From day one this book has been Alex Toth's baby, but never more than this issue, his last on the series. From his design of the Hot Wheels characters for Saturday morning TV, to his pencils on the first cover and first three issues' main stories, to his cover and full art last issue, he slowly took on more of the production of the book. This issue he provides not only the cover and the full artwork on the main story, but also the script. During this time Toth was also drawing half-page color Sunday comics ads for the Hot Wheels toys, featuring drivers Dan Gurney and Don Prudhomme.
As comic book storytelling, I prefer last issue, which feels more like a standard comic than this one. This issue is more like a movie's storyboards. With the exception of one double panel on the final page, Toth tells this story in sixteen pages, consisting of eight equal-sized panels, separated by black borders. "The Case of the Curious Classic" is written, penciled and inked by Alex Toth. We begin in 1937 outside Metro City, a beautiful white Cord sedan making its way down the highway is suddenly being followed. The Cord increases its speed, leaving the highway for a narrow mountain road and the chase car follows. The front-wheel drive Cord begins to pull away in the tight turns, losing the chase car.
The Cord unfortunately runs out of gas and the driver cuts the ignition and the lights, deciding to drive by moonlight. but as he begins to lose speed, the driver decides to hide the car in the heavy roadside brush. Driving through the brush, the driver is not expecting the step incline he now finds himself sliding down. As the pursuit car passes it by unawares, the car ends its descent in a shallow pond that turs out to be a muddy bog. As the czar begins to sink, the driver escapes. later that night the driver, recently retired racketeer, bootlegger and smuggler "huff" Braden, flags down a ride and an hour later leaves the country in a small private plane.
Ten years pass and when a young farmer named Jess Mabry drains some bottom land for more crop acreage, he finds an old Cord. After advertisements in the paper do not result in an owner coming forward, he decides to keep it as a project. But farming was hard and he had no time, so the old mud-encrusted car sat in his old barn for 23 years.
Coming back from a father-son camping trip, Mike and Jack Wheeler stop at a local farm for some fresh bacon and eggs, only to notice the old Cord siting in the barn. Mike recognizes what it is and pays $1,000 for the car. Back at Wheeler Motors, the Hot Wheels gang starts to work on cleaning up the old classic, which catches the eyes of the local paper and TV station. The story is picked up by the national news and in a South American country one viewer is more that a little interested in the car. The next week is filled with Mike getting inquiring phone calls, one offering $5,000 for the car, but Mike rebuffs all offers.
A few weeks later the car is ready for a test drive and Mike and Jack take to an abandoned airfield to out the car though its paces. When they leave they are followed by an unknown car. Realizing they cannot outrun a new car on straight roads, Mike takes an old mountain road. Ironically, it is the same road the car took in its final drive in 1937. The front wheel drive Cord has no problem handling some tight turns, but the pursuing car is not so lucky and plunges over a cliff. The highway patrol find three dead men in the car, one of the being Garth Ernst, a high-level drug trafficker who came into power in the 1930s after "Huff" Braden disappeared.
When Mike gets a phone call one night offering $50,000 for the car, he becomes suspicious and calls the police. The next day Mike is back on TV saying that he will race the Cord in next month's Concours d'Elegance Classics Competition and will begin a full teardown of the Cord in the morning in preparation for the competition. That night when someone sneaks into Wheeler Motors to steal the car, the police are waiting. The thief is wounded in the shootout and eventually confesses to be "Huff" Braden. He admits the car is his, coated in 1/8th inch of pure gold and that there are 50 god ingots in the floor pan and two million in diamonds in the door and trunk panels. The car was his getaway plan and is worth more than four million in total.
Weeks later the Cord, stripped of gold and jewels, wins the competition.
The back up is "The Dangerous Days of Mickey Barnes!" by Len Wein, Ric Estrada and Dick Giordano. One day in the school parking lot, new kid Mickey Barnes literally runs into Jack Wheeler, the two almost coming to blows. Later in the day, they literally bump into one another in the school hallway, with only the interference of rich kid Dexter Carter stopping a fight form occurring. After school, Mickey is testing out his new Mustang at the Airport track when Dexter arrives and talks Mickey into racing his car in an upcoming race where Jack Wheeler should be the front runner.
The day of the race, Jack tries to warn Mickey that Dexter is bad news and will do anything to win. Mickey blows him off and the race begins. Jack takes an early lead, but Mickey is right behind him. When Mickey tries to pass Jack he notices that Jack's brake line is disconnected and unable to warn Jack, Mickey puts his car in front of Jack and uses it to slow Jack down, one bump at a time. Once stopped off the course, Jack notices that his brake line had been cut. Mickey explodes and heads over to Dexter and his goons. The goons pile onto Mickey, but Jack jumps into the fray and the two of them take care of Dexter's boys and a beautiful friendship is born.
We end with a two-page Hot Wheels text story, "What it Takes" with illustrations by Sal Amendola. This is Amendola's first work at DC and is uncredited, but Sal's unique style is impossible to miss. Amendola graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 1969 with a 3-year certificate. He eventually returned, with Robert McGinnis as his thesis adviser, to earn his MFA in illustration. Sal worked at a writer, penciller, inker, editor, letterer and colorist, mostly at DC but also at Marvel for a spell and at Archie decades later. He wrote and penciled the Batman story "Night of the Stalker!" in Detective Comics #439 which was dialogued by Steve Englehart, and is considered as one of the greatest Batman short stories ever.
Edited by Dick Giordano.
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