Blindzider's Reviews > Deadly Class, Book One: Noise Noise Noise

*** 2023 Review ***
I did a quick reread of this volume since I'll be doing a straight run. It's as dark and violent as I remember (something which appeals to me), and deals with depression in personalities that were altered by early childhood trauma, which lead to bad decisions and more trauma. You can almost feel Remender working through his issues as he writes this.

Looking forward to continuing the series and upgrading this to 4 stars.

*** Original Review ***
3.5 stars

I actually thought this was going to be different: more of a "90210" and about school, but it's all about loneliness and striving for acceptance. All of the kids were brought up amidst violence and some with personal tragedy. Couple that with the normal teenage angst, puberty, and insecurity and you have an extremely heavy and introspective story. I'll say it again, that this is very dark, morose, sometimes depraved and violent with ample sex, drugs, killing, cuss words, etc. Some of it I found to be uncomfortable, some of it funny, and some of it seemed unnecessary.

There's actually very little about the school of assassins, yet. This volume leaves you on a pretty serious cliffhanger about the future of the main characters and just exactly what the school is about. For the most part, this first foray into Deadly Class has been about establishing the main core of kids. With the usual Remender flair, you really get into the heads of the characters, learning what events in their backgrounds drove them to make certain decisions and act the way they do.

The art is fantastic. Craig has an incredible ability to show action and movement as well as specific feelings within the frame such as rage or disorientation while taking drugs. The limited color palette seems to enhance his art as well, allowing you to focus on what he's drawing but still set the tone and mood of the panels.

This turned out to be much better and more "adult" than I was expecting and there are enough twists that I'm not ever really sure what is going to happen next which is something I look for in a good book. Hopefully Book Two won't be too far behind this one.