BY Matt Vroom (@themattvroom)

Freeway Fighter #3, is part of an ongoing comic book series published by Titan Comics. It was written by Ian Livingstone and Andi Ewington, with art done by Simon Coleby and Len O’Grady. It was published on July 12, 2017, and is now available on Comixology. (And possibly your local comic book shop.)

Like a lot of Titan’s properties, Freeway Fighter is based on a critically acclaimed source. Instead of an award-winning novel (see last week’s review of the Forever War #5,) it’s based on a single-player role-playing gamebook of the same name. The gamebook was the 13^th in the original run of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone’s Fighting Fantasy series. Which saw publication in 1985 by Puffin Books. It was then re-released by Wizard Books in 2005 as the 23^rd in that more modern series.

A quick look at Wikipedia would prove all that I have said so far to be true.

Here is the synopsis of the story from Titan Comics:

The year is 2024: eighteen months after an unknown virus wiped-out over eighty-five percent of the world’s population.

Former I-400 Driver, Bella De La Rosa, is one of the remaining fifteen percent – living every day as if it were her last. Having set out for the township of New Hope, Bella and her travelling companion Ryan find themselves caught in a trap set by the cruel, post-apocalyptic highwayman known simply as the Animal, and hunted by his vicious Doom Dogs.

This book did not have a lot of dialogue. As I began reading this issue I scratched my head a little bit as all I saw was a bunch of gasoline guzzling cars chasing each other with welded on battle bumpers. Kind of like carnival bumper cars on something a little stronger than steroids.

However, my confusion subsided as I started picking up the contextual clues left by Coleby and O’Grady. Some of my favorites moments in the book were directly related to the art. It was grungy, dirty, and had a “Mad Max” vibe to it.

The dialogue in the latter half of the book cleared up the rest of my confusion, and I understood a little more about the main protagonists’ motivations for going to New Hope, presumably the last safe haven for the good survivors. I also discovered that the next time I’m stuck in a post-apocalyptic landscape to not piss off a man in a luchadore mask in front of his groupies. Even if I was the only guy in town who knew had to fix his car.

All of the vehicles look great in this book. Sometimes they looked good enough to pop out of the page. The characters looked a little wooden in some of the positions they were in, but that never did distract me from the non-stop action that was this issue.

If you are into Mad Max: Fury Road, and are looking for a comic that is along those lines, then you’ll get that with this series.

I give this comic a 7 out of 10 capes. While I liked the action, and the vehicles, it lacked depth and story. I believe that my impression is this way because I have not yet read issues one and two, but I promise when I do that I will give my thoughts on the entire series as a whole. I would recommend this title still to anyone who is looking for that adrenaline pumping comic book experience.

Matt Vroom – Co-host, Content Creator, and Comic Reviewer for SuperHeroSpeak.com.

Follow Matt on Twitter: @themattvroom

See Matt’s Comic Book Work: www.vroomation.com

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