High school is the ultimate proving ground in new graphic novel
San Francisco, 1987. Marcus Lopez hates school. His grades suck. He has no money. The jocks are hassling his friends. He can't focus in class, thanks to his mind constantly drifting to the stunning girl in the front row and the Dag Nasty show he has tickets to.
But this is the world of DEADLY CLASS, the graphic novel series by Rick Remender (BLACK SCIENCE, Uncanny Avengers, Captain America) and Wes Craig (Batman). Here, in King’s Dominion High School for the Deadly Arts, jocks are the children of Joseph Stalin's top enforcer, the teachers are members of an ancient league of assassins, the class Marcus is failing is "Dismemberment 101”; and his crush, a member of the most notorious crime syndicate in Japan, has a double-digit body count.
Welcome to the most brutal high school on Earth, where the world’s top crime families send the next generation of assassins to be trained. Murder is an art. Killing is a craft. In DEADLY CLASS, the dagger in your back isn’t always metaphorical, nor is your fellow classmates' poison.
“The school is almost how you would imagine: it’s cult-ish and diverse because the cast is culled from all of the major criminal organizations and government spook installations around the globe,” said writer Remender in an interview at Newsarama. “It’s a strange, clandestine place where the kids have no idea what they’re really up against. But the students coming in see that the senior class is a lot smaller than the freshman class, so they begin to get an idea.” |
Praise for DEADLY CLASS:
“...a beautiful book that is a drastic tonal shift from Remender’s Black Science, but there’s a passion in both projects that shows the writer’s skill when he’s given free rein and paired with collaborators that are similarly unshackled.” –Oliver Sava, The A.V. Club
“Deadly Class is one kick-ass comic book. Amazing art, lettering, coloring and story. This is the whole package, folks.” –Benjamin Bailey, IGN
“This book is beautiful, dark, hopeful, violent, smart and a whole lot more things, and in two issues, it’s done more for me as a reader than most do in a year’s worth of issues. If you’re not reading Deadly Class, you are truly missing out.” –David Harper,Multiversity Comics
“...everything you want in a comic: original and captivating writing seamlessly mixed with breathtaking art peppered with some truly creative lettering.” –Torbin Chimners,Bloody Disgusting