Comic Review: Deadly Class #53

Image Comics

Writer: Rick Remender

Artist: Wes Craig

Colorist: Lee Loughridge

Letterer: Rus Wooton

“A Fond Farewell, Part 5” begins with promise. With hope for bad things to come full circle, into the light. But this is a Rick Remender series. Unless your name is Stel Caine, hope is deadly.

Wes Craig’s renditions of our favorite Deadly Class characters as adults are incredibly well done. No one is ageless, and despite a few beer guts and wrinkles, no one looks absurdly wizened. Helmut is particularly impressive, bringing a lot of “Thor two years into retirement” vibes as he chops wood and cozies up with his (aww!) family.

Helmnut hasn’t fully left the mercenary life behind, and his latest target reads like a stroke of fate.

But before we see how Helmut’s mission plays, we rejoin the book’s two central figures at arguably the lowest points in their lives. Not as harrowing as some of their past predicaments, surely, but decidedly more real and, short of a few miracles, seemingly permanent.

As an undocumented immigrant with a pre-existing medical condition, Maria is viewed by the American healthcare system as a non-entity. It hurts badly seeing our warrior princess wunderkind as a frail 30-something, helpless in the grip of rheumatoid arthritis. What’s worse is a horrid, pit-in-the-stomach moment when Maria’s friend offers her a brand new, non-habit forming painkiller: oxycontin! 

It’s one thing to worry about what condition these last few issues will leave Maria. It’s another to be reminded that one of the nation’s ugliest, deadliest epidemics is running strong some 15 years later.

Marcus, meanwhile, has done the seemingly impossible: walked away from a life of loneliness and violence, found happiness and family, even took up a creative art. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t care about debut science-fantasy novels. Dejected Marcus signing a single copy of his book for a reader who openly dislikes the story is the smallest the character has ever felt…and we’ve walked in on Marcus giving himself an enema.

As our doomed lovebirds beat on, boats against an oncoming typhoon, Helmut finishes his mission with precision and ease–the issue ends with a blast of Looney Toons brass and the WB logo. No, actually, everything goes horribly awry and the closing pages rank among the book’s darkest. And what a Deadly Class sign-off:

“What’s the moral to your story? … It’s really quite simple. … You’re a piece of shit, and karma’s a bitch.”