Imagine the freedom of being a trucker, dedicated to living a 100 percent nomadic, off the grid-style existence. Traveling the open road, living job to job, no taxes and no mortgage, just an ever-changing view of the vast wonders of the American highway. But what happens when a loved one suddenly needs access to something like expensive medical care? Without insurance, or even a Social Security number, what are you willing to do to get the money? How dangerous of a person would you be willing to steal from to make sure your family member gets the care they need to survive?

Those are some of the questions that will drive Death or Glory, a new, creator-owned Image Comics series from writer Rick Remender and artist Bengal, announced Wednesday at Image Expo in Portland. When it launches this May, Death or Glory promises to offer plenty of high-speed action, heart and a look at the freedom on the American highway.

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The series revolves around Glory, a driver and grease monkey who grew up on the open road as part of her father's independent trucking convoy. When her dad suddenly becomes deathly ill, Glory is thrust into the dangerous world of organized crime, where she'll have to call on her personal cunning and her skills behind the wheel in order to survive and get the money needed to pay for her father’s life-saving operation. Along the way, she'll have to deal with colorful assassins, treacherous ex-lovers and technology that threatens to permanently end her family's way of life. CBR has the first interview with Remender on Death or Glory, which launches on May 2 with a 48-page first issue and a $4.99 cover price, along with a six-page preview of Bengal's art from the first issue.

Death or Glory #1 cover by Bengal

CBR: Death or Glory looks like it was inspired by freewheeling Rockabilly music and '70s-style big rig and car chase movies.

Rick Remender: A bit, yeah, though I’d say more classic country than rockabilly. Death or Glory is part Convoy, part The Professional, part Thelma and Louise. That led me down the rabbit hole of what I wanted to say about the mythology of the American highway and the last free people, the truckers. Add in Bengal’s love of drawing cars, and you’re off to the races.

This is a mix of all of that, and at the center we have Glory, this kind, honest character who was raised free, with integrity in an independent convoy, on the road, off the grid, and free of all modern bureaucracy. Glory is going to be forced to confront the world that she’d been raised to stay away from to keep her father alive.

Five thousand miles, four heists, three days, two psychopaths and one woman who’s had enough.

It's very grounded. There's a little bit of a heightened reality in that Glory is going to upset a number of different criminal organizations, and colorful shady figures end up in pursuit.

We're also looking at the effect the dying of the trucking industry, all the jobs self-driving cars will make redundant, it’s effect on her family and friends. Human resistance against the technology that's eating up so many of our jobs.

When we first meet her, will Glory have any sort of experience in dealing with that corrupting blend of corporate greed and technology?

Glory is a very kind and honest character, and she's been raised wonderfully free of all these things that are now starting to encroach upon her and her family's way of life and livelihood. She’s never had a Social Security number, or even a bank account for that matter.

Glory’s world is crumbling in more ways than one. I really romanticize the idea of a convoy, this band of brothers and sisters, the last free people in the country, and now their way of life and that piece of the American mythology of the highway is in jeopardy.

Death or Glory #1 cover B by Duncan Fegredo

When people hear someone's been living off the grid, they often think that person is incredibly naive, or a paranoid and angry person with a large stockpile of weapons. It sounds like Glory is neither of those personality types.

In this case, “off the grid” is just pure freedom. They avoid the traps of modern society. They believe that to be pulled into the grid just erodes your humanity and makes you a slave to credit card companies and mortgages, so they live completely free, job-to-job, no other entanglements. This convoy that her father runs provides work, food and sustenance, but they don't want big houses. They don't want shiny things. They don't want credit cards or stocks, or bank accounts. It's a cash society, completely unencumbered from the things that tie all the rest of us down and drive us.

For them, life is about living this free, almost nomadic existence the way humans did for tens of thousands of years prior to the development of society and this slow march towards what we have today: an almost indentured servitude to the giant companies that control us with debt and all the shit we need that we don’t really need.

There is a downside to their freedom; no Social Security, no medical insurance, forged drivers licenses, and living hand to mouth means that when her father needs a liver replacement, they have no means to pay for that.

It's diagnosed late, so it's a procedure that needs to happen soon, or she's going to lose her dad. Of course, going through the bureaucracy of getting him medical insurance or even access is nearly impossible because they're basically ghosts. They do not exist. So Glory undertakes a terrible risk to acquire the funds to pay for her father's procedure.

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What will Glory's exploits to save her father be like? Is this an over-the-top action/crime story?

Dire, fast-paced chases across the Western United States with a clock. Glory is not the lady from the Resident Evil movies. She’s not a katana-wielding, back-flipping, ass-kicker. She's a trucker, a mechanic and a race car driver. She's just a grease monkey who was raised in Yuma, Arizona. She's never shot anybody, never held a gun before, never been in a fight.

So many action heroes are completely unaffected by the action itself because they're tough-as-nails ass-kickers types. That's not Glory. She's a regular girl who has a short amount of time to do something extraordinarily dangerous in order to save her father, and she's never done anything like this before.

She's a non-violent person, so even just lifting a gun is strange to her. She's lived her life as a pacifist who enjoys being outdoors and racing cars and motorcycles. She's not prepared for what's coming.

Since Glory's specialty is driving trucks and racing vehicles, I'm guessing a lot of the action will involve things like car chases. And until recently with books like All-New Ghost Rider and your own Tokyo Ghost, I never really considered how fun those types of sequences can be in comic book form.

Anything can be well done in comics. Action films are storyboarded prior to being filmed, and those storyboards need to have a clear, concise flow of action to them that informs the filmmakers on how to actually film that action. As somebody who has spent a lot of time as a storyboard artist, one of my goals in comic books was to open things up to allow for storyboarded action sequences. It was something we did in Tokyo Ghost and some of the other issues where we tried to capture that same energy.

Ultimately, it comes down to the artist, and Bengal loves drawing cars. When I hung out with him and Sean Murphy in Leeds a couple of years ago they had a big conversation about how they were fans of drawing cool looking cars. They're uniquely positioned to do things like what we have planned for Death or Glory and what Sean did in Tokyo Ghost.

Not all artists like to draw cars. [Laughs] It really is a unique thing, and you've seen some of the art for Death or Glory. You look at the covers, the mechanic shop, and other scenes, and you can see the love Bengal dumps into them. That love is there because he likes to draw those things.

Death or Glory #1 has a huge chase sequence. So if you're not in love with drawing that stuff, you probably won't get a great reaction. [Laughs] What Bengal has done though is a very cinematic experience. I think Death or Glory #1 is very unique in the way that it reads because of his love of that stuff.

Death or Glory #1 cover C by James Harren and Moreno Dinisio

Another element he seems to have a knack and affinity for is female lead characters.

For sure. Anything he draws is gorgeous. His style is very appealing. His women are human, cute and realistic. They're not cheesecake. If you look at the design of Glory, she's a real person. She's not a caricature. Her proportions and her face are beautiful but human, she’s very real.

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Who are some of the other characters you and Bengal will introduce us to?

Her ex-husband is an interesting character. He's used the family convoy for illicit purposes, so he becomes an interesting foil. He's our door to a lot of the crime elements that Glory finds herself surrounded by. He's a guy who decided that he did want the big house, money and all of the material things that Glory didn't care about. The way he got them was to use this pure and good thing, the convoy her father had started, to conduct some illegal business.

He's in cahoots with a very frightening crime organization on the east coast. Through that organization, we're going to meet a few very interesting assassins. There's going to be a bounty that's taken out on Glory once she's pulled into this world, so we'll have a lot of bounty hunters, too. We'll also have the classic, corrupt sheriff who is after her.

The title, Death or Glory, refers to a lot of people who are given the task of bringing this women in or die trying. So the heightened reality stuff comes in the form of all the colorful and interesting people out to kill her. Tonally, this is definitely a high speed '70s style crime caper.

I have 12 issues outlined. We're doing some incredibly cool, visual stuff, and Bengal is producing the pages of his life, so we might want to extend some of that stuff out. There's just no way to know, but I know it will be at least 12 issues right now, with a good potential for more.

This book will be a departure in a number of ways from what I have been doing, but ultimately the big thing here is we get to expose a large portion of our American audience to Bengal doing work that he co-owns. I’m dumping my whole ass into this, but really, it doesn't matter what I write. If Bengal is drawing it, the book is going to be worth the price of admission. He's a brilliant scientist of magic, and I think that's obvious to anyone who checks out the preview art in this article.

Death or Glory #1 is scheduled for release on May 2 from Image Comics. Keep reading for a six-page preview of the issue!

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Solicitation text:

Meet Glory, raised off the grid in a convoy amid truckers—the last men and woman fighting for true freedom on the American open road. Now, in order to pay for her beloved dying Father’s surgery, 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.

New York Times bestselling author RICK REMENDER teams up with legendary French superstar BENGAL to bring you a high-speed chase across the American West that examines our dwindling freedoms and the price paid by those who fight for an untethered life.