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3.95 AVERAGE
3.95 AVERAGE
I’m just not interested in this story anymore. Feels like it should’ve ended awhile ago and is just being milked now. Smh
This is a collective review for Deadly Class, Vols. 1-10. There are some spoilers ahead.
Deadly Class, written by Rick Remender and illustrated by Wes Craig, is the story of a wayward youth in the late 1980s who finds himself in a private academy where the children of extremely powerful people are trained in the arts of assassination. There, he learns the tradecraft of murder, but also must navigate the corridors of teenage angst, shifting alliances, and more as he tries to survive long enough to challenge the school itself - and by proxy, all of the corrupt institutions that make the world such an awful place.
Now, lest you be tricked into thinking that this is going to be any fun, be advised that it isn't. Remender is at his Remender-iest here (a feat he won't top until he launches his Scumbag series a few years later), which means that what begins as an intriguing, edgy concept has more than run its course by the end of Volume 1. By the end of Volume 4, we get a pretty interesting surprise ending that suggests a new direction for the series, but no, it's all undone, and it's all just more of the same.
And that same we get so much more of is just an endless conveyor belt of half-assed world-building, slapdash plotting, threadbare character development, self-important sermonizing about pop-culture, off-target edgelord references, and bathroom jokes a-go-go (somewhere in the middle of this, we get a three-page long fart joke). Remender opens the first volume by opening up about what a rough adolescence he had in Phoenix, where he saw one friend shot in the head, another die from a heroin overdose, and personally experienced two group beatdowns. One imagines that given the premise of this story - which involves children murdering each other - that he tells us about the terrible things he witnessed as a way of gaining social permission to express things much worse than that narratively for the sake of cheap entertainment.
It seems strange therapy, then for him to channel those experiences the way that he does in this story, where he glamorizes all of those things as throwaway storytelling disguised as some kind of meta-commentary about what it was like to become a teenage cynic in the 1980s. Either Remender was lying about his teenage trauma, or he decided to mine it in the most crass and exploitative manner imaginable. One doesn't get the sense that he was lying.
That this series' non-stop orgy of sex, drug use, murder, depravity and fecal expulsion all occurs to children under the age of 16 is perhaps its most unsettling aspect. Sure, we have seen kids-killing-kids stories elsewhere (Battle Royale and The Hunger Games being two notable examples). But in those series, the authors at least try to make such violence an inherently horrifying state of affairs. Remender never puts in that work here, apart from a little half-hearted exposition before he sets up yet another scene of teenage mayhem. It's like he tried to turn Kids into a John Woo movie, with predictably abhorrent results.
Deadly Class is not condemned inherently by its problematic subject material. Were this story used to make a genuine examination about some aspect of humanity, we could look past this story's many, many excesses. Hell, were this story simply well-told, we could give it a lot of leeway. But especially in the back half of this, it's clear Remender doesn't really know how to land the plane. Between weird jumps back in forth in time, unexplainable shifts in character motivations that are later hand-waved away, the suggestion that sometimes it's heroic to start a school shooting, and an exceedingly lame copout of an ending that involves simply killing everyone in an earthquake, Deadly Class becomes such a narrative disaster that no matter how cool we might have thought this was when it first began, there's nothing left to love about it now, no matter how badly one might want to.
But that's not the worst of it. The worst of it is that it's clear that Remender (and Craig, who enables him) are simply getting off on being transgressive. You can do that as an artist, of course, provided there's a point to the transgression. Here, though, it's not about any of the things Remender says it is, because it's all just so hollow and cynical and poorly formed. Whatever there is supposed to be in Deadly Class never feels like more than one of those stupid, half-formed philosophical rants one goes on while out of their mind in the seedy back room of a smoke-stained kegger. And while you can forgive some dumb teenager for thinking they're onto something profound in those moments, Remender is old enough, and experienced enough, to know better. That's what makes this thing feel like such hot, angry garbage. None of it is by accident. And none of it is for any purpose other than to keep Remender's fingers busy while he makes sure somebody, anybody picks up the screen rights for this.
That SyFy actually did kind of proves the ultra-cynical worldview of this thing, but actually being the problem you're decrying is just being more of the problem. Somewhere within this is a deep sense of self-loathing beyond the main character's unconvincing diatribes. And if that's what's really driving Remender here, then this series is an extended cry for help. If it's not, then it's an extended act of public defecation that isn't art, no matter what Remender and Craig manage to scrawl with it.
Deadly Class, written by Rick Remender and illustrated by Wes Craig, is the story of a wayward youth in the late 1980s who finds himself in a private academy where the children of extremely powerful people are trained in the arts of assassination. There, he learns the tradecraft of murder, but also must navigate the corridors of teenage angst, shifting alliances, and more as he tries to survive long enough to challenge the school itself - and by proxy, all of the corrupt institutions that make the world such an awful place.
Now, lest you be tricked into thinking that this is going to be any fun, be advised that it isn't. Remender is at his Remender-iest here (a feat he won't top until he launches his Scumbag series a few years later), which means that what begins as an intriguing, edgy concept has more than run its course by the end of Volume 1. By the end of Volume 4, we get a pretty interesting surprise ending that suggests a new direction for the series, but no, it's all undone, and it's all just more of the same.
And that same we get so much more of is just an endless conveyor belt of half-assed world-building, slapdash plotting, threadbare character development, self-important sermonizing about pop-culture, off-target edgelord references, and bathroom jokes a-go-go (somewhere in the middle of this, we get a three-page long fart joke). Remender opens the first volume by opening up about what a rough adolescence he had in Phoenix, where he saw one friend shot in the head, another die from a heroin overdose, and personally experienced two group beatdowns. One imagines that given the premise of this story - which involves children murdering each other - that he tells us about the terrible things he witnessed as a way of gaining social permission to express things much worse than that narratively for the sake of cheap entertainment.
It seems strange therapy, then for him to channel those experiences the way that he does in this story, where he glamorizes all of those things as throwaway storytelling disguised as some kind of meta-commentary about what it was like to become a teenage cynic in the 1980s. Either Remender was lying about his teenage trauma, or he decided to mine it in the most crass and exploitative manner imaginable. One doesn't get the sense that he was lying.
That this series' non-stop orgy of sex, drug use, murder, depravity and fecal expulsion all occurs to children under the age of 16 is perhaps its most unsettling aspect. Sure, we have seen kids-killing-kids stories elsewhere (Battle Royale and The Hunger Games being two notable examples). But in those series, the authors at least try to make such violence an inherently horrifying state of affairs. Remender never puts in that work here, apart from a little half-hearted exposition before he sets up yet another scene of teenage mayhem. It's like he tried to turn Kids into a John Woo movie, with predictably abhorrent results.
Deadly Class is not condemned inherently by its problematic subject material. Were this story used to make a genuine examination about some aspect of humanity, we could look past this story's many, many excesses. Hell, were this story simply well-told, we could give it a lot of leeway. But especially in the back half of this, it's clear Remender doesn't really know how to land the plane. Between weird jumps back in forth in time, unexplainable shifts in character motivations that are later hand-waved away, the suggestion that sometimes it's heroic to start a school shooting, and an exceedingly lame copout of an ending that involves simply killing everyone in an earthquake, Deadly Class becomes such a narrative disaster that no matter how cool we might have thought this was when it first began, there's nothing left to love about it now, no matter how badly one might want to.
But that's not the worst of it. The worst of it is that it's clear that Remender (and Craig, who enables him) are simply getting off on being transgressive. You can do that as an artist, of course, provided there's a point to the transgression. Here, though, it's not about any of the things Remender says it is, because it's all just so hollow and cynical and poorly formed. Whatever there is supposed to be in Deadly Class never feels like more than one of those stupid, half-formed philosophical rants one goes on while out of their mind in the seedy back room of a smoke-stained kegger. And while you can forgive some dumb teenager for thinking they're onto something profound in those moments, Remender is old enough, and experienced enough, to know better. That's what makes this thing feel like such hot, angry garbage. None of it is by accident. And none of it is for any purpose other than to keep Remender's fingers busy while he makes sure somebody, anybody picks up the screen rights for this.
That SyFy actually did kind of proves the ultra-cynical worldview of this thing, but actually being the problem you're decrying is just being more of the problem. Somewhere within this is a deep sense of self-loathing beyond the main character's unconvincing diatribes. And if that's what's really driving Remender here, then this series is an extended cry for help. If it's not, then it's an extended act of public defecation that isn't art, no matter what Remender and Craig manage to scrawl with it.
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Too slow, and too many filler pages. It was a slog to get through just like the previous volume.
Bullet Review:
At volume 9, what new can I say about this series that I haven't already touched on? If you've gotten this far, you already know that most of the cast are an unstable group of very disturbed teenagers who act on emotions and with extreme violence, led by a protagonist who is very depressed. This series seems to get its kicks off on going to the places that most stories tip-toe around - the early issues of the goat *ahem*er, rape, underage drug and drinking, domestic violence, violence, bullying, racism...and so on and so forth.
I think my big problems with this series can be boiled into two points: 1) the first few issues of each trade paperback are incredibly slow and boring and 2) I'm not sure where Remender plans to go with the overall story (I think because he doesn't have an endgame planned?).
This trade really isn't about the overall school atmosphere at all - it's kinda one-off, a venture to a rich kid's parents cabin at Lake Tahoe where violence ensues. Some school politics are addressed, sure, but it's almost an accident, I feel.
Oh well, if you want death and violence, you got it aplenty here!
At volume 9, what new can I say about this series that I haven't already touched on? If you've gotten this far, you already know that most of the cast are an unstable group of very disturbed teenagers who act on emotions and with extreme violence, led by a protagonist who is very depressed. This series seems to get its kicks off on going to the places that most stories tip-toe around - the early issues of the goat *ahem*er, rape, underage drug and drinking, domestic violence, violence, bullying, racism...and so on and so forth.
I think my big problems with this series can be boiled into two points: 1) the first few issues of each trade paperback are incredibly slow and boring and 2) I'm not sure where Remender plans to go with the overall story (I think because he doesn't have an endgame planned?).
This trade really isn't about the overall school atmosphere at all - it's kinda one-off, a venture to a rich kid's parents cabin at Lake Tahoe where violence ensues. Some school politics are addressed, sure, but it's almost an accident, I feel.
Oh well, if you want death and violence, you got it aplenty here!
adventurous
dark
funny
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
2.5/5
So, after reading another 8 volumes of this series this one was just okay. It was fast paced and had tons of action but, after so much violence and so many deaths, it doesn't have the same impact as they did in the beginning of this series, it felt a bit repetitive. Also, at this point the story feels like is going nowhere, like I felt like I was reading a side story and I have no idea how the author is going to wrap up this series. Overall it was entertaining and I'm going to finish the series for sure, but this volume was not as good as the others.
So, after reading another 8 volumes of this series this one was just okay. It was fast paced and had tons of action but, after so much violence and so many deaths, it doesn't have the same impact as they did in the beginning of this series, it felt a bit repetitive. Also, at this point the story feels like is going nowhere, like I felt like I was reading a side story and I have no idea how the author is going to wrap up this series. Overall it was entertaining and I'm going to finish the series for sure, but this volume was not as good as the others.
dark
emotional
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes