It revolves around twin sisters. Alexis is the con artist, the liar, the slick talker always getting herself into trouble. Abby's the one who traditionally gets Alexis out of trouble, but they've been on the outs for an undetermined amount of time. Abby gets hospitalized, seemingly because Alexis told a lie she shouldn't have, right as Abby and her boyfriend/partner Ralph were going to try and win some big money in a cross-continental underground rally race. Think the big rally race in the Speed Racer movie, but with a distressing lack of beehive catapults. Abby was the navigator, had the whole trip planned out, but the only one who can read her handwriting. . .is Alexis. And since they're twins, in theory no one will realize it's not Abby.
Writers Oliver Ho and Daniel Reynolds have something there about two sisters trying to bridge a divide. This is complicated by the fact Abby's in a coma for 95% of the story. So most of the bridging if on Alexis' end. And she's mostly doing that by trying to win this thing with Abby's directions, while working with a guy she can't stand (who she slept with behind Abby's back.) And there's something about Alexis trying to use her knack for fast talk to an unselfish end, to the extent winning an illegal rally race because Ralph is deep in debt to people it doesn't pay to be in debt to.
But there's also an entire subplot about the guy Ralph is in debt to, some crime boss named Red Sweeney. The lie Alexis told involved him, but he keeps popping up as this guy who is, I guess behaving in an unseemly manner? He places large bets on Ralph and Alexis to win, daring the other bettors to risk parts of their territories, which seems to be a faux pas. He also starts hiring people to shoot up the other race teams. Things don't end well for him, but I'm not sure what the point is. Like all would-be great men, he tried to reach too far and got brought down? But that would include the Mongol Empire, and Alexis never talks about them being beaten back eventually.
As you might guess from the title, a lot about Genghis Khan in here. The girls' father told them they were descended from him, and so Alexis' internal narration is peppered with little anecdotes about Genghis Khan. Chris Peterson (artist) and Ruth Redmond (colorist) will add these lavender spectral Mongols to the panels. Sometimes on horseback, riding towards Alexis on alongside the car. Sometimes just looming in the room.
Redmond's colors are mostly muted (although it also feels like the printing smudges the art and colors sometimes) and Peterson's art is cartoony while keeping his characters looking realistic. I can see actual people looking like Alexis or Ralph or the rival team's wrestling fan navigator, even if the art is nothing close to photo-realistic. Point being, the big lavender ghosts tend to stand out, even if Redmond doesn't go for a bright shade, simply by virtue of being a decidedly unusual thing.
Mostly, they seem to pop up when Alexis is angry. Whether that's because Abby's hurt, or some guy she's trying to scam is giving her the runaround. Which is odd, because Alexis' anger seems uncontrolled and wild, while most of her little stories about Genghis Khan suggest he was thinking when he acted. Even the story about him killing his friend is framed as him having decided there's really no percentage in being a companion to this guy when he could be the boss instead. That's forethought, while Alexis' whole deal is she just shoots her mouth off without ever giving any thought to the potential consequences. Sure, say you stole a car from a notorious gangster, what could possibly go wrong?
Maybe the point is Alexis has been embracing the worst aspects - the anger, turning against people she cares about - and she's gradually coming of it. Ralph doesn't come out of it, he's able to justify any decision he made, or make it somebody else's fault. All that matters is winning. Same with Red Sweeney, same with wrestling fan rival navigator guy (his name's Clint, but did you actually care?) Clint's driver doesn't want to win that way, so they have a falling out and she doesn't get caught in the whirlwind of Alexis' revenge against Ralph.
That seems like a point about how you win being important, which is actually true to Genghis Khan's rules. His generals were supposed to win with the least loss of life among their men. Victory at the cost of major casualties were not victories. But that's not something Alexis ever mentions, it's something I remember from Jack Weatherford's book on Genghis Khan I read 7 years ago.
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