Review: Deadly Class TP Volume 8

Gwen Dylan Stacy

5 years ago

There’s a bitter sweetness to writing this review and being sent this beautifully violent, amazing Rick Remender title after knowing that its live action counterpart was cancelled (which is truly a TRAVESTY of our time.) Regardless, hot damn. Can I even say that word? Who knows, but I am. It’s the only way to really do my initial reaction to the close of this 140 page title justice. I liken it to the time that I, as a fresh faced 13 year old, sat down to read Punk Rock: An Oral History. I remember closing the cover of the musty library book, sitting back in my thrift store plaid pants, and just thinking, “wow” whilst trying to take everything in. Deadly Class volume 8 made me feel exactly that.

All the layers of my naivety fell from my shoulders in heavy piles around my feet as the allegory in Remender’s writing reminded me of the great struggle of the Sex Pistols. Everything between Marcus and Maria resonating with that same slightly Johnny Rotten, ” do you ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated” whilst speaking heavily about the dangers of things like capitalism, class-ism (have you guys understood the metaphors for Rats and Legacies as those for different classes within the school itself?), all while disguising a lot of the Nietzsche-like “one must be careful when fighting monsters” introspection under the never-quite-out-of-date pretense of musically selling one’s soul; how someone’s revolution can go from a scream to a gurgle as the people who first loved them start to classify them under the same labels as those they’d so vehemently protested against because they’ve managed to somehow find success in their subculture.

But is this a type of revolt or only a dream that they’ve been force fed and subjugated themselves to? Is Marcus truly happy? Or is this just another man made illusion that’s been crafted by the hands of people around him who seek to manipulate him like Master Lin? Are we to believe that there is quantifiable protest in everyone’s version of revolt like Kathleen Hanna once said, or is it just a facade? Something that the masses feed you to satiate that gnawing edge that might make us feel like something isn’t quite right?

I need to pause my opining about the writing to mention all the art by co-creator Wes Craig with Jordan Boyd’s colors, which I actively am still studying to see if they follow the same somewhat Fincher-esque shift in hues to communicate moods. The heavy handed dark inked shadows echoing the dissonance of the time period and the overall theme. I can’t tell you in words how wonderfully harmonic of a cacophony every aspect of this volume comes together to create. I’ve lived this title. It speaks to me beyond just the surface level.

I’m curious to see how the next installment of this title opens, as we watch the Rats start to rise up against the Legacies after understanding their discontent with their own complacency. Well, at least one of them does, in all senses of the word. The best way to truly experience this 5 out of 5 title, in my opinion, is to put on this Deadly Class playlist (https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0BVYDW3X94kAroJdnoeDP2?si=ZMYDONi_SEab1RUP7drnBg), flip open the volume, and become one with the filth and the fury. Do you agree? Need something outside some of the synthpop/goth on the playlist? Tweet me. I’ll send you a punk song I playlisted while wallowing in my own angst.

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(W) Rick Remender (A/CA) Wes Craig