The school they attend - Kings Dominion School for the Deadly Arts - is hidden in great length. I'm not sure exactly, but I believe it lies deep down below San Francisco's surface, buried under the politically correct and just society it thinks it's protecting. The school is run by an old man, who looks like an elderly Kung-Fu master of sorts, and when he offers the main protagonist, Marcus Lopez - a recently homeless Nicaraguan young man turned student at KMSDA - a chance to join this prestigious assassins' academy, the story kicks into higher gear. The thing is, the gear in question isn't that much faster than neutral.
Deadly Class: Reagan Youth is writer Rick Remender and artists Lee Loughridge & Wes Craig's throwback to numerous pop-culture academies, where many troubled youths are brought together for missions which may or may not be of ethical natures. We're reminded of Dr. Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters of the X-Men franchise, and to some degree, even of the relatively recent Morning Glories serial, where we also witness development of talented youth at a mysterious and somewhat dangerous "school" whose location remains a mystery to all. The major difference between Deadly Class and Morning Glories is that the latter grabs your attention, and, regardless of how enigmatic and confusing it may be, it keeps you fully engaged, albeit a bit confused; this is, sadly, not something I can say about the former.
At first, Marcus is conflicted about wanting to be trained in the art of killing, something that KMSDA teaches its students to excel at, and all the while being torn between two very different women: Saya (member of the Japanese Kuroki Syndicate group), the tattooed, icy cold killer who saves his ass; and Maria, girlfriend of a local Latino thug and murderer, Chico, leader of the Soto Vatos group at the KMSDA who's out to bring Marcus down out of pure jealousy. The last act of this first TP issue deals with Chico hunting down our hero through a series of events that eventually become exhausting and a bit boring. The only salvation of this final chapter, which takes place in Las Vegas while Marcus and his friends are all tripping on LSD, is the audacity and visual flair that Loughridge and Craig bring in trying to replicate such an experience on a comic book page. Their artwork is hallucinatory in and of itself, the colors are hypnotic, leaving the reader who has had some experience with the aforementioned psychedellic to relate with it accordingly.
Rick Remender is a talented writer. His sci-fi serial Low is a superior work, a visual marvel and a grand story of a family holding on to hope in a hopeless world. But his Deadly Class: Reagan Youth feels a bit contrived, and not thoroughly engaging, especially when one considers other similar works in the medium that have tackled similar themes, and pulled them off more successfully. Marcus Lopez and his classmates may be killers in training, but their plight leaves a lot to be desired, especially in the drama and emotion department. Here's hoping it gets better from here on in.
C
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