Speed Racer
Speed Racer Classics Volume 2
The credits seem confusing. Page 3 lists the English script as by Nat Gertler. Page 4 credits the Translation to Takako Hamazaki & the English script to Mike Mulvihill.
Possibly Nat Gertler did one story & Mike Mulvihill the other, but they could have done a much better job of establishing who did what.
The Secret Of The Golden Auto
“That is plutonium in a diamond shell. In five days the shell will dissolve and release a deadly gas.”
1. Shouldn’t plutonium be sealed in lead to stop radiation?
2. Why would the diamond shell dissolve?
Speed & company are at the ISP HQ in New York, but the man in charge starts talking about FBI agents.
Also it shows the FBI agents operating in Germany & Italy which is outside their jurisdiction.
The know QQQ is smuggling stuff & killing FBI agents, but they just let him continue entering races around the world???
“Gentlemen, start you engines”.
Your not you.
“We put the plutonium in the truck of the golden auto”.
I think they mean trunk.
Speed asks, “Dr, Rich where did the plutonium go?”
Dr. Rich answers, “When I had the box I sprayed the plutonium with the antidote.”
Speed says, “You mean the plutonium just dissolved!”
Yeesh! They should have just made up a chemical name for the gas rather than calling it plutonium.
There were a couple of instances of running words together, but I didn’t feel like trying to list them.
Original Speed Racer manga being reprinted in 2-book hardcover collection.
Speed Racer: Mach Go Go Go Volume 1
NNAN. The volume/set has an introduction by Peter Fernandez, the voice of Speed Racer. Now while it's a good intro with some interesting info on the American version of the cartoon show, it really has little to do with the comic (save for the characters American names which he came up with).
Chapter 1 The Great Plan
Speed Racer Arrives!! Originally published in Mach Go Go Go #1
Some pages of this are in full color, some are in partial color & others are in B&W.
Been nice if there had been an explanation about this.
The Fight For The Engine Plans
2 pages in partial color, the rest in B&W.
Speed jumps off of a racing bike & somehow lands unharmed.
The driver of the bike crashes & he ends up hooked by the back of his shirt to the handlebars while the motorcycle dangles off the edge hooked by the guard rail.
Yeahhhhhhhhhh...
Trixie stops the final motorcyclist by bringing her helicopter down so he crashes into it, and he bounces off the road, down a cliff to land on his motorcycle.
Surprisingly the helicopter doesn't have a scratch and while that should have killed the motorcyclist it wouldn't surprise me if he is one of the bandaged thugs we see later (he doesn't have a distinctive enough facial feature to be sure though.)
Mach-5 Under Attack!
Why put the plans on a windshield???
Couldn't Pops find a clear piece of plastic? (Yeah, yeah, plot contrivance.)
Speed Racer's Decision
Duggery causes the Mach 5 to flip & Speed is thrown out with his helmet flying off.
Not much of a helmet if it goes flying off for no reason like that.
NANJAO. Trixie's father is president of Shimura Aviation. Which explains why Trixie has access to helicopters & planes.
Chapter 2 Challenge Of The Masked Racer
Shows a blonde gal hanging on to Speed, but no such gal is in that chapter. There is one in the next chapter which lacks a cover title page, though.
The Diabolical Number 9
Page 2, Panel 3. One the people says of Racer X, "He looks so grim..."
Problem is panels 2 & 3 it looks like he's smiling. Panels 5 & 6 have him looking grim.
NANJAO. First appearance of the iconic steering wheel with buttons & the jacks.
The bottoms of the jacks are pointy which would seem to make their intended purpose (raising the car up) riskier since there is not that much surface to hold the weight of the car.
The Alpine Race
Page 1, Panel 1. An overhead shot of the assembled racers waiting for the race to start shows Racer X's car in the front row, but no Mach 5. Page 4, Panel 1. Racer X's car is now in the next to last row, but still no sign of the Mach 5 (although Racer X comments that he is there).
Given the uniqueness of the Mach 5 we should have seen it & the artist should have been more careful where he placed Racer X's car.
Chapter 4 The Fire Race
Invitation From Kapetepek
Page 1, Panel 6. Speed's helmet is shown being knocked off by the landing gear of Trixie's helicopter.
1. Aren't helmet's supposed to brace the impact by breaking instead of flying off?
2. Wouldn't the force necessary to knock off the helmet do some serious damage to Speed's head and/or neck?
3. Apparently it didn't go flying very far as he's got it back on his head 2 panels later. Apparently while still driving he took the time to pick it back up.
The Night In Kapetepek
In the previous section the chief refused to let his village be civilized & made a bet with the president of the Republic of Kapetepek that if any civilized racer wins instead of Kabala the village will be civilized. Here he promises his daughter's hand to the winner & says he would like her to be married to Speed.
Methinks grandpa is going senile.
Into The Core Of The Earth
Not really, just through an 800 mile long tunnel between two volcanoes.
Scientifically the premise here seems highly unlikely. Once every hundred years Mesoph volcano opens the entrance & exit to an 800 mile tunnel for 5 hours & inside is an ancient city that has stayed pretty much recognizable despite lava & seismic activity. Yeahhhhhhh...
Of course we also have a mythical beast that protects the Kapetepek treasure. Something like that should have been killed a long time ago.
Speed Racer: Mach Go Go Go Volume 2
The True Spirit Of A Racer
Pops won't let Speed be a racer.
Excuse me??? Have all the races he's competed in so far been behind Pops back?
During the Fire Race the pointy ended jacks had been replaced with some jacks with feet on them, but here we're back to the pointy-ended jacks.
Why is Racer X driving around in his racing car without his mask (aside from the plot contrivance, of course)? If some photographer spotted him & snapped his picture Racer X's secret identity would be out.
Chapter 3 The Secret Engine
Tongue Blaggard has escaped from prison & has had his gang gathering Model T's because he believes that Henry Ford hid some blueprints for a dream car that he can use to win buckets of racing prize money.
Riiiiiiiiiiight... and the Wright brothers secretly designed the first jet engine. *rolls eyes*
Chapter 6 Race To Fire Island
Yikes! What happened to the art quality? Some of it looks like it was done in a hurry.
Sounds like episodes from the cartoon series.
(Or was that the idea?)
The comic was done first & most of the stories were redone as episodes.
The Great Plan
The Challenge of the Masked Racer
The Most Dangerous Race
The Fire Race
Race for Revenge
The Desperate Desert Race
The Secret Engine
First appeared as comic stories before being rewritten for cartoons (usually by adding Spridle & Chim-Chim moments *rolls eyes*).
Sometimes a big change happened, for instance, Racer X doesn't appear in the comic version of The Fire Race, whereas he's important to the cartoon version.
A couple of stories didn't make the transition (or were so rewritten it's hard to tell). The Mach 5 has a couple of gadgets that never appeared in the cartoon (& vice versa) such as an automatic spare tire (that can also shoot off the old tire).
The Fire Race Speed Racer: Mach Go Go Go Volume 1
NANJAO. Rereading this I noticed that the country of Kapetepek could have been a palindrome had they spelled it either Kapetepak or Kepetepek.
Invitation From Kapetepek
Kabala, the world's greatest racer, is a member of Chief Zuma's tribe.
Seems like race car driving kinda goes against the primitive lifestyle the Chief wants his tribe to maintain.
The Night In Kapetepek
Chief Zuma offers his granddaughter, Silvana, to the winner of the race and then indicates that he wishes Speed to be the one Silvana marries.
Problem is he's bet his village on Kabala winning the race.
Who Is The True Champion?!
Speed, disguised as Kabala, says, "The young driver -- Speed Racer -- is the trunk, defeated!"
What he meant was 'is in the trunk'.
So what happened to Silvana? Given that she was rooting for Speed to win you'd think she might be here in the last part of The Fire Race story, but no.
I wonder if off-panel Trixie beat her up and tied her up somewhere. ;-)
The Secret Engine Speed Racer: Mach Go Go Go Volume 2
Tongue Blaggard wants Speed to give him some information so he ties Speed with chains connected to 5 different cars and if Speed doesn't tell him, Speed will be ripped apart.
Given that one of the chains is wrapped around Speed's throat I'd imagine that the risk of damaging Speed's throat could keep him from talking even if he wanted to, which is probably why most people who use this torture technique only tie up the arms and legs.
If Henry Ford felt this dream car was so valuable why give the secret to its location to his top designer instead of building it himself?
Lightfingers Klepto, Jr. knows the secret is in the engine so why not retrieve the plans before this?
The Secret Of The Golden Arrow - (Story title)
The Stolen New Element - (Chapter title)
The Racer repair shop is blown up damaging the Mach-5. Pops and Speed rebuild it and Speed wants to test the car. Pops says, "There's no time for that! You'll have to trust my design! Only three days to the race!"
Three days till the race, but no time to test it??? Are they transporting the Mach-5 to Mexico by zeppelin?
Spritle & Chim-Chim hide in the trunk of the Mach-5 before it is loaded on the transport plane. After the plane takes off, but apparently while the plane is still over Japan, Spritle & Chim-Chim are ejected from the plane with parachutes.
Now I've got nothing against the idea of tossing Spritle & Chim-Chim out of a plane ;-), but 1. The landing with a parachute is usually described as feeling like a ten-foot drop, which can be painful 2. Who knows where, or on what, they will actually land 3. How will they contact Mom to pick them up?
The Challenge Of Death!
King Hu is revealed to be... Racer X... which should have been painfully obvious to the reader, but one wonders how come no one in the story made the connection to the fact that King Hu drives the same type of car as Racer X? The only difference between the two cars is that King Hu has a Chinese symbol instead of the number 9.
Race To Fire Island
Every 20 years a land bridge forms between three islands and the nation of Liberaul uses a race to see who will be the next leader. The Crown Prince has been injured so they use a lookalike, Speed Racer, to race for him. He dresses like the crown prince and the Mach-5 is repainted to disguise it.
Which would be fine if the story actually stuck to it. At one point the paint comes off the Mach-5 and Speed decides to stop wearing the Crown Prince's clothes and dresses as himself. Sadly they didn't actually show us Speed crossing the finish line and people wondering what happened to the Crown Prince's "original car" or why he's suddenly dressing like Speed Racer.
Speed Racer Classics Volume Two
The cover shows Speed carrying a girl from some villains. This scene does not appear in the collection. One of the villains looks like the leader of the Three Roses Club, two others kind of/sort of look like President Pizzaroh and Chief Zuma from the Fire Race story, but Zuma wasn't a villain and the president didn't appear shirtless and firing a machine gun.
Comparisons between Translations
Classic = Speed Racer Classics Volume 2
Manga = Speed Racer: The Original Manga Volume 1
MGG1 = Speed Racer: Mach Go Go Go Volume 1
MGG2 = Speed Racer: Mach Go Go Go Volume 2
I'm not going to list every different bit of dialogue (especially since there's a lot), but I'll try to focus on major differences between the translations and presentations.
Most of the pages in the Classic flip the panels, but not the artwork, to accomodate American left to right reading habits. Also they have gray used as coloring that is missing from the MGG2 reprint.
The Black Test Car
Classic: Uses miler per hour
MGG2: Uses kilometers per hour
Classic: 1. Cousin Hank 2. Uncle Henry 3. Clive 4. Kondoru 5. unnamed henchman
MGG2: 1. Swifty Otto 2. Mr. Otto 3. Gread 4. Condor 5. Blackwater
Page 12
Classic: Removed Panel 5 of the original and replced it with Panel 7 & expanded Panel 8 to fill the space.
Page 23, Panel 8.
Classic: Shot of bushes.
MGG2: Close up of the Mach-5 & sabotaged tire.
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Classic: The Secret Of The Golden Auto
MGG2: The Secret Of The Golden Arrow
Classic: Missing pages 1, 2, 11, 12, 15, 33 & 38
Classic: 1. Plutonium 2. mysterious person 3. Delta 4. Dr. Danke
MGG2: 1. Protonium 2. King Hu 3. Belda 4. Professor Danke
The original story's Page 28 was only a half page so the Classic reprint added a panel of Speed driving.
The original story's Page 41 had a chapter title (The Challenge Of Death!) which was removed from the Classic reprint, so they added a panel of Speed driving.
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Manga: Return Of The Malanga
MGG1: Race For Revenge
Most of the Manga reprint has the panels, but not the art flipped.
Manga: 1. Malanga * 2. Brett North 3. Kelo Midorik 4. Three Roses 5. Melanga Yuzo 6. Tommy Yuzo 7. Uri Marker
MGG1: 1. Melange * 2. Mr. Black 3. Mr. Green 4. Three Roses Club 5. Flash Marker 6. Flash Marker, Jr. 7. Lily Marker
* Additionally the Manga reprint has Malanga as the first name of the driver whereas the MGG1 reprint has Melange as a name for the X3 car itself.
Manga: Missing pages 8, 9, 16, 30, 31, 32 & 33
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Manga: The Deadly Desert Race
MGG2: The Desperate Desert Race
Manga: 1. Soofki 2. Kimbe 3. Wilm 4. Tiger Shark 5. General Ghul 6. Joe Taisa 7. Palace of Death
MGG2: 1. Sandoland 2. Kim Jugger 3. Flathill Country 4. Black Tiger 5. General Cardonce 6. Ali Ben Schemer 7. Palace of Doom
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Manga: This Is A Racer's Soul!
MGG2: The True Spirit Of A Racer
Manga: 1. Lenny Duggary 2. unnamed 3. Eastern Alps Inferno race 4. Eastern Alps Grandstand
MGG2: 1. Zoomer Slick 2. Mr. Wiley 3. Trans-country race 4. Hawk's Ridge Circuit