Marcus and Maria have a brand-new life in Deadly Class #52, by writer Rick Remender, artist Wes Craig, colorist Lee Loughridge, and letterer Rus Wooton. This chapter combines the book’s trademark melancholy with some beautiful moments and a great cliffhanger.

This issue follows Marcus and Maria through 2006. He’s working as a writer for a free paper, and she’s a nanny. They’re impoverished but happy, but Maria’s body is breaking down. She finds out she can have lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, and Marcus decides. He takes her to Santa Cruz, asks her to marry him, and they go to Vegas, where they meet up with Helmut, Zenzele, and Tosawhi. The two get married and have a great night with their friends.

Meanwhile, Stephen is sent pictures from the event. He talks with his boyfriend about the past and looks at an old picture book after his SO leaves the room to get more scotch. He goes into the kitchen to find him dead, and then he’s shot as well. The mysterious attacker takes his computer and sees the pictures.

Remender has long used Marcus as a vehicle for his ennui and to speak about Generation X. This issue is more of that. Sometimes, it does feel a little preachy and disingenuous, especially coming from someone who has had as much success as Remender. However, he does something that makes it quite interesting: the captions of the issue are written by Marcus for his and Maria’s future children. That could certainly extend to the rest of the comic as well, which makes it an even more interesting book in general.

All of that aside, this is yet another amazing installment of the book. It feels like Remender has saved a lot for the end; one can tell how much he loves these characters and this story and is pulling out all the stops. These last issues have been a joy to read, and this one is no different. It goes from sadness and doom to joy, which is pretty much just life. It’s a single-issue journey, which is rare in today’s comic industry, and Remender is an expert at it, as these last story arcs have shown. This is one of the strongest of them all because it feels like the calm before the storm, a nice, beautiful moment before the whole thing goes to hell.

Craig and Loughridge are doing some great work in this book. The issue’s art isn’t perfect throughout, which is a hallmark of Craig’s penciling style in the later stages of the books, but it gets across the emotions it needs to. There are a lot of really nice shots in the book, especially toward the end. Loughridge’s colors are amazing, but that’s always been a hallmark of his work on Deadly Class. The way he uses color to set the scene's tone is beautiful, and it works so well in this issue.

Deadly Class #52 is a roller coaster of emotion. It can get a little preachy, but that’s fine. Remender, Craig, and Loughridge are doing fantastic on this book, and this issue definitely whets the appetite for what is coming next.

Grade: A