Speed Racer #1-5 [Review]
I'll be honest with you: I dropped the ball on this one. When David Pepose's Speed Racer launched through Mad Cave Studios, I had every intention of picking it up. I loved what he did with Space Ghost, and Speed Racer is exactly the kind of IP that lives in the back of my brain on a near-permanent basis. The original anime was one of those early VHS memories, right alongside Kimba and Astro Boy, something that predated even my Toonami years by a good margin. And yet somehow, issues slipped by me month after month.
So when issue six arrived in my inbox alongside a consolidated file for the first five issues, I figured it was time to stop making excuses and catch up. I am genuinely glad I did.
For anyone coming into this cold, Speed Racer follows a young, hotheaded driver with serious raw talent trying to claw his way onto the Formula X circuit, which is about as dangerous and corrupt as professional racing gets. He's got the iconic Mach 5 at his disposal, a cutting-edge machine built by his father Pops, though their relationship is strained to say the least. Speed is still carrying the weight of losing his brother Rex years prior, and Pops feels that weight differently. Trixie fills the role of Speed's manager and a romantic interest that the book handles with enough charm to actually work, and younger brother Spritle is here too, equal parts liability and comic relief. The setup is faithful to Tatsuo Yoshida's original franchise while feeling genuinely contemporary.
Pepose has carved out a specific lane for himself at Mad Cave, and Speed Racer fits squarely within it. He excels at taking properties that could easily feel corny or dated and finding the emotional engine underneath them. He did it with Space Ghost, and he does it here too. That said, I think Space Ghost is the stronger book overall. The writing there had a particular sharpness to it, a sense of weight behind the spectacle that elevated it beyond what you might expect from a Hanna-Barbera revival. Personally I think Speed Racer is a step below that, but a step below Space Ghost is still well above average. The characterization is doing the heavy lifting, and it works. Speed is impulsive, but not irritating. Trixie has actual agency. Pops is complicated in the way good parental figures in these stories need to be.
Davide Tinto's art is an excellent match for the material. The colors are bright and immediate, the kind of palette that keeps your eye moving across the page even during the quieter scenes. But where Tinto really earns his seat at the table is in the action sequences. Speed Racer lives or dies on its racing, and Tinto delivers. The Mach 5's cutter blades slicing through obstacles, the spring jumps, the controlled chaos of a wreck at high speed: all of it reads clearly and with genuine kinetic energy. Rex Lokus's colors amplify that throughout, giving the book a clean visual identity that feels modern without abandoning the spirit of the original.
The villains are satisfying in the way classic villains should be. Captain Terror, the Black Jaguar, Racer X… they all get enough texture to function within the story, and Pepose has a knack for making you actively root against the antagonists rather than simply waiting for them to be defeated. A few of the narrative turns telegraph themselves pretty clearly, especially if you have any familiarity with the source material. But that's a minor complaint in a book that's clearly aiming for something broader than pure genre subversion.
That broader appeal is actually one of the things I want to flag specifically: this is a genuinely family-friendly comic. That sounds like faint praise, but it isn't. Finding solid all-ages books that don't talk down to younger readers while still holding the attention of adults is harder than it should be. Speed Racer pulls it off. I would hand this to a ten-year-old with full confidence, and I would sit down and read it alongside them.
Alongside Space Ghost and Captain Planet, Pepose continues to demonstrate that he can be entrusted with some of the most recognizable and beloved franchises from across the years. I'm caught up now, and much like Speed, I’ll be doing my best not to be left behind!
