Deadly Class #1-35
Published by: Image – 2014
Written by: Rick Remender
Illustrated by: Wes Craig
Deadly Class—an ongoing monthly series published by Image Comics, begun in 2004—takes a cliché premise off the beaten path to unexpectedly intriguing results.
The first issue begins pleasingly with an interesting take on what it’s like to be a homeless adolescent—introducing the protagonist, Marcus, an orphaned teenager alternately reminiscing about a tragic past and the blissful homelife his parents’ deaths robbed him of—one that is original enough in its execution—in both art and writing—that the last few pages come as a disappointing surprise: that same down-to-earth narrative, from that point on, is going to be about an underground school for training assassins.
The preceding twenty-or-so pages of the issue, however, are good enough that sticking around through issue two is warranted, and issue two is good enough to warrant buying issue three, and so on and so forth until you’ve read thirty-something issues and look forward each month to the next.
What could’ve easily been a cliché, overused, rehashed, shallow premise—think Wanted meets Vampire Academy—is instead treated as an inventive and insightful exploration not of what defines assassins, but, rather, what defines high-schoolers. By placing his characters into a school for assassins, the writer, Rick Remender, elevates the mundane minutiae of high-school life that feels, at the time, to be life-or-death drama, into literal life-or-death situations—with knives, swords, and guns complicating romantic relationships and friendships, and a fair share of social climbing, bullying, and betrayals.
Some of the most interesting stories in the series, so far, have little to do with becoming an assassin and, instead, take place outside of the school—featuring scenes of teenagers doing an irresponsible amount of drugs at a concert and later in a hotel after ditching school to go on a road trip to Las Vegas, smoking pot in a dorm room, discussing then-contemporary music and its role in defining the culture of personal identity, and working part-time at a comic-book store—not things you would expect from a story about future world-class assassins, though these events are often interrupted or bookended by violence.
Cliques form and rival each other for supremacy within the halls of the school, but, again, the stakes are far higher than mere popularity, as killing fellow students is sometimes even encouraged by the faculty—to separate the wheat from the chaff—especially during finals, when the students hunt each other, seeking to both survive and rack-up the most kills, while settling old scores.
The characters are treated as either sympathetic or demonized—the protagonists versus the antagonists—with the protagonists more often inhabiting a moral and ethical grey-area, while the antagonists—generally—are more firmly in the “black” on the scale of black-and-white moral absolutism, and each character is both complex and unique in their personality type and are thus far from interchangeable.
The series takes place in the 1980s and thus there are goths, metal-heads, mods, punks, preps, nerds, and jocks—defined both by dress and musical preference—and the characters are a pastiche of races, ethnicities, and countries of origin. The pasts and motivations of these future assassins are each unique and interesting—how they each ended up in the school and why they stay—providing insight and depth to the characters. Some characters are the progeny of gang, or mafia, leaders seeking to live up to expectations, or take over their families’ respective legacies, while others were simply in the wrong (or right) place at the wrong (or right) time (depending on vantage).
The art in Deadly Class—by Wes Craig—is a selling point. It is not particularly realistic, but its stylization is not merely cartoonish; it is both visually appealing and compliments the writing—conveying emotion and action equally well—in a way not common from a writer/artist duo. The synergy calls to mind the enviable collaborations of Brian Azzarello (writer) and Eduardo Risso (artist) on the crime-noir comics 100 Bullets and Jonny Double.
Deadly Class is definitely a “mature audiences only” comic. One might understandably be concerned about the effects on impressionable youths of a story about high-schoolers committing violent acts against one another—one reason it is only suitable reading material for the mature—however, the stories are relatable to anyone whom has gone through the American public-school system—despite the fact they are clearly exaggerated to extremes which act as symbols, and allegories, for much more mundane, real-world, experiences.
Though there are numerous murders and dismemberings, the violence is not milked for gruesome effect, but is, at the same time, used for dramatic effect. The violence is not glamorized, but neither is it cautionary nor does it comment upon or criticize real-world violence as a social ill. The comic exists in a world with its own moral code—one unique to assassins that differs from that of the rest of the real world: it’s bad people killing bad people. The quality of the writing and the art make the world believable and—despite its violence and premise—palatable as more sophisticated than simply resorting to violence for the sake of sensationalism.
I cannot recall any nudity, though there may be some sex.
Fans of Deadly Class should definitely check out the aforementioned works by Azzarello and Risso—and vice-versa—though, the four-issue Jonny Double might be a more accessible point of entry for a new reader due to 100 Bullets spanning one-hundred issues.
Powers, by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming, should likewise appeal to fans of Deadly Class. Originally published by Image, before being picked up by Marvel’s creator-owned imprint, Icon, Powers is, essentially, a police procedural that follows the exploits of two homicide detectives whom exclusively work cases involving super-powered victims and perpetrators. The early issues focus more on the crime and detective-work than the costumes and superhuman abilities. At the time it debuted, Powers was a unique premise that has since lost some of its uniqueness but is still a compelling, original, and rewarding read.
Brian Bigelow
September 1, 2018
