If Roger Corman had a fever dream that George Miller directed Bruce Campbell as the lead, then you might have the beginning of the new series from DC and Hanna Barbera called Wacky Raceland.
The title does not really do this justice and I fear it will scare some readers away. This is not just wacky. It is a campy good time. Ken Pontac delivers his readers a story that has all the elements of a Doyle mystery if that mystery were told by Quentin Tarantino.
We begin at a post-apocalyptic bar where we see the “Wacky Racers” in various states of disrepair from the earlier race. The story is told in crash cuts. We see a bar fight with a three-headed mutant and dwarf versions of the Gentlemen from Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s epic “Hush” episode.
Cut to the race competitors beautifully drawn by Leonardo Manco who introduces all the teams.  Cut to hot and dirty race action. Cut to the bar fight. Cut to Penelope Pitstop’s back-story where we learn that she and the rest of the Wacky Racers have been brought from the end of the world (literally) to race for a chance to live in Utopia by an omniscient narrator called the Announcer who, by the way, makes all the cars in the race sentient beings. Yep. The cars, they talk, they think and they have personalities. Cut to…well you get it.
At the end of the first issue, we see who wins the first leg of the Wacky Race after having to stop and fight some nasty critters.
The back of the book has another origin story of another race team called Lazy Luke and Blubber Bear that is just long enough for us to care about them but not long enough to give too much away.
I am not too sure if Pontac is taking himself seriously or not. I am not sure if he wants the audience to laugh, cheer or smirk at some inside joke he thinks we are all in together. What I do know is that this book has some serious potential to be fun. Sign me up for issue two, I am ready to go racing.
