The self-questioning nature of Marcus ensures consideration of what’s happened at every stage, and his ability to think for himself and challenge others results in dialogue actively scorning some lifestyles. Given the premise of Deadly Class, obvious sensationalist pandering is one route, presenting vicarious debased thrills by maximising the assaults, but Remender makes the humane choice and while there are murders and extreme violence, they’re never without consequence. Colourist Lee Loughridge is very important to the look, adding atmospheric flat colour, and when a group of students hit a Grateful Dead gig he really shows what he can do. There’s something of Paul Pope about Craig’s deceptive looseness. So’s the page with the white space between panels eventually forming an arrow, and the general indication of movement in so many ways. Around the halfway point there’s a conversation as two people make their way across the city, with each line of dialogue occurring in a different place (yeah, suspend that disbelief again), which is clever. It’s difficult to know if Remender or Wes Craig lays out the story, but there are a lot of visually interesting page designs and segues to other scenes. Rick Remender’s put a whole lot of thought into creating Marcus and his background, and it comes out in drips and drabs of dialogue, as Marcus analyses himself and justifies a preference for being a loner rather than joining the cliques.

It’s toughened him, but not closed off his heart, and that’s the key characteristic enabling his rescue and enrolment when some crooked cops came looking for him. By the age of 14 in 1987, he concluded life on the street was preferable. His parents were executed for running arms to the Contras, leaving Marcus in a US orphanage. Marcus is the son of a former Nicaraguan cop.

The ways of keeping it such would certainly keep most people quiet, but even so… Alternatively, Marcus Arguello attending assassins school is no different from Harry Potter going to magic school, and away we go on what’s a consistently perverse and violent treat. It’s that thousands have attended from all around the world, yet it’s a secret. It isn’t even that it’s run like a proper high school with lessons tied into the art of killing. The hurdle isn’t a school for assassins running covertly beneath San Francisco, nor that it’s been running for decades and even has a legacy system. Get past it and you’re in for one hell of a ride filling seven graphic novels and counting. Deadly Class has a big hurdle to overcome.

Reagan youth rick remender