Among his rivals are Viktor, the muscle-headed Russian and Shabnam, a portly young man whose specialty is acquiring intel on his enemies. He’s caught in a love triangle with Maria, a member of Soto Vatos, who has a troubled history and Saya, daughter of the Kuroki Syndicate, who has her own agenda. Marcus makes quick friends and enemies within the first few days, setting up what will be the significant relationships of the series. You have superior minded Russkies, cold & measured Yakuza children, kids with ties to the Afro-Latino gangs of California, Central American drug cartel kiddies, and more. The cliques at King’s Dominion are centered around ethno-geographic criminal cartels.

Those with long family ties to King’s Dominion are Legacies, but new recruits like Marcus are Rats and reviled by those in higher standing. Through a series of circumstances, Marcus is recruited to attend King’s Dominion, a private school that specializes in training the children of mobsters and mass murderers to become cold, calculating killers in their own right. She was one of many people released from mental health facilities when the Reagan Administration cut funding. We learn that his parents were killed by a mentally ill woman who jumped from a building and landed on them. It’s 1987, and Marcus Lopez Arguello is a teenage orphan living homeless on the streets of San Francisco. I was surprised by what I read, enjoyed quite a bit of it but also had some moments that I didn’t care for. I literally went in blind, not knowing the names of any characters or the premise of the series. As part of my look at Image Comics this year, I decided to check out his Deadly Class series, which had been turned into a now-canceled series on SyFy. It’s no secret that I am a fan of Rick Remender, I spent half a year reading through and reviewing his entire body of work at Marvel Comics in 2018. Deadly Class Book One: Noise, Noise, Noise (2016)

Deadly class comic volume 1