Cars #1
Written by Alan Porter and Mark Cooper
Art by Fabricio Grellet
Colors by Digikore Studios
Letters by Deron Bennett
Covers by Allen Gladfelter
BOOM! Studios
Release date: February 17, 2010

Cars #1 takes us to a post-apocalyptic future, where the cars have gained sentience and wiped out the human race. They now rule over a desert-like wasteland, participating in terrible cross country races and demolition derbies in order to crown King Engine.

Okay, so that’s not completely true.

The comic book adaptation of the multi-million dollars Pixar blockbuster, Cars #1 continues the story of Lightning McQueen, a race car in a cartoon world where there are only cars, no people. Of course, there’s no explanation as to why this world is the way it is, but that’s fine. In fact, the biggest weakness of the Cars comic book series, which actually begins with Issue #0, is that it assumes you are already familiar with the Cars film. If you’ve never seen the movie, it will take you some time to get familiar with the characters.

But as a weakness goes, it’s a pretty minor one. The story of the comic is very strong. It opens with the cars driving to participate in a charity race to raise money to fix broken cars (what would a car use for currency anyway? Oil cans? Lug nuts?), which then leads into the back story of the Hudson Hornet, a secondary character in the movie and a former race champion who now spends his time fixing broken cars.

The story traces Hudson Hornet’s past as a very proud and arrogant champion racer who suffered a terrible crash. He learned to fix cars in the hope that he could fix himself, but in the end began fixing other cars that still have the chance to race again. In the end, it is a classic redemption story about finding your real purpose in life.

Like most Pixar projects, the Alan Porter and Mark Cooper script is an excellent children’s story that doesn’t insult their intelligence by being overly preachy or obvious. The art, on the other hand, is a little childish and doesn’t do justice to the incredible 3D Pixar animation, but at least it still looks like the movie.

In the end, Cars #1 is an excellent tribute to Hollywood legend Paul Newman (who played the voice of Hudson Hornet in the movie) and a fine opening edition to the unfolding Pixar universe.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 AXELS