Race Wars - Paperback

by Brad Gosse (Author)

Race Wars... The Cars Have Smiles. The Stakes Are High. Nothing About This Is What The Title Suggests.

Today is the day of the very big race. All of the cars have a smile on their face. The race is on. The cars are competing. The race is, specifically, a car race: vehicles on a track, competing for position, with the stakes of automotive competition at the highest level this particular illustrated scenario has to offer. This book is about those cars. It is about that race. The title is about a race between cars. The title describes what is happening in every single panel of this book. Nothing else is happening. This is a car race. The cars are smiling. The race is the war. The war is between cars.

This adult parody book operates on a bait-and-switch premise in which the title sets an expectation and the content completely redirects that expectation toward automotive competition, and the humor is in the gap between the two things and the reader's experience of that gap being bridged by a cartoon car with a smile. The cars are racing. The race is the whole book. The title has been selected with awareness of all of this. Welcome to the race. May the fastest car win.

• Anyone who opened a book called Race Wars and found themselves at a cartoon car race and experienced that as either relief or disappointment
• Fans of bait-and-switch humor that commits completely to the redirect and never acknowledges the setup
• People who appreciate that certain titles produce a reaction and the book then does something entirely different with the reaction
• Gift-givers who want to hand someone something with a title that requires a moment and then provide the moment

• People who wanted what the title sounds like it describes and will feel specifically disappointed by the car race
• Anyone who bought a book about a car race looking for cartoon car content and then googled the title to understand what happened
• Readers who require their titles to be completely straightforward descriptions of the content without any additional layer
• Race car drivers who find that the title creates promotional challenges they didn't sign up for

• White elephant exchanges where reading the title aloud produces a reaction and then opening it produces a different one
• Gag gifts for the friend who has strong opinions about a lot of things and will process this book in multiple ways
• Anyone who enjoys the specific comedy of expectations being set and then redirected with complete commitment
• Racing fans who also have a sense of humor about what the phrase "race wars" contains before the cars come out

The cars are smiling. The race is on. There are stakes. There is competition. There is automotive drama at the highest level this particular illustrated format can achieve. The title is accurate. The content is what the title describes. The experience of reading this book begins before the book is opened, in the moment of reading the title and processing the title, and the book then delivers the car race it promised while being aware of everything the title produced before the cover was lifted.

Buy it for someone who will have the full experience of the title before the book is opened. Buy it for someone who loves cars and will be confused by the initial reaction and then delighted by the content. Buy it for someone who needs the laugh that comes from something working exactly as expected and not at all as expected simultaneously. The cars are racing. Everyone is smiling. It's race day. The race is the whole thing.