would.

Much of this story’s fast pace also owes to Tinto’s art. There is a distinct difference between those panels that showcase the speeding cars and others that center on comparatively static characters and settings. Tinto makes liberal use of lines meant to imply the cars’ speed. He also blurs backgrounds, a technique further helped along by Lokus’s coloring. The story is visually exciting.

Speed Racer’s limited appearance in Speed Racer #0 results in a barebones storyline for the character. Though Pepose offers no details of consequence, hinting only that Speed Racer is trying to establish a legacy in the shadow of someone else’s, it is enough of a hook to make the series’ first issue worth getting. And very smartly, nothing presented here comes across as critical information. So readers who pick up the series’ first issue likely won’t feel that they’ve missed anything if they missed this one.

Racer X’s B-story connects to Speed Racer’s A-story in a shared moment depicted in both and then extends off it like a spoke. It’s shorter and never builds up much tension. It does, however, provide more humor. Russell doesn’t go overboard with it. But its inclusion gives Racer-X’s story a distinct identity, separate from Speed Racer’s. That said, it does end on a serious note for the character which creates a nice hook going into future Racer X storylines.

Batista is able to capture the sensation of extreme velocities in a manner similar to Tinto. He incorporates much fewer background details than Tinto does, but the result is largely the same. The Racer X story possesses the same energy as Speed Racer’s and thus generates a similar sense of urgency.