Digitally Speaking...33 "Deadly Class"

via Image

Deadly Class #1 (Image)

From 2014.

The last time I read an issue of this comic, I kind of got what Rick Remender was doing.  But I was also kind of lost.  Deadly Class is not a series you can jump into the middle of, as it turns out.

But when you start at the beginning, you will probably have a much better idea of what it is.

A mix between Mark Millar's Wanted, Grant Morrison's Invisibles, and Brian Michael Bendis's Ultimate Spider-Man, Deadly Class starts out much more grounded in the real world than any of them, detailing the life of a lost youth suffering from suicidal depression at having been left completely behind by the rest of the world.  There's a fair bit of real world details stuck in, specifically Reagan's America (although it's not really a period story otherwise; this could just as easily be set in the present).

Then he's approached by representative of a special school.  Not for mutants.  For students training to become assassins.

And, more or less, the first issue ends.  And suddenly, I wouldn't mind reading more of Deadly Class.  I had this issue in my comiXology cue when I read the other one I've sampled to date sometime last year (#6), but such was my reaction that I didn't feel particularly compelled to seek out more of the story at that point.  

This is something of a personal project for Remender, a comics veteran who lately has done some off-the-wall and yet compelling work with Captain America.  I'd recommend Deadly Class as an ideal way to see how much potential Remender really has.

As for any digital comments, as always I think this is a format that exposes the limits of current lettering capabilities.  In normal mode at comiXology, it's hard to read Deadly Class properly.  This is not a knock against Deadly Class itself, but, as I said, against the whole lettering profession.  You would certainly think, along with all the digital inking and in some cases even art, lettering would not even remotely be a problem today.  But incredibly, it is.  Considering how many psychopaths we have reading comics (and watching things) on tiny devices, I can't imagine how this has not been a problem already addressed and corrected at this point.  Seriously.  

And yeah, this is not a problem one has with physical comics.