The Courses Are Killer in DEADLY CLASS

High school is the ultimate proving ground in graphic novel by Remender and Craig

San Francisco, 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 this is the world of DEADLY CLASS, the graphic novel series by Rick Remender (BLACK SCIENCE, Uncanny Avengers) and Wes Craig (Batman). Here, in Kings Dominion High School for the Deadly Arts, jocks are the children of Joseph Stalin's top enforcer, the teachers are members of an ancient league of assassins, the class Marcus is 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. In DEADLY CLASS, the dagger in your back isn’t always metaphorical, nor is your fellow classmates' poison.

“The school is almost how you would imagine: it’s cult-ish and diverse because the cast is culled from all of the major criminal organizations and government spook installations around the globe,” said writer Remender in an interview at Newsarama. “It’s a strange, clandestine place where the kids have no idea what they’re really up against. But the students coming in see that the senior class is a lot smaller than the freshman class, so they begin to get an idea.”

Artist Craig finds universal experiences in DEADLY CLASS’s extraordinary premise. “What I enjoy the most about this story is the stuff we can all relate to from our teen years: trying to fit in, getting dumped, etc,” he said. “So much drama and comedy and craziness go down in those few short years, there's a lot of creative juice in there. So I'm hoping that's what readers will get hooked on as the story progresses. And hey, if a ninja happens to attack in the middle of all that stuff, all the better!”

DEADLY CLASS, VOLUME 1: REAGAN YOUTH will be in comic book stores on July 16 and in bookstores on July 29 and is specially priced at only $9.99.

DEADLY CLASS VOLUME 1: REAGAN YOUTH by Rick Remender and Wes Craig (colors by Lee Loughridge)

• ISBN 978-1-63215-003-5
• Diamond Comic Distributors order code MAY140626
• 160 pages, full color, $9.99
• In comic book stores July 16, bookstores July 29
• Collects issues #1-6 of DEADLY CLASS
• Rated Mature

Praise for DEADLY CLASS:

“...a beautiful book that is a drastic tonal shift from Remender’s Black Science, but there’s a passion in both projects that shows the writer’s skill when he’s given free rein and paired with collaborators that are similarly unshackled.” –Oliver Sava, The A.V. Club

“Deadly Class is one kick-ass comic book. Amazing art, lettering, coloring and story. This is the whole package, folks.” –Benjamin Bailey, IGN

“This book is beautiful, dark, hopeful, violent, smart and a whole lot more things, and in two issues, it’s done more for me as a reader than most do in a year’s worth of issues. If you’re not reading Deadly Class, you are truly missing out.” –David Harper, Multiversity Comics

“...everything you want in a comic: original and captivating writing seamlessly mixed with breathtaking art peppered with some truly creative lettering.” –Torbin Chimners, Bloody Disgusting