Cover of the Week 1/6 – Deadly Class #21 by Wes Craig

*I guess this is a spoiler filled cover and review!*

There aren’t often too many covers that can spoil the actual outcomes of the comics, but if you inspect this one carefully that would probably happen. It looks like simple symbology with the drain cover representing a faction of sorts, especially with the blood draining around it. In actual fact, that is exactly what it depicts as it harks back to the very first issue. Marcus was homeless and lost living on the streets, scrapping to survive and it was particularly unpleasant. Before being taken into the assassin’s school, he was under threat from Fuckface and his soon to be friends saved him. This page could show anyone lying on the street, clearly supposed to be dead with a hand laid outstretched and limp towards the manhole cover. It could only be one person, Marcus. Few others would require such little characterisation as there is only one person we are truly invested in, one tragedy we live through in reading this book. Look around at the effects upon his person, the cigarette, the pencils, the condoms, the drugs and the weapons. The single most poignant and upsetting are the photos of him with Saya, left covered in blood. The red and black colouring is simple but effective in representing the bloodshed at the end of a life. We admire the nuanced graphic design Wes Craig has produced as Marcus returns from whence he came: bloodied in a gutter.