Graphic Novel Review: Deadly Class Vol. 1: Reagan Youth by Rick Remender

Deadly Class Vol. 1: Reagan Youth
by Rick Remender

Goodreads
Kings Comics

It’s 1987. Marcus Lopez hates school. His grades suck. The jocks are hassling his friends. He can’t focus in class. But the jocks are the children of Joseph Stalin’s top assassin, the teachers are members of an ancient league of assassins, the class he’s failing is “Dismemberment 101,” and his crush 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. At Kings Dominion School for the Deadly Arts, the dagger in your back isn’t always metaphorical.

Collecting the first arc of the most critically acclaimed new series of 2014, by writer RICK REMENDER (BLACK SCIENCE, Fear Agent) and rising star artist WESLEY CRAIG (Batman). Experience the 1980s underground through the eyes of the world’s most damaged and dangerous teenagers.

Collects DEADLY CLASS #1-6.

Okay, so this is the first graphic novel I’ve ever read. Please don’t chuck anything at me! Oh wait. You can’t. AHA!

Anyway, so yes. That means I don’t really know how to review a graphic novel. Reading this was a very different experience for me. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVED IT. I’m totally into graphics novels now and I’m definitely going to be reading more. Reading graphic novels definitely takes a shorter time to read, there’s more going on and the story line develops faster.

In this novel’s case, there was A LOT I had to keep track of. There are tons of action sequences and there is a short span of time for you to get used to the characters and what’s going on around them.

Deadly Class is a very dark, moody, violent story that I highly enjoyed. The viciousness and stakes are amped up in this high school for psychopaths and assassins. It’s such an intriguing concept where this line between good and bad are very thin and very blurred. Marcus, himself is a very flawed character. He’s bad-tempered, easily influenced, gets high but you can’t deny a small sliver of good-heartedness that he has. His own adventures consists of a lot of fighting, a lot of injures and a lot misunderstandings. I laughed and hissed a lot while reading this. The banter is hilarious and every time Marcus is beat up, I cringe.

The ending is open enough that I want to read more but it isn’t urgent enough the it feels like an unfair cliffhanger. I’m definitely going to start reading more graphics novels and hopefully my review of them are better than this one.