The World of Cars: The Rookie #1 (of 4) (Boom! – Porter / Carreres)
Cars fans, start your engines! Before the big Dinoco 400 race, rookie sensation Lightning McQueen is interviewed by Darrel Cartrip. Full of braggadocio, McQueen reveals his scrappy origins as “Bulldozer” McQueen–a local short track racer who dreams of the big time…and recklessly plows his way through the competition to get there!
Another great addition to the Boom! kids line. Pixar made a wise decision when picking the creative teams over at Boom! to flesh out a comic line representing their movie properties. The art and writing are both dead on.
This is more or less “The origin of Lightning McQueen” and a in-continuity prequel to Cars. For any fans of the film, young or old, this might be considered required reading!
We meet McQueen as he is tearing up the track, and competitors, on a backwater circuit. We see how he meets Mac and how this meeting leads up to him getting his chance in th big leagues. This is a fun story, but from his narrative the reader sees that McQueen has some incredible raw talent but he doesn’t care much about others and he can’t really see other car’s points of view. That is the only thing that might not make this a totally lovable book for the pre-teen, McQueen is exactly where he started at the beginning of the movie, a selfish greedy individual with his heart set only on winning. Those qualities don’t make make a hero that we want to cheer on. Now, given we know where it goes, most readers (especially the young ones) will over-look this and absolutely adore this excellent property adaptation.
Between the Incredibles, the Muppets and this, Boom! Kids is batting 3 for 3!
Issue grade: A
