Speed Racer has had an interesting career on the comic page. Originally published in manga form in Japan as Mach GoGoGo, the series proved phenomenally popular, and eventually came to our shores as Speed Racer. In the 80’s NOW Comics brought the character back in a then contemporary revival. Now kept the license and published the comic book tie-in to The New Adventures of Speed Racer. Sadly, when that series didn’t catch on, the comics stopped entirely.
WildStorm acquired the license in the 90’s with a few mini-series with the work of Tommy Yune and Jo Chen. While widely considered to be the best Speed Racer comic adaptation (barring the original, of course), for whatever reason, an ongoing series never materialized.
Most recently, IDW acquired the license and re-released most everything mentioned above, and created their own mini-series, which added a mystical element to the Speed Racer mythos, and is considered (by me), to be the worst adaptation of the character, ever.
So, when Robot 6 reported that Speed Racer was coming back to comics, I was a bit wary of yet another attempt to bring the charm and excitement of Speed Racer to the comics page. Then I saw the creative team. Tommy Yune already has my confidence when it comes to Speed, and Len Wein is practically a living legend! While on the art side, I’m not as familiar with the players, Robby Musso’s style looks like it will fit into Speed’s world admirably. While the publisher is unknown at this time, I’m pretty sure the license still belongs to IDW. I guess we’ll see when Speed guns down the track once again this summer!