I’m fairly convinced that Image Comics’ DEADLY CLASS was an X-MEN pitch that got rejected. This is all speculation on my part, but the theory doesn’t matter in the long run, because DEADLY CLASS would have been neutered if it had been given a green light at Marvel. Instead, what we get is creator-owned chaos that fully embodies the rebellious spirit it focuses on.

Let your eyes pop from the unhinged, vibrant art of series artist Wes Craig and read on…

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From Image Comics:

It’s 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 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, 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. At King’s Dominion High School for the Deadly Arts, the dagger in your back isn’t always metaphorical, nor is your fellow classmates’ poison. Join writer RICK REMENDER with rising star WESLEY CRAIG (Batman) and legendary colorist LEE LOUGHRIDGE (Fear Agent) to reminisce about the mid-1980s underground through the eyes of the most damaged and dangerous teenagers on Earth.

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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 King’s Dominion High School for the Deadly Arts, the dagger in your back isn’t always metaphorical, nor is your fellow classmates’ poison. Join writer RICK REMENDER with rising star WESLEY CRAIG (Batman) and legendary colorist LEE LOUGHRIDGE (Fear Agent) to reminisce about the mid-1980s underground through the eyes of the most damaged and dangerous teenagers on Earth.

Join writer RICK REMENDER with rising star WESLEY CRAIG (Batman) and legendary colorist LEE LOUGHRIDGE (Fear Agent) to reminisce about the mid-1980s underground through the eyes of the most damaged and dangerous teenagers on Earth.

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DEADLY CLASS comes to us courtesy of Rick Remender and Wes Craig. If you’ve been following me on Twitter at all then you’ll know that I tend to fist pump for writer Rick Remender’s work pretty regularly. His UNCANNY X-FORCE slipped me right back into what it felt like to read X-Men as a teenager — that feeling of head-spinning unpredictability that always made you look forward to next month’s issue. The writer’s work on CAPTAIN AMERICA and UNCANNY AVENGERS continued to give me that sense of peril. In particular, Remender invited readers to re-examine what they loved about their favorite Marvel characters and then pureed those nostalgic crutches at high speeds to make it all lively and dangerous again. With DEADLY CLASS, he continues to put the reader on high alert. And with a cast of characters who are largely teen-aged, it allows readers to re-live the heightened reality of adolescence. Everything feels big, everything feels important — hatred is on the same plane as homicidal rage and any sexual encounter must equatew to the love of your life. So imagine what happens when you give those feelings weapons.

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This book is my first official introduction to artist Wes Craig. And with each page of each issue it became obvious that he’s one of my all-time favorite comic artists. His style reminds me a bit of Michael Avon Oeming (POWERS, ALEISTER & ADOLF) and Eduardo Risso (100 BULLETS). Still, to compare those three talents to each other does a huge disservice to all three men. Each is in a class of their own, and Craig is here on DEADLY CLASS to match the emotional intensity of the subject matter. The artist shifts perspectives to accelerate action sequences. He turns entire pages into mind-expanding hallucinations! He tilts reality for impactful, page-turning shocks.

Basically, Wes Craig knows what your eyeballs need. Wes Craig knows what your eyeballs deserve.

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More from Image:

Craig’s art, with colors by Lee Loughridge and Jordan Boyd, is exceptional. He can draw teens who are gangly, bulky, slim, round, and everything in-between. His action scenes are incredibly dynamic, particularly when he chops a single moment up into several panels, or varies his art style to show how the characters are feeling or want to be perceived. Remender & Craig together show that comics is a synthesis of writing and art, not one in the service of the other. When things get serious, bodies start dropping and moods begin falling. When characters drop into despair, you can see it in Craig’s line. His facial expressions are good, we’re all in agreement there, but when you see a character’s face ringed by jagged shadows or realize how much emotion Craig is able to wring out of a face that’s got two dots for eyes, one dot for a nose, and a screaming mouth, you’ll understand exactly what I mean. 

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Going through my oversized hardcover of DEADLY CLASS Book 1, I found myself savoring each issue and each page — staring at lines of art and dialogue completely mesmerized. And the amazing thing is…the creative team has been providing readers with this stimulus for 32 issues (and counting).

DEADLY CLASS is available from Image Comics. You can grab it digitally at their store, but you really need to hold this in your hands every month. So, find a comic shop and get the collected editions, because this is how comic books are supposed to feel.