This may well be the laziest cover I have ever posted to this site.
Racer X vol. 2 #4
NOW Comics (December, 1989)
“Surface Thrill”
WRITER: Chuck Dixon
BREAKDOWNS: Todd Fox
FINISHER: Enrique Villagran
COLORIST: Staff…yes, just listed as “staff”
LETTERER: Dan Nakrosis
ART DIRECTOR: Michelle Mach
EDITOR: Katherine Llewellyn
Azimuth sends Rex to go undercover with a terrorist named Anton Dubcek, who is doing a job stateside. He meets Anton’s partner, Alister Stiles, and Anton’s girlfriend Caroline. Caroline is actually married to a mobster but she’s one of those girls who like excitement with bad boys, and Anton wants to rob the mobster, since he’s supposedly done with terrorism and wants to plan for retirement. After the heist Anton decides to double cross Caroline and Racer X (which we saw him do before so this is par for the course) and they were actually working for the mobster to wants to use the money to pay back debts on the money’s actual “owners”. (Mobsters stealing from mobsters to pay that very mobster.) Racer X drives the jeep out of the back of the plane, with the money and a few thousand feet in the air.
What they got right: Since this is the only issue I have of this Speed Racer spinoff I like the idea of Rex/Racer X using his reputation to basically pull a Green Hornet and pretend to be a criminal to catch criminals. It gives an extra reason for the disguise beyond proving himself to Pops and we get to see what he does when he isn’t secretly racing his younger brother. The story itself is off to a good start, with some really nasty criminals and the obligatory femme fatale.
What they got wrong: Besides the lazy cover the last page has “end” instead of to be continued. This is the co-designer of the Mach-5 so I’m betting he put some gadget into this new Hummer thing (Wikipedia says the vehicle wasn’t introduced until the 1990s, yet this comic came out in 1989) to save them when he was going over it so I doubt it ends here, especially with a few more issues left. Granted if it wasn’t for these errors I wouldn’t have anything to talk about beyond not naming the colorists.
What did I think overall: I wouldn’t mind checking out more comics from this series as well as completing my Speed Racer comics from NOW (which we’ll get back to next week). This is the only one I have and I rather enjoyed it.
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