Speed Racer: Tales from the Road #2: Good Guys and Bad Guys

The Speed Racer universe continues to grow in Speed Racer: Tales from the Road #2. Speed Racer’s family takes center stage again in the anthology’s second issue. But this time the focus expands to new good guys and established bad guys.

“Fall. Rise. Repeat.” gives readers the first look at a Speed Racer heroic character not tied to the Racer family, Piston. What’s more, Piston is an ordinary guy. Unlike Speed and Rex, he didn’t come to racing with a family pedigree. The result is a story about perseverance–of fighting for a dream when all odds are against you. Complicating this story is that this entry in Speed Racer: Tales from the Road #2 is set in the background of the ongoing Speed Racer series. Piston’s potential success hits a speed bump as a result of Speed’s actions. Sieracki does a good job getting the reader on Piston’s side before muddying the waters with the Speed Racer universe’s main hero. It’s well executed and adds a little heft to an otherwise straightforward story.

Maps’s art is detailed but not overly so. Backgrounds create a nice sense of the world around Piston. Character features are delineated with merely a line or two to suggest contour or add shading. Most of Piston’s expressions come through the shape of his eyes and mouth. Mapa doesn’t exaggerate either one. In some cases differences are subtle. Pelandra’s coloring is soft but rich in variety. Characters central to each sequence are usually the most vibrantly colored things in the panel. Often that is Piston, but sometimes it is a character talking to Piston.

“Dante Ferno in The Price of Victory” is entertaining enough as a story about one of Speed Racer and Racer X’s villains. Unfortunately it doesn’t get enough space to allow any but the most surface level examination of Dante Ferno, head of Car Acrobatics Team. His character arc boils down to “He’s a bad guy who, when the chips are down, will do bad guy things to win.” That said, this short story does deliver Speed Racer: Tales from the Road #2’s only real racing action. It’s limited to a few panels, but as is the case with all the Speed Racer universe books, it’s still fun.

Colors are rich and vibrant in “Dante Ferno in The Price of Victory,” but they lean toward darker hues. It provides a lot of visual contrast throughout the story, but nothing jumps off the page particularly. It does work well with the racing action, though. Also effective with that action is Hymel’s general eschewing of backgrounds. There is nothing to compete with the cars or the characters on the page.

The emotional center of Speed Racer: Tales from the Road #2 is “A Race Down Memory Lane,” the opening story that focuses on Pops Racer and the Racer boys when they were young. This is a fairly straightforward story, easy going and without much complexity. That said, it’s nice to see the Racer family during easier times. The main Speed Racer series has been a high stakes affair from the first issue, only reaching an emotional release in its most recent issue. Here readers have a chance to get to know Pops a little bit and connect with him and a young Rex and Speed. Though racing is a central part of their lives, the Racer family is much like any other, and Pops is a typical father. Even so, this is a welcome entry in the larger Speed Racer universe because it makes the reader want to care about these characters on a very basic human level more so than the other series have.

Andres’s art delivers some typical manga qualities when it comes to the characters in “A Race Down Memory Lane.” Most obvious are character eyes and mouths which are rounded and exaggerated when characters are experiencing any heightened emotions. Though Andres’s style doesn’t leave much room for subtlety when it comes to character expressions, especially in the case of Speed and Rex’s mother, the energy of the exaggerated expressions marries well with the overall story. Nalty’s coloring is a good fit for this art style. Colors are rich and there’s a nice level of contrast, especially characters versus surroundings. But nothing is so bright and vibrant that it proves distracting from the energetic art.