Marcus and Maria return to King’s Dominion in Deadly Class #38, by writer Rick Remender, artist Wes Craig, colorist Jordan Boyd, and letterer Rus Wooton. This issue serves to reintroduce Marcus and Maria to the power structure of the school, while also giving tantalizing glimpses of what’s to come.

As Shadnam, the head of the student body council, and his class are learning about gas attacks in WWI, a commotion starts up- Marcus and Maria have returned. Master Lin grills them on their reasons for coming back and is satisfied with their answers. They enter the school again as almost celebrities, something which bothers Marcus immensely. After the two meet their new roommates and get back into their classes, Marcus goes to the graveyard, confronting visions of his criminal past. Maria joins them before Shadnam, and the rest of the student body council confronts them, telling the two they are in charge. They have different plans, though, and the confrontation doesn’t go well for Shadnam and his ilk.

Marcus and Maria’s return to the school has long been a foregone conclusion. After what has happened to them, for their story arcs to really reach a satisfying conclusion, getting them back here has been something most readers could easily envision. Remender does a great job of using their survival of the “rat hunt” of the end of their freshmen year and Marcus’ internal monologue to point out how people “love” winners. Marcus and Maria both are given praise by students who before wouldn’t even have noticed them. They are celebrities in the school, but Marcus’ punk rock ethos points out how fake this is. The two of them have survived things that very few others in the school have, but in a place like King’s Dominion, that should earn them targets on their back, not adulation. Everyone loves a winner, though.

This adulation harms Shadnam and the student council. They were always the chief actors in the tribulations of Marcus, Maria, and their friends, so for the two of them to show back up, almost universally beloved and immediately thrust into the running for valedictorian status is a massive threat to them. Shadnam’s power has always been dependent on being the one who masterminded the destruction of Marcus and Maria’s clique, and both Viktor and Brandy broke school rules in trying to ensure their deaths in Mexico. Remender is setting up for what could be the dissolution of the current power structure, and it will be fun to see how it all plays out. These new developments have given the book an added dimension that will breathe new life into it.

Wes Craig’s artwork is heavy on thick black linework in this issue, but it’s also some of the best his pencils have looked in a while. His art’s detail has suffered a lot lately, but in this issue, it’s back to almost what is used to be back in the book’s earlier segments. It’s not perfect, of course, but it’s better. There are no big action set pieces, as this issue is mostly a lot of set up and table setting, but he’s able to capture the way the students look at Marcus and Maria now while also capturing Marcus’ disgust with the whole thing. The best part of his art is during the conference Marcus and Maria have with Master Lin. In the background are white outlines of their dead friends that fill the page, leaking into the adjacent panels, the ghosts of the past haunting the two of them.

Deadly Class #38 is predictable in a way, bringing Marcus and Maria back to the school, but it transcends that predictability with the strength of Remender’s narrative. Marcus’ viewpoint on the whole situation takes what could have been a fairly standard story and makes it into something else, a critique of the way people love winners who they hated when they were losers. He does this by being true to his characters, using who they are and what readers know about them to make his points. Craig’s artwork isn’t up to his best standards of the book’s early days but also doesn’t suffer in the detail department the way a lot of the book’s recent issues have. So far, there’s no inkling of what shape Marcus and Maria’s plans will take beyond revenge, but this issue does a great job of setting the table for what’s to come.

Grade: A-