Death or Glory Vol. 1: She's Got You
Rick Remender, writer; Bengal, artist
Image Comics, 2018

The titular Glory is a young woman who was raised off the grid, with a trucker convoy as her extended family. There is some talk about the open road as the last bastion of American freedom--and her father's dilemma as a cancer victim with no social security number or health insurance was certainly precipitated by his libertarian beliefs--but in the end this is primarily a road/heist action tale. Glory has three days to pull off four dangerous cross-country heists with mob killers, crooked cops, and a psycho ex-husband all out to stop her.

There is also a strong subplot about illegal immigration, with the immigrants being used as a macabre pool for replacement body parts. And a very colorful villain, a suave killer who uses liquid nitrogen as his murder weapon. So it's a bit of a crazy quilt. But once Glory begins to execute her plan the story quickly becomes an action movie: things go wrong, she tries something else, that goes wrong, etc.

Remender's script is beautifully illustrated by French artist Bengal. Bengal has been getting work in American comics recently, but Death or Glory has a distinctly European look. Which oddly makes the book look like a European view of the United States: you almost have to remind yourself that it was written by an American. At the close of this arc Glory and her trucker family are about to transport her father Red (along with a replacement liver) to Mexico for medical treatment. Which is where one group trying to stop Glory are from, so plenty of potential future conflict there.

The collection concludes with a large collection of alternate covers, as well as Bengal's concept art and designs.

 

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