International Affairs: Lone Racer

Next up in our look into the comics from around the globe is the latest import by Nicolas Mahler, an Austrian cartoonist. Top Shelf, another of the best publishers in bringing foreign works to the U.S., put out Mahler’s slim book Lone Racer, a silly little racing romp. Very similar to another of Top Shelf’s best books of last year, The Tales of Woodsman Pete, Lone Racer leans far toward the whimsical side while packing a few emotional punches.

Lone Racer and Woodsman Pete are actually very similar books. Both are short, about 90 pages, and smallish in shape, about half the size of a standard comic book. Lone Racer has more of a direct narrative, though, telling a story that strangely mirrors Talladega Nights (even down to the ending, although Lone Racer has no references to little baby Jesus). In short, the main character, a race car driver, has fallen on hard times and lost his will to win. The book tells of his sudden decision to reclaim a last piece of glory.

Mahler’s style is bare to the point of childish. Characters have strangely proportioned bodies, perspective is always off kilter, there’s very little shading, all objects (especially cars) are drawn with a definite remove from reality and the panels are all quite simple. The only color is orange, used for Lone Racer’s uniform and for highlights throughout. While the style definitely isn’t for everyone, it’s certainly fresh and fits the story well enough that, after a couple pages of acclimation, I had no problem with it. By the end, I actually preferred the two dimensional shapes that almost seemed to swim on the page.

Mahler treats his characters with the same frivolity of his artwork, so that it’s not so much that you become attached to them, but you can be entertained by them. Lone Racer and his friends are all has-beens, the dregs of the racing world. They do little but drink too much and wallow in their failures, only occasionally leaping into some cockamamie scheme. The buddy Rubber especially brings a few laughs — he’s drawn with tread marks across his face, the scar of a racing accident. Another funny, light moment is the inclusion of a training montage that serves as better parody than the montage sequence of Team America.

Like a lot of foreign books, Lone Racer reflects how all cultures have the same stereotypical elements in popular fiction, the same plot lines (old hero triumphs again!) and the same worship of sports. What’s always the most interesting is to see how people from other cultures choose to take those tired setups and turn them into something fresh. In Austria, a multi-leveled message comes across, that victory can be hollow, that man can take control of his destiny, and that even greater, randomizing forces are always at play.