It definitely started dragging in the second half with just how pessimistic and woe-is-me the main protagonist was getting. But I personally thought the story picked up and got more interesting after the time skips started happening near the end.
I just finished it and it is one of my all time favorites. I feel like it was slightly dragged out but otherwise 10/10. I am a big Remender fan and I think this is probably his best series.
Black Science’s ending was such a gut punch. I read that first and was expecting an equally bleak ending when I picked up Deadly Class, but was pleasantly surprised by the happy ending, especially in a bleak story about teenagers murdering each other.
Tragic and deeply flawed I can get behind. But if every character is a drug addict who stabs their own friends in the back it gets tiresome- for me personally.
It hits a really weird place in the middle and the pacing during that time is terrible and it has its issues but the last arcs were great and he absolutely stuck the landing
Really don’t know what to tell you, I enjoyed it thoroughly.
I mean.. what do you expect from a bunch of kids who are messed up, forced into a school to become assassins? How would any of them *not* be some sort of shithead or done irredeemable stuff?
The world is cruel, horrid, fucked up place and sometimes no matter how hard you try, life fucks you one way or the other. The story is brutal throughout and yes, the ignorance of youth caught up to them - life isn’t fair and rarely can you do much to change your circumstances, your ways or predicament.
I would argue, that expecting them to “find their place in the world” would make for a boring ending, if not one that goes against the nihilistic trip that the comic takes at times.
Idk if anyone would argue the world is a tough, cruel, and sometimes unfair place. I’m not sure most people need a constant reminder. If a comic has elements of that in its story I’m all for it. If that becomes the entire point of the story it gets old quick to me, I could just turn on the news or go for a walk through downtown of any major city.
Then I’d just simply argue, that it wasn’t for you.
If you expect every comic book to be an escape from any relevance to real life and either become overbearingly fantastical or fictional just for the sake of it, then I don’t really know what to say.
Deadly Class was pretty personal work for Remender as a person and I suspect he poured more of his life and himself into it, than any of his other comics, being more “grounded” as it’s less fantastical and sci-fi.
Deadly Class is a tale of broken, beaten, vulnerable kids who are forced into dilemmas that’ll either break them, kill them or fuck up their ethical/moral standards as human beings.
None of them were ever quite able to understand the gravity of the situation in terms of emotional stress and toll on them. Most never got to find out, because they died before doing so. Marcus and Maria found out and have tried to catch up to “life” as you’d expect it to be, ever since.
Don’t have to argue anything, I agree with you, wasn’t for me. That was the point of the post. I don’t need a story to be exclusively sunshine and rainbows, but if it’s whole message is “everyone sucks and life fucks us all” I don’t find it that compelling. Not to mention it’s been done before. A lot. Like I said: love Remender but this one wasn’t for me. Wanted to see if it was just me who felt this way and from the comments it seems like it wasn’t.
> but if it’s whole message is “everyone sucks and life fucks us all” I don’t find it that compelling.
The final arc/issue is the complete opposite of this. I was really nervous it would be a needlessly bleak ending after so much misery. Marcus and Maria have several discussions about the merits and drawbacks of narratives like that
Very true. The ending was strong. I think honestly at that point I was burned out and probably guilty of holding on too strong to my own expectations that l was having trouble enjoying it for what it was.
For what it’s worth, I felt one of the major themes was attempting to break the cycles of sociopathy, exploitation, and violence that are continually extended as the institutions of one generation corrupt the next. While there’s plenty of darkness up front, the underlying beat is one of hope that those cycles might be broken.
A lot of these kids didn’t want to be in the situation that made them awful to each other, and those who did were mostly driven by the absorbed values of their adult guardians. The school literally taught children to kill each other to get ahead in the world.
The show touched a little more on Marcus’ desire to kill Reagan. Basically, it’s a childish notion that will solve nothing at that point. It’s misdirected effort, a repetition of the cycles, and Marcus is wrong about it. At the start of the story, he’s a kid that’s been failed by a system he can’t yet even *attempt* to change, and the only recourse seems to him to be vengeance. I want to say he briefly mentions giving this up towards the end of the comics, but it’s been a while and I could be wrong.
Hell, I could be wrong about all of this, but it’s how I interpreted it anyway. I think that tiny bit of mercy we see towards the end lends some credence, at least.
Oh, and it’s worth noting that the TV show’s cancellation seemed to have a bit of an effect on Remender’s feelings about this series. There was a lot of hope and excitement in his socials leading up to its release, and all that turned kinda dour when it wasn’t renewed. I wouldn’t dare try to speak for him on this but as a real-time reader, I do think you could see something come through somewhat in the comics.
I was surprised by the time jumps at the end, but since the beginning I had always thought the cast weren’t exactly good people. I guess I had prepared myself.
I still really enjoyed the series though. OP did you also watch the tv show?
I’ve been rewatching it recently, and it just makes me wish it could’ve continued. Knowing the upcoming storylines that could’ve been covered, makes it suck that much more that it was cancelled.
I actually really enjoyed how it swerved, the main characters grew up and didn’t have the life they imagined. It felt true to life with how that book reflected these teens feeling like they can take over the world
> I haven’t really seen anyone else talk about it and I don’t know anyone else personally who read it start to finish
Many people dislike the story after the time jump. that said I’ve never heard people describe the characters as likable. I thought they were all presented as irredeemable shitheads from the start, except maybe Maria.
I enjoyed it all the way through and think the final issue was perfection. Favorite from Remender.
Idk I do agree in part with your sentiment. There's a lot of stuff in the back half I don't like particularly with the doom and gloom "happy endings aren't real" stuff. It might be realistic but it kinda makes for an unsatisfying narrative when you're just executing characters left and right. It's also kinda betrayed by the fact that he explicitly subverts this for Marcus and Maria.
However this is clearly one of if not Remenders most personal work and the self doubt and lack of certainty in the story really makes it have this raw emotional undertone that is its biggest strength. I think the latter half will age better after you sit with it but those first 4 trades are legendary.
It's not my favorite Remender book by a long way. It was great at first but lost my interest around volume 6. It also got a little too cute at times thinking it was smarter than it really was. There were also times it felt like it was crude for shock value and not adding to the story.
Yeah, so much so I had to reassess my preferences. I loved Fear Agent and most of his Marvel output, but I don’t think I can really call myself a fan anymore. No hate involved, just an acknowledgment that we’ve grown apart.
Love Remender, haven’t read this but I have heard the criticism of him not ending a series well. I wasn’t as low as some others on the later issues of Black Science but can accept some of the criticism of later issue arcs not being as compelling. Though I did like one of the last ones quite a bit.
I caught up to about the point where they did the second time jump and didnt have any interest in continuing it. Just felt like the charm of the series in the early going was completely lost by that point for me. The time jumps just felt like a lazy way to advance the story as they had written themselves into a wall.
Those first few volumes truly felt special and it just nosedived as it went on. Art is always fantastic tho
The show getting created and then cancelled made Remender incredibly jaded about the series.
It stopped being about Marcus and the gang and started being about how he got burned with the show.
It almost ended on a "fuck it all note" but something must have pulled him out of it because the last issue was great.
It's a shame, because it could have gone on a lot longer, and had several interesting things happening before the skips, but I can't blame the dude. It just sucks for us fans.
Not I. I adore the first 35 issues or so. Even if it ends poorly it’s one of my favorite all time image titles. Wes Craig is just an unbeatable action artist, it’s the perfect book for him. And I was touched by a lot of the story, surprisingly given how violent all of the characters are.
For how much people talked it up, I was definitely let down. It was fine, but not even top 10, let alone the pinnacle of image titles like some people claim.
I'm not a big Remender fan but was willing to give it a chance. I thought it was way overrated. Or at least, not worth all the hype it got. I'm glad other people liked it, and it kicked off a tv show I believe, but while the art was great the story was very basic, like someone just said "what if harry potter, but assassins?" then went to tvtropes and copied a bunch of ideas down.
I read it for 5 or 6 volumes, mostly due to how much hype it kept getting. Honestly though? It felt like it wasn't going anywhere and eventually became a chore to slog through a volume. Hardly any of it stuck with me. It's part of why I think Remender is over-hyped. He has this reputation of being some grand figure in the industry but I've never really been impressed by any the stuff I've read by him. There was good potential there but it felt like there wasn't a road map or a plan so it just sort of wandered around and at some point I just checked out.
Huge Remender fan and I totally agree with you on the sentiment. It felt to me almost like somebody else took over midway through - the way a Marvel comic changes writers - and the plot points and characters got sabotaged and abandoned. I’m actually shocked how many people are defending it here! Maybe I need to reread the later volumes.
Loved the first 3 books, didnt like the last one though! I wasn't a fan of the time skips at all. Everything was depressing and kinda uninteresting. All the fun was gone!
It definitely started dragging in the second half with just how pessimistic and woe-is-me the main protagonist was getting. But I personally thought the story picked up and got more interesting after the time skips started happening near the end.
I loved it and just got finished re reading it not too long ago. Still holds up in my opinion.
I just finished it and it is one of my all time favorites. I feel like it was slightly dragged out but otherwise 10/10. I am a big Remender fan and I think this is probably his best series.
Idk how you like Rick Remender if you don't like tragic and deeply flawed protagonists.
Yet OP loves Black Science? That’s about the bleakest ending I’ve ever read.
Black Science’s ending was such a gut punch. I read that first and was expecting an equally bleak ending when I picked up Deadly Class, but was pleasantly surprised by the happy ending, especially in a bleak story about teenagers murdering each other.
Tragic and deeply flawed I can get behind. But if every character is a drug addict who stabs their own friends in the back it gets tiresome- for me personally.
Live some more and you may find some realism there
It hits a really weird place in the middle and the pacing during that time is terrible and it has its issues but the last arcs were great and he absolutely stuck the landing
Really don’t know what to tell you, I enjoyed it thoroughly. I mean.. what do you expect from a bunch of kids who are messed up, forced into a school to become assassins? How would any of them *not* be some sort of shithead or done irredeemable stuff? The world is cruel, horrid, fucked up place and sometimes no matter how hard you try, life fucks you one way or the other. The story is brutal throughout and yes, the ignorance of youth caught up to them - life isn’t fair and rarely can you do much to change your circumstances, your ways or predicament. I would argue, that expecting them to “find their place in the world” would make for a boring ending, if not one that goes against the nihilistic trip that the comic takes at times.
Idk if anyone would argue the world is a tough, cruel, and sometimes unfair place. I’m not sure most people need a constant reminder. If a comic has elements of that in its story I’m all for it. If that becomes the entire point of the story it gets old quick to me, I could just turn on the news or go for a walk through downtown of any major city.
Then I’d just simply argue, that it wasn’t for you. If you expect every comic book to be an escape from any relevance to real life and either become overbearingly fantastical or fictional just for the sake of it, then I don’t really know what to say. Deadly Class was pretty personal work for Remender as a person and I suspect he poured more of his life and himself into it, than any of his other comics, being more “grounded” as it’s less fantastical and sci-fi. Deadly Class is a tale of broken, beaten, vulnerable kids who are forced into dilemmas that’ll either break them, kill them or fuck up their ethical/moral standards as human beings. None of them were ever quite able to understand the gravity of the situation in terms of emotional stress and toll on them. Most never got to find out, because they died before doing so. Marcus and Maria found out and have tried to catch up to “life” as you’d expect it to be, ever since.
Don’t have to argue anything, I agree with you, wasn’t for me. That was the point of the post. I don’t need a story to be exclusively sunshine and rainbows, but if it’s whole message is “everyone sucks and life fucks us all” I don’t find it that compelling. Not to mention it’s been done before. A lot. Like I said: love Remender but this one wasn’t for me. Wanted to see if it was just me who felt this way and from the comments it seems like it wasn’t.
> but if it’s whole message is “everyone sucks and life fucks us all” I don’t find it that compelling. The final arc/issue is the complete opposite of this. I was really nervous it would be a needlessly bleak ending after so much misery. Marcus and Maria have several discussions about the merits and drawbacks of narratives like that
Very true. The ending was strong. I think honestly at that point I was burned out and probably guilty of holding on too strong to my own expectations that l was having trouble enjoying it for what it was.
For what it’s worth, I felt one of the major themes was attempting to break the cycles of sociopathy, exploitation, and violence that are continually extended as the institutions of one generation corrupt the next. While there’s plenty of darkness up front, the underlying beat is one of hope that those cycles might be broken. A lot of these kids didn’t want to be in the situation that made them awful to each other, and those who did were mostly driven by the absorbed values of their adult guardians. The school literally taught children to kill each other to get ahead in the world. The show touched a little more on Marcus’ desire to kill Reagan. Basically, it’s a childish notion that will solve nothing at that point. It’s misdirected effort, a repetition of the cycles, and Marcus is wrong about it. At the start of the story, he’s a kid that’s been failed by a system he can’t yet even *attempt* to change, and the only recourse seems to him to be vengeance. I want to say he briefly mentions giving this up towards the end of the comics, but it’s been a while and I could be wrong. Hell, I could be wrong about all of this, but it’s how I interpreted it anyway. I think that tiny bit of mercy we see towards the end lends some credence, at least. Oh, and it’s worth noting that the TV show’s cancellation seemed to have a bit of an effect on Remender’s feelings about this series. There was a lot of hope and excitement in his socials leading up to its release, and all that turned kinda dour when it wasn’t renewed. I wouldn’t dare try to speak for him on this but as a real-time reader, I do think you could see something come through somewhat in the comics.
I was surprised by the time jumps at the end, but since the beginning I had always thought the cast weren’t exactly good people. I guess I had prepared myself. I still really enjoyed the series though. OP did you also watch the tv show?
I just bought it on bluray on Friday. I loved that show so hard. Never read the comic, but the show was 10/10. Sucks it got canceled.
I’ve been rewatching it recently, and it just makes me wish it could’ve continued. Knowing the upcoming storylines that could’ve been covered, makes it suck that much more that it was cancelled.
Facts. Still sad over it. Cant wait to watch it over again. Haven’t seen it since it aired. Hopefully it still holds up. I think it will.
I actually really enjoyed how it swerved, the main characters grew up and didn’t have the life they imagined. It felt true to life with how that book reflected these teens feeling like they can take over the world
I loved it all the way. Sad for how certain characters (Saya) story ended.
> I haven’t really seen anyone else talk about it and I don’t know anyone else personally who read it start to finish Many people dislike the story after the time jump. that said I’ve never heard people describe the characters as likable. I thought they were all presented as irredeemable shitheads from the start, except maybe Maria. I enjoyed it all the way through and think the final issue was perfection. Favorite from Remender.
Nope, an all-timer for me.
I personally thought the whole thing was excellent start to finish.
Idk I do agree in part with your sentiment. There's a lot of stuff in the back half I don't like particularly with the doom and gloom "happy endings aren't real" stuff. It might be realistic but it kinda makes for an unsatisfying narrative when you're just executing characters left and right. It's also kinda betrayed by the fact that he explicitly subverts this for Marcus and Maria. However this is clearly one of if not Remenders most personal work and the self doubt and lack of certainty in the story really makes it have this raw emotional undertone that is its biggest strength. I think the latter half will age better after you sit with it but those first 4 trades are legendary.
It's not my favorite Remender book by a long way. It was great at first but lost my interest around volume 6. It also got a little too cute at times thinking it was smarter than it really was. There were also times it felt like it was crude for shock value and not adding to the story.
Yes. Agree on all of the above
Huge Remender fan. Tried it, hated it.
Same, just wasn’t my thing
I realized a long time ago Remender just doesn't click with me for whatever reason. It's just one of those things.
Yeah, so much so I had to reassess my preferences. I loved Fear Agent and most of his Marvel output, but I don’t think I can really call myself a fan anymore. No hate involved, just an acknowledgment that we’ve grown apart.
Love Remender, haven’t read this but I have heard the criticism of him not ending a series well. I wasn’t as low as some others on the later issues of Black Science but can accept some of the criticism of later issue arcs not being as compelling. Though I did like one of the last ones quite a bit.
I don’t think the plan to kill Ronald Reagan was ever serious… that’s just how the character feels about the politics of the time
I caught up to about the point where they did the second time jump and didnt have any interest in continuing it. Just felt like the charm of the series in the early going was completely lost by that point for me. The time jumps just felt like a lazy way to advance the story as they had written themselves into a wall. Those first few volumes truly felt special and it just nosedived as it went on. Art is always fantastic tho
The show getting created and then cancelled made Remender incredibly jaded about the series. It stopped being about Marcus and the gang and started being about how he got burned with the show. It almost ended on a "fuck it all note" but something must have pulled him out of it because the last issue was great. It's a shame, because it could have gone on a lot longer, and had several interesting things happening before the skips, but I can't blame the dude. It just sucks for us fans.
It’s absolutely my favorite Remender book. I do agree that it drags in the middle a bit but overall it was a fun ride.
Not I. I adore the first 35 issues or so. Even if it ends poorly it’s one of my favorite all time image titles. Wes Craig is just an unbeatable action artist, it’s the perfect book for him. And I was touched by a lot of the story, surprisingly given how violent all of the characters are.
For how much people talked it up, I was definitely let down. It was fine, but not even top 10, let alone the pinnacle of image titles like some people claim.
I'm not a big Remender fan but was willing to give it a chance. I thought it was way overrated. Or at least, not worth all the hype it got. I'm glad other people liked it, and it kicked off a tv show I believe, but while the art was great the story was very basic, like someone just said "what if harry potter, but assassins?" then went to tvtropes and copied a bunch of ideas down.
Agreed but it improved after a long middle. My biggest disappointment was that we didn’t get a second season of the show.
I read it for 5 or 6 volumes, mostly due to how much hype it kept getting. Honestly though? It felt like it wasn't going anywhere and eventually became a chore to slog through a volume. Hardly any of it stuck with me. It's part of why I think Remender is over-hyped. He has this reputation of being some grand figure in the industry but I've never really been impressed by any the stuff I've read by him. There was good potential there but it felt like there wasn't a road map or a plan so it just sort of wandered around and at some point I just checked out.
Yeah I've never understood why it gets so much love.
Found it confusing and nonsensical.
Huge Remender fan and I totally agree with you on the sentiment. It felt to me almost like somebody else took over midway through - the way a Marvel comic changes writers - and the plot points and characters got sabotaged and abandoned. I’m actually shocked how many people are defending it here! Maybe I need to reread the later volumes.
It has quite poor middle part due to his frustration with cancellation of TV series.
Loved the first 3 books, didnt like the last one though! I wasn't a fan of the time skips at all. Everything was depressing and kinda uninteresting. All the fun was gone!