Speed Racer #2: No Ordinary Race

Speed Racer #2 pulls a bit of a reversal on the first issue by setting Speed up as more of an underdog. Speed Racer #1 depicted Speed as a mouthy and successful street racer. In the wake of his father’s health crisis, though, that strength all but disappears. This vulnerability carries over into the racing world when Speed has to practically beg to get a team sponsor for a tournament qualifying race. The two issues offer a balanced look at the character, showcasing both strengths and weaknesses. Indeed, Speed’s resolve in the face of difficulty in Speed Racer #2 is more telling than his bombast in Speed Racer #1.

This additional character exploration is made possible by Speed Racer #2 further opening up the world that the series takes place in. This is chiefly seen in the professional race Speed takes part in. The strategies and unorthodox car upgrades seen in the street race in Speed Racer #1 are just as applicable in professional races as well. This kind of dangerous and somewhat underhanded sport gives Pepose the opportunity to build all manner of suspicious characters around Speed. His father told him to be wary of the C.A.T. Team (and certainly they are not depicted in the best light here). But that isn’t to say that Speed won’t encounter additional threats.

The Racer X appearances are already growing tiresome. They feel too divorced from events in Speed Racer and too much like commercials for the character (which, of course, they are).

Stealing the show once more when it comes to visually gripping sequences is the race in Speed Racer #2. Tinto uses several techniques to communicate the various cars’ speed and power. The most basic is the use of straight thin lines, varying between relatively short and long, set against the background and track and surrounding the cars.

The more interesting technique is the way that Tinto plays with the idea of parallax within his art. Rather than trying to maintain a realistic sense of depth and implied distance that the cars have traveled, Tinto exaggerates the surroundings. As the Mach 5 races toward the reader in the front corner of a large panel, the road behind it seems to curve more downward than extended straight–as though the race was being run on the outer edge of a circle. The spectators’ stands loom large over the race track, almost impossibly so, but disappear at a sharp downward angle as the view extends backward. The work on this long race sequence makes the case that the series’ main characters are the cars and the races as opposed to any of the people.

Lokus makes choices that reinforce this same sense of speed and power. The color of the sky and other such backgrounds are most vivid up front (as implied by the exaggerated sense of parallax and speed lines) before fading, sometimes to plain white, as they extend into the background.

Beaudoin makes the race announcers’ spikey dialogue bubbles as in your face as the race itself. Though not so big that they obscure the art, the bubbles are nevertheless very large compared to dialogue elsewhere in the issue. Bold text is so heavily used that at times almost the entire bubble is emphasized.