Review by Frank Plowright

Death or Glory is Rick Remender’s constantly escalating action movie in comics form. It begins with everything as sweet as it always has been, then constantly accelerates to an ending where a massive body count indicates everything’s gone to hell.

The focus is Glory Owen, brought up by the man she knows as Red, living off the beaten track and within a small community that doesn’t earn a lot of cash, but enough to keep them housed and fed. However, the shortcomings of opting out of society pull sharply into focus when Red falls ill. He has no medical insurance, so where’s Glory going to raise the money needed for his treatment? The offbeat choice she makes informs the remainder of the story.

Remender cultivates a weirdness via eccentric characters, many of them killers, their strangeness having an internal logic consistent throughout in the way the Coen Brothers structure their films. The deliberately crude and provocative sits alongside a desire to see Glory do right by the man who raised her, and the skills she’s accumulated and the risks she’s willing to take offer some hope of eventual salvation. She exploits the community and their contacts, but discovers not everyone can be trusted as presumed.

Swiss artist Bengal is phenomenal all the way through, picking the right moments to go large and ensuring we can tell one person from another. He’s very good with movement, and the choreographing required for a nutty two chapter vehicle chase seen near the end is phenomenal, yet there’s never a moment of wondering how someone worked their way from one place to another. However, beware, as he relishes the exaggerated violence also, and the faint of heart may find their delicacies disturbed by some graphic scenes.

As events escalate Remender never loses control, and this is one hell of an adrenaline rush over eleven chapters. If preferred, it’s also available in two paperback volumes beginning with She’s Got You.