An assassination school for growing teenagers

This is the first volume of a series of other independent. It contains episodes 1-6, first published in 2014, written by Rick Remender, drawn and inked by Wes Craig, with a color setting of Lee Loughridge.

The story takes place in 1987 in San Francisco. Marus Lopez Arguello is a teenager who lives on the street. He lost his parents in a tragic and ridiculous accident direct cause of a choice of managing the administration of Ronald Reagan. He lives petty theft, alongside the homeless, frequent the soup kitchen and sleeps on the pavement.

On the occasion of the procession of the Day of the Dead (November), he finds himself involved in a police dragnet. It receives assistance from a group of young age, organized and violent whose beautiful Saya on his motorcycle, and Willie Lewis who warned the crowd. This first meeting lead to the murder of a policeman and the proposal to integrate a school of assassins called Kings Dominion Workshop of the Deadly Arts (led by Master Lin).

In the introduction, David Lapham says Rick Remender certainly imagined a plot mixing suspense, action and violence, but has primarily been able to recreate an era, with its cultural references (of the time bands) and a state of mind (that of students diffident, suffering from loneliness, putting himself away from the rest of the group, etc.). In the postscript, Rick Remender gives some biographical elements, explaining that regular removals forced him to repeat the scheme in which he found himself in the position of having to integrate a new facility where students already know. The most difficult case is when it went to skate in a big city, in a small country village.

Remender managed an impressive amalgam behaviors between adolescents and muscular and brutal action narrative. Integrating Marus is forced march, amid adolescents with heart to show their hardness and cynicism (booing and jeering therefore newcomer), while not being sure of them. He knows how to stage an intelligent behaviors inherited from the parents, the feeling of belonging, the weight of the conventions of social and ethnic class, to know how to hit between 2 teenagers (emotionally charged and uncontrolled outbursts ).

Craig Wes designs drawings realistic kind with expressionist nature of exaggerations, away from the aesthetics of superheroes. For starters, there are characters of any morphology, any ethnicity, and teens actually look like teenagers, not young adults or to older children. Craig occasionally exaggerating facial expressions to better highlight the intensity of the emotions felt by the characters. Similarly, it highlights a move beyond realism to show the vivacity of a teenager, but also focus its concentration in this single gesture, that one movement. Wes Craig proves a great designer to give shape to the main theme of the story. He transcribed perfectly the attitude of teenagers giving a kind to hide the discomfort that accompanies this age.

Due to the nature of the plot, Remender also depicts aggressive behaviors, and risk. In particular, during a break, Marus licks LSD blotters quantity. It follows a hallucinogenic trip, rendered with impressive skill. Remender and Wes found the right tone to report hallucinations, inappropriate remarks and abstruse uttered out loud, the inner logic of the character, the disorder of his perception from visual distortions to a delirious logic. The authors report with incredible accuracy of the pounding sensation, operation perverted brain, psychedelic side (printing as facets of reality suddenly reveal through improved operation of the senses), not to mention the latent paranoia to have like seeing things hidden, to connect the facts, to access a higher reality forbidden to ordinary mortals.

"Deadly class" remains primarily an action of history, with a training center of a very particular kind. When students are sent to labs, innocent citizens suffer. The first practical test is to kill a homeless man who deserved because of crimes committed in his past life. Remender shows how difficult take action, make sure to have killed his victim well, taking full measure of the transgression performed. It does not glorify violence, it does not make these rogue heroes. The player supports these young sympathy bad about themselves and used by adults, but it can not condone their crimes.

When violence erupts, Wes Craig is careful to show that individuals are aware of the nature of their actions, they hesitate before committing the irreparable, and that once carried the blows cause wounds that do not heal magically one space to another. The violence has consequences on individuals and leaves scars, both physical and psychic.

Rick Remender and Wes Craig created an original series, with a romantic element a bit big (a school of assassins for teenagers), and characters really acting like teenagers. The plot is fast and the action is violent. The actions have consequences, and murder is not reduced to mere physical prowess. The drawings are precise and expressive, with an innovative layout when the sequence requires it; each scene has a particular hue, available with intelligence by Lee Loughridge again in a remote registry simple infographic pyrotechnics. Icing on the cake: the reader learns what Ronald Reagan is responsible for the situation of Marcus Lopez Arguello.