Deadly Class vol. 7: Love Like Blood

The cliffhanger delivered at the end of vol. 6 was amazing for a few reasons, but mainly because of how it inverted my expectations of the kind of ending I usually expect from Rick Remender’s work.  So, do he and artist Wes Craig fully deliver on the promise of the tables being turned on everyone who’s currently chasing Marcus and his friends? Nope!  It’s not a complete walkback as Marcus is forced to team up with Viktor and Brandi to fight off the yakuza thugs who have come after them while Maria and Quan, Petra and Helmut, and Zenzelle and Toshawi respectively split up to find their own ways to survive this awful night in Puerto Penasco.

Vol. 7 is the thinnest of the series so far, collecting only four issues.  That’s not as much of a problem as Remender and Craig pack this volume with enough action and incident to make it a satisfyingly dense read.  While the action sustains pretty well for the first half of the volume, it’s the character stuff that will likely stick with you after the volume is over.  Things like Maria’s interrogation of Quan that’s as spontaneous as it is menacing, Marcus’ desperate fight against Viktor that leads the former to a hallucinatory debate with a dead friend, and the revelation of Zenzelle’s backstory that sheds an awful new light on her religious fanatacism.

There are a number of issues, however, that keep this volume from being among the best in the series.  First is that the action is so intense and over-the-top that it strains even the suspension of disbelief for this series that only one member of its cast winds up dying along the way.  Regardless of whether this character deserved their fate, it’s frustrating when another is mentioned to constantly be on the brink of death throughout the volume only to demonstrate a level of survivability akin to Wolverine’s.  Then there’s the fact that Craig’s art, which is on point for the volume’s first half, takes a dive halfway through as it takes on an increasingly rougher look that indicates he was bashing it out against some deadlines. Finally, I think that the change-of-heart demonstrated by one character toward the end of vol. 7 only works because I really wanted to believe it, not because it makes sense for this character.  Still an enjoyable volume overall even as I’m left hoping things get fully back on track when we return to King’s Dominion next time.