Glory is back and heading south in a hurry. She has her dad with her, along with a liver for his needed transplant. Just roll on down to Mexico, where healthcare is cheaper and all that. Oh, and try to avoid the many roadblocks and reprobates along the way.
This Death or Glory Trade (volume 2) from Image Comics reprints issues 6-11.
Written by Rick Remender, Death or Glory is a surprisingly deeply thought-out title. This isn’t just a pell-mell race toward salvation, with tractor-trailers bouncing all over hell’s half-acre. No, it’s a more intense, introspective study of character, motivation and THEN it’s a crazy-hellion-at-the-helm/Road Warriorlike drama. Glory, the young woman who has been battered and bruised, bartered, and targeted by every guy around. And the villains, their limbs akimbo, their judgment flawed by overdoses of self-pity and accelerants. A noxious band of brothers, organ harvesters, primed for extraction, and quick action. But their dialogues, their questions, their thoughts about their existence catapult the writing wayyy beyond the simple suspense thriller.
The artwork is wailin’, just pedal to the metal all the way. No matter the explosive, no matter the brain matter, it’s all spattered out by Bengal. The pairing of writer and artist here is synergistic, to be sure: the trucks, the tricks of the drawing, the tricks of the light. The hot colours, the bare shadows, the perspective, and creative analysis of drawing the characters in all angles, in all dangers. All will delight the reader, eager to help see Glory and her pops hit the accelerator, pronto. Bengal can capture the lunacy, the man who hates Nixon, the one-armed man on a mission, the roads with no maps. The desert highway, hot wind in our hair, the smell of burning fuel, our burning desire to see this mission through.
It’s worth picking up, this volume. The collection is solid, and while the fast pace and nonstop mayhem makes the pages go by in a hurry sometimes when we stop for fuel, the creative team is right there, in control, regulating the flow of the narrative, the standards as high as they go.
Image, Death Or Glory Trade (vol 2), $16.99 for 172 pages of content. Mature
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