Title: Death or Glory #1
Writer: Rick Remender
Artist(s): Bengal and Rus Wooten
Publisher: Image Comics
Release: May 2, 2018
Price: $4.99
“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 bring her in or die trying.”
Death or Glory #1 does a fantastic job of grabbing your attention with that awesome cover. There’s something about the coloring work that just makes it pop off the shelf, demanding that you read it. And thankfully, Death or Glory #1 does a pretty great job creating something new and exciting in a world of ever-brooding superheros. Image comics might have a winner on their hands if they can continue the pace of this opening gambit.
The book tells the story of Glory Owen. Raised off the grid in a community that seems to shun the more capitalistic society that surrounds it. But it’s this isolation that forces her to come to terms with some hard choices when her mentor and father figure needs a medical procedure that they can’t afford. It’s this struggle that puts her into the position of having to make some choices that will change her world, and the world of everyone in her life, in very dramatic ways.
Rick Remender crafts a tale of fast cars and quick triggers in a world that isn’t all that removed from one we can see happening. Since this is issue one we get an extended comic which is great, as it allows the story time to build on the characters we will be getting to know. Glory is a well developed character that is doing some pretty terrible things by using some twisted logic to justify it all.
The art is what really helps to keep everything together as Remender likes to pull from his bag of weird dialogue choices. The coloring is also superb as it really helps set the emotional tone that we get in this first issue. There are a number of scenes where the art tells us everything that we need to know, giving us hints at what Glory is going through without explaining it in forced dialogue.
Death or Glory #1 moves along at a brisk pace and never gets lost placing too much focus on any one aspect of the story. There is a lot going on here, but the pieces are laid out in a nice way that everything connects in both subtle and overt ways. It gives us just enough to connect the dots in the grander story .
And then there’s the action which is really quite solid. Glory and her muscle car look fantastic, and seeing them in action was a pleasure. But what I really enjoy is that the book is about Glory and not the car. It’s simply a tool instead of some forced character with magical properties like is so many other tales of this nature.
Glory is no hero and this becomes clear as the book progresses and we see that everything she is doing is both new a foreign. What seems like will develop into our main antagonist even notes this in the small encounter the pair have in the book.
Even after making her choice she is in a constant struggle with the actions she is taking. And this is all brought to a head in the book climax that places Glory is a position well outside of anything she could have planned or imagined.
At the end of the day Death or Glory #1 is a really great start to a story that could be a lot deeper than initially let on. Glory’s look and her slick ride are enough to draw the reader, but the story and where it’s heading is enough to keep you coming back for more.
Final Score:
4/5
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