My spoiler-free review of Deadly Class episode 1 is HERE.
Deadly Class is a fast-paced, dark romp through a high school for future assassins, set in the late 80s, when Ronald Reagan was president, the AIDS crisis was in full swing, the Cold War
But it was a dark time filled with an amazing sense of irony and style, which led to a run of fantastic comedy-horror films that I encourage you all to check out. Personal favorites include Little Shop of Horrors, Teen Wolf with a very young Michael J Fox, and the Witches of Eastwick.
The film that’s most pertinent to our discussion today is the 1987 vampire film The Lost Boys, which starred Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Patric and Jami Gertz. It also starred a killer soundtrack and sense of fashion.
Deadly Class is channeling The Lost Boys, but the angsty teen vampires are now angsty teenage human (so far) assassins, and they’ve been collected by Peter Pan Headmaster Lin, played by a kindly and wise, but menacing, Benedict Wong, to perfect their arts. The point of view character and lostest of the lost kids is Marcus Lopez, played by Benjamin Wadsworth.
He’s joined at the school by Netflix’s teen rom-com queen Lana Condor, who plays Saya, the queen of King’s Dominion and a Yakuza (Japanese mob) legacy student. Other regulars among the students include: María Gabriela de Faría as Maria Salazar, who is a member of the Latino gang the Soto Vatos. On his first day of school, she manipulates Marcus into getting into a fight with her soon to be ex-boyfriend, Chico, the leader of the Soto Vatos, played by Michel Duval. Marcus becomes friends with Billy Bennett, played by Liam James, a punker who is outgoing and without a gang affiliation, just like Marcos, and Willie Lewis, played by Luke Tennie, a member of the F.W.O. (Final World Order). Erica Cerra, Henry Rollins and Christopher Heyerdahl can be spotted among the teachers at King’s Dominion.
Like Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, King’s Dominion Atelier of the Deadly Arts is eccentric and encourages individualism, but it also has a few strict rules that must be obeyed. It’s all fun and games until someone ends up dead. Someone who wasn’t part of a class assignment, that is.
It can’t be fun for Master Lin to have to break the news to a world-class assassin that their pride and joy was killed by an underclassman in gym.
The pilot begins at King’s Dominion, San Francisco, 1987. Master Lin is expounding on the history of the 20th century while pacing the aisles between students in a classroom. He tells his high school students that it was a teenager with a gun, a Serbian peasant, who assassinated the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, an act which kicked off World War I, led to World War II, and still influences the Cold War in the late 20th century.
But was the teenager on assignment from King’s Dominion, or just a talented amateur?
Thinking the Headmaster’s back is turned, one of the students, Brandy Lynn (Siobhan Williams), leader of the Dixie Mob and a white supremacist, passes Marcus a note. Master Lin pins the note down on Marcus’ desk with one end of his staff/cane, then whips Brandy in the face with the other end, breaking her nose, all without turning to look at Brandy, and with only a brief pause in the lesson. He continues as though nothing has happened. Brandy licks her own blood off her fingers, and gives Marcus a flirty, if challenging, look. Marcus looks horrified by the entire situation.
It’s his first day of school.
Marcus opens up the note. It’s a friendly welcome to the school, reminding him, “You’re dead, mutt.”
Meanwhile, Master Lin has moved on to the philosophical portion of his lecture:
“Character is revealed through choice. Consider for a moment. Who would be the recipient of your rage: A thief, a child molester, a world leader? This one decision betrays all secrets and unveils true motive. Ask yourself. On that dark ledge, poised to strike with clean opportunity, who would you kill?”
Flashback to the day before. Marcus is living on the street, musing about his dead parents and their tendencies toward positive thinking and religious platitudes. He’s currently fresh out of both. The best he can do is a paltry, “Happiness is the absence of pain.” He had to do something awful to get out of the boys’ home he was living in, something that involved people screaming in a fire and the idea that God would reject him now. He’s wanted for a dozen murders.
All he wants is a sense of normalcy and a safe place to call home. But the people who pass by him as he huddles on a street corner assume he’s in this situation because he’s done something to deserve it. Maybe they’re right.
Unbeknownst to him, from the shadows, several students from King’s Dominion keep an eye on Marcus as he wanders through the streets. He goes “home” to a tent city that the homeless have set up in an abandoned lot. He’s met by Rory, the king of the tent city, who is cruel, violent, and mentally ill. He takes Marcus’ backpack, sorts through it, and tosses aside anything that’s valuable to Marcus. Then Rory holds a knife to his throat and threatens him for good measure.
Marcus grabs what he can of his stuff and wanders away again, telling the viewers that, “Reagan cut funds for the local nuthouses
Marcus finds a joint that someone just discarded on the pavement, so he picks it up and continues smoking it. At the end of the block, he sees a Day of the Dead procession go by, just as he starts hallucinating. He thinks the drugs might have been a bad idea. Then Reagan appears in a broken TV and starts speaking to him. Ronnie climbs out of the TV and chases Marcus into the celebration, where a girl in full Calavera sugar skull regalia is dancing.
Marcus stops to stare at the dancer, who is Maria Salazar, one of his future classmates. Willie Lewis comes up behind him to tell him that the police have spotted him, so Marcus runs, while Maria uses her fans, which are edged with razor blades, to slow the cops down. She’s helped by Billy Bennett and his skateboard.
Marcus runs into a parking garage and keeps running. A girl, Saya, pulls up in front of him on a bike and tells him to gets on, just before the police catch up to them. Marcus is too stoned to act quickly, so the window of opportunity to escape closes. The police tell them to come out with their hands up, or whatever. Saya does, but then she beats up the cops while Marcus freaks out. Willie and Billy catch up to them, and put a hood over Marcus’ head.
When the hood comes off, Marcus is tied to a chair in a meat locker, with the four students heckling him. Master Lin arrives and gently chides them. He speaks softly and carries a big stick, quite literally. He also has a cup of tea, which he drinks carefully and properly. Master Lin offers Marcus a spot at the school, where he can learn the deadly arts, with peers who share his passion for killing, and have the fire inside him valued and nourished.
Marcus, understandably, doesn’t trust the offer. He walks out, pickpocketing Willie on the way.
You have to admire the kid’s nerve.
When Marcus gets back to the tent city, the police are there looking for him. Rory the psycho is helping them. Everything Marcus owns is gone, other than what he was carrying with him.
Marcus finds a sidewalk bench to rest on for the night. He remembers his parents. Viewers see the memories as an animated flashback.
He was walking down the street with his family, holding a balloon and eating an ice cream cone. After years of hard times, things were better for them, but Marcus didn’t trust it to last. His dad stopped to tell him he needed to find a way to be happy, since this one life is all they have.
Then they continued walking. Marcus was a little behind his parents as they walked by Coit Tower. The next thing he knew, a woman named Barbara Salinger jumped from the tower and landed on his parents, killing all three. She was a suicidal schizophrenic who was released from the hospital because of Reagan’s funding cuts.
All of Marcus’ worst fears came true.
These days, he doesn’t believe in God, but he does pray for a way out. He stands at the top of the same tower, and prepares to jump. Saya appears in the shadows, and tries to convince him to come back to the school with her instead. She pretends that she can relate to him and that she’s attracted to him. She kisses him and tells him he doesn’t have to be alone.
At least half of what she tells him are lies. Some of it is probably true. Whether or not she’s attracted to him is TBD.
When they get to the school, which is in the Asian section of town, she leads him through to the back of a butcher shop, as she tells him that the first rule of King’s Dominion is that you never talk about King’s Dominion. is that you never reveal its location, or Master Lin will take great pleasure in killing you slowly and creatively.
After that, the rules are typical of a strict high school: No disobedience, no drugs, and no sex. Maria interjects that the no sex rule was made to be broken. By now, they’re back in the meat locker. A monk in an executioner’s robe comes into the room to act as Marcus’ escort. He leads them out the back door, into a small courtyard surrounded by buildings, then into a medieval stone building (of course).
The monk drops Marcus off in Master Lin’s office. It’s warm and cluttered, but also filled with dangerous secrets. Lin begins by telling Marcus a little history. It seems that he’s a bit of a history buff.
First, a stark truth: “Some people deserve to die.” There can be nobility in killing, though often people are no better than animals in their quest for survival.
Lin’s great-great grandfather came to America looking forward to a better life. All he found was a life filled with brutal racism and near slavery. So he taught himself to kill and founded the school.
Over the generations, the school’s focus has widened, and Lin thinks of it as training creative problem solvers. But his ancestor’s original purpose still lies at its heart: To give the poor the skills they need to overthrow their corrupt leaders. If Marcus stays, Lin can teach him to do the same. Marcus decides to go for it.
He accepts his school blazer and heads off to get cleaned and polished for his first day of school.
On his first morning, he runs into Willie and Saya, separately, in the halls. Both rebuff him. Brandy Lynn helpfully tells him that he’s not good enough for Saya. But she uses colorfully racist language that, until Trump’s campaign started, I hadn’t heard since I was a child. Then, in his locker, he finds a doll with a dagger through it, labelled “child killer”.
It’s not that different from the way he’s been treated, as the new kid, everywhere else he’s lived.
Maria approaches and asks if he’s Mexican. Marcus explains that his dad was Nicaraguan and his mom was from Kansas. Maria tells him that the whole school is wondering if his reputation, as a guy who killed 12 people, is real. Then she asks what his affiliation is. He doesn’t know what she means. “Being in a gang is mandatory for survival.”
Maria invites Marcus to run with her gang, Soto Vatos, since they are his own people. Plus, she wants to get to know him better.
She’s rudely shoved up against the wall by Chico, her boyfriend and the leader of Soto Vatos. He doesn’t like the way she’s talking to Marcus. Marcus pushes Chico off of Maria, so Chico punches Marcus in the stomach, hard.
Chico pulls out his knife and waves it around Marcus’ face and neck, which is triggery for him, after the way Rory the Evil King of the Homeless treated him. Chico’s sidekick makes him stop, because one of the executioner monk hall monitors is around, so Chico grabs a big gulp from Billy, and pours it over Marcus’ head. He drops the empty cup near Billy and tells Marcus’ they’ll pick up the real fight again that evening. Billy waves the cup at Marcus as he walks away.
It’s a unique take on the welcome wagon.
Back to the opening scene, which turns out to take place in AP Black Arts. Marcus looks at Brandy Lynn’s sweet note, which tells him he’s dead. The message is surrounded by swastikas. She’s using them as her calling card, not calling Marcus a Nazi.
Brandy Lynn is so unabashedly terrible that I might be developing a thing for her. Plus, she’s named Brandy Lynn. All of the girls are amazing, really.
Oops, better pay attention. Master Lin says that tonight’s homework is to find someone who deserves to die, and kill them, dispose of the body, then bring him proof. It’s worth half the semester’s grade.
Just your average mob hit, should be no problem.
Marcus’ mind immediately goes to Rory, who openly murdered whoever he wanted to, eventually not even bothering to hide the bodies. There was nothing the others could do, because the cops don’t care about the homeless.
Next up is Hand to Hand class, taught by Jo Lupo Miss De Luca (Erica Cerra), who doesn’t have time for philosophy. “Hand-wringing Liberal ideals won’t keep you safe. The world respects those who can protect themselves.”
Students are assigned to pick a partner and find their weakness. Maria picks Marcus. Saya is with the Yakuza kids. Marcus gives her a longing look, because of course he does. Maria understands his type, and isn’t amused. She gives him excellent fighting tips, which he mostly ignores, because boys aren’t always very bright.
Billy ends up with Viktor, a muscle-bound Russian murder bot. Viktor breaks some part of Billy’s hand or arm, because Viktor is homophobic and also possibly attracted to Billy. I didn’t quite catch which way that was supposed to go.
By the end of class, Marcus is wondering if he’s joined a death cult. Why did it take him so long to ask this question? He’s handed a wooden box with a rat skeleton inside as part of his hazing ritual.
Looks like a death cult.
Marcus comforts himself with the knowledge that it’s against the rules to kill another student without an instructor’s permission.
He’s remembering how to think positively again already.
Time for poison lab with the rest of the gang that he’s had such fun with today. While they’re preparing the poison they’ll use to kill cute little bunnies, Billy, who is Marcus’ lab partner, asks Marcus to distract Viktor for a minute. Marcus knocks a book on the floor and asks Viktor to pick it up.
While Viktor is arrogantly telling Marcus no, Petra, who is sitting next Viktor, grabs Viktor’s soda can and holds it where Billy can reach it to put a few drops of something in.
The teacher, Mr Denke, notices what they’re doing and turns it into a teachable moment. He asks the class to name a poison which is ideal for making a statement. There’s some discussion over whether it’s better to use a fast or slow acting poison for the statement, depending on whether you want a big, splashy effect versus prolonged suffering and revenge. Viktor suggests sodium cyanide, because it kills in seconds, while Petra chimes in with cyanide, because it leaves the victim convulsing for hours. Either way, the message is that no one is safe from the poisoner, anywhere.
Viktor makes a pass at Petra, but then the poison takes effect. He tries to run for the boys room, but the teacher makes him stay in the classroom and suffer through the shame of the poison and its gastrointestinal effects. Viktor invited the attack by being a jerk. Mr Denke tells Billy to get a mop. That’s for using the poison in Mr Denke’s classroom.
Next up is lunch, where of course everyone sits with their own kind. Billy exuberantly explains the caste system to Marcus, starting with Chico, who can’t take his eyes off of Marcus. Probably not in a good way. Soto Vatos is cartel and the top gang on campus, like the football team at a normal school. The Preps are rich kids, mostly from CIA and FBI families. Marcus calls them fascists and he’s not wrong. Then there’s Brandy Lynn’s Dixie Mob, inbred remnants of the Confederacy from the Deep South, with an air of White Nationalism and Nazism around the edges.
The Stoners Hessians, though lower on the totem pole, perform the vital functions of being both the gaming nerds and the source of drugs for the school, even though drugs are forbidden. Maria forgot to mention the work around for that rule. Next is Willie’s Final World Order, out of Watts, who Billy describes as “party bummers”.
Marcus asks about “the unobtainable Saya, part valedictorian, part prom queen. 100% bitch.” Saya is the leader of the Yakuza kids of the Kuroki Syndicate. Marcus waves to Saya, but she turns away and Billy stops him, explaining that he’s a Rat. “As in not from a legacy,” bottom of the food chain, losers, no affiliation. Hence the welcoming gift of the rat skeleton.
There are perks to being a Rat, which Marcus learns when Billy drags him up to the roof of the school, the loser’s hangout spot, otherwise known as the Graveyard. Petra is there, getting high with Lex, another punk. Petra has a slight variation going, the goth girl look.
They move from discussing Chico’s desire to kill Marcus to who they’d each like to kill. Lex has a long list of targets. Marcus has just one: Ronald Reagan, the man who ruined his life. The other three kids laugh at him, assuming no one can get to a president, and Chico will kill Marcus anyway.
Saya finds Maria in a stall in the ladies room, struggling to open a bottle of Valproate, a prescription medication that’s used for seizures, migraines and bipolar disorder. Maria drops the bottle, and Saya hands it back. Maria has obviously been crying.
Maria takes the bottle and hurries away. Saya tries to follow her, but Marcus stops her. He wants to talk to her about fighting Chico. While they’re talking, he admits that his reputation for murder is blown out of proportion. He was nine when his parents died and he was sent to a boys’ home that was a front for a sweatshop. They tortured and abused the kids. He leaves it unsaid, but there’s a good chance he’s including sexual abuse. When he escaped, some guards got hurt, but he didn’t kill the kids.
The point is, he doesn’t think he’s like the rest of the students. Saya asks why he came back with her then. He gives the obvious answer: She told him to and then she kissed him and said he didn’t have to be alone.
Batting her eyelashes at him took away his free will and made him unable to make his own decisions. Barf. Weak excuse. Any idiot knows that you shouldn’t trust strangers. We’re all taught it in preschool. That means men should keep their distance from women they’ve just met, too.
Saya points out that she convinced him to come back as part of an assignment for Lin, and she didn’t tell Marcus to antagonize Chico. The kind of person Chico is should have been obvious. Her advice is to run.
Marcus, who is apparently more of a flunkie than a leader, does what Saya says, again, and tries to run. He runs straight into Maria, who now has a black eye. She tells him that Chico said he’d do a lot worse to Marcus.
You’d think Marcus would be smarter than this. That black eye look days old. There’s no purpling, no red, no swelling. Just a flat black bruise. It’s obviously makeup.
These girls must be killer assassins and spies, though. I’d hire Maria in a minute.
Marcus finds Chico with the Soto Vatos in the courtyard. He comes up behind Chico and sucker punches him in the face. Chico quickly gains the upper hand, with the help of his main goon, Juan. Chico pushes Marcus up against a wall and pulls out his knife again. He wants Marcus to concede the fight by saying that Chico is the man and Marcus is his bitch.
Marcus: “You’re just a dickless rich kid in a prep school, playing the role Daddy assigned. You got something to lose. I don’t. I fought a guy who carves people up for fun. You’re just a poser… Do it!”
Chico keeps taunting Marcus, but doesn’t actually cut him. Then Master Lin yells for them to stop. Chico pretends that they were just sparring. Marcus continues with his plan to run away.
Willie, driving his car, follows Marcus out into Chinatown. He’s on his way to do their Deadly Arts assignment, and he’s decided that Rory, who he heard Marcus mention during the fight, would be the perfect mark. Marcus is going to help him. Willie and his gun won’t take no for an answer.
Clearly these students need to work on understanding how consent works. Just because you’re an assassin, doesn’t mean you also have to be an uncivilized jerk.
Marcus shows Willie a drawing he did of Rory so that Marcus will know what Rory looks like. There’s a discussions of comic books and comic art in which Willie puts his gun to Marcus’ head to make his point.
Once they get to the tent city, Willie has his moment of truth, but he can’t bring himself to shoot Rory. He tells Marcus that he’s actually a pacifist. Marcus feels that it would have been helpful to know that before entering the psycho serial killer’s lair, since he’s now barreling down on them. They split up and run, but Rory corners Willie in a dead end. Just as he’s about to attack Willie, Marcus hits him in the head, hard, with a thick pipe.
Willie tries to get Marcus to run, but he stays, and hits Rory again, killing him. Then he takes back the family photo that Rory stole from him, the only photo he had of his parents. He tells Willie that he did their assignment: He killed someone who deserved it.
While Marcus was making his decision, then killing Rory, the screen pulsed between going dark and showing the action, and the music included a pulsing drumbeat with the same rhythm. It was as if Marcus’ heartbeat took over the viewing experience while he made the most important decision of his life, the decision whether to become a murderer or not, and whether to make the school his home.
They gather up Rory’s body and dispose of it in a dumpster, setting the dumpster on fire to get rid of any incriminating evidence. As they work, Willie tells Marcus that his mom is the OG (original gangster). It’s just who she is, while Willie isn’t cut out for this work. She sent him to King’s Dominion to make him into a man. Marcus thinks he’s okay already, his mom’s just a jerk.
Willie seems to be just fine at the clean up side of the job. He just shouldn’t be the trigger man. He considers becoming a runaway, like Marcus, but Marcus discourages him, telling him how awful his life really is. Marcus figures that they’ve already done the hard part, and he’s got nowhere else to go. Willie warns him that Lin’s assignments will get worse. Marcus will be Willie’s study buddy for those, too.
When they get back to school, Marcus stays out in the courtyard to have a cigarette. His hands are shaking.
Maria is also in the courtyard. She tells him he embarrassed Chico. They’ll be feuding forever, now. Shockingly, her black eye has also miraculously healed. Maria admits that the black eye was makeup. She tells Marcus that he wanted to play hero, so she gave him a reason. She wants him to kill Chico for her. But she wasn’t just pretending to like him. “No one’s ever fought for me before. Chico gets in fights about me, but not for me.”
She’s kisses him. He says he has enough problems without getting involved right now. Maria tells him that there’s a party on the rooftop. He should come. He verbally stumbles around, but says okay.
When Marcus goes inside, Master Lin is waiting for him.
Lin: “What do you want here, Marcus?”
Marcus: “A reason to wake up.”
Lin: “Tragedy will always find you. That won’t change here. But how you respond to it will.”
Marcus: “Yeah, well, sh–ty things just happen. What’s the response to that?”
Lin: “My daughter Naya was two when she and my wife were killed. The people I loved most, taken by the faulty brakes of a freight liner. And my response? I found the drug-addled truck driver, the greedy owner who couldn’t check the brake lines, and the judge who called my family’s murder an act of God. They were my first kills.”
Marcus: “But your family was still gone.”
Lin: “As are the men responsible.”
Marcus: “And it helped?”
Lin: “Not at first. Even with my training, the weight of it haunted me. Years of sleepless guilt. Then, over time, I accepted it was my right to exact justice. Why should they enjoy another single day?”
Marcus: “It’s like you said. Some people deserve to die.”
Lin: “Once you shed your fear of choosing who does and who doesn’t, you’ll see. Strength feels better than weakness.”
As they’ve been talking, Master Lin has walked Marcus through the dormitory, to the door of his new room. Now, he swings it open and Marcus walks inside. It’s a literal broom closet with a small bed in the corner. Most of the students would be insulted, but to Marcus, having his own space and his own bed, with a lock on the door, feels like a palace.
Master Lin has photos of the students we know, plus a few others, spread out on his desk. Saya walks in and asks if she’s finished with her assignment. Lin says, “Not yet,” and passes her the photo of Marcus.
Marcus goes to the rooftop party and muses on the differences between a normal suburban desk job, an establishment job that involves killing, such as a cop or a soldier, and what he’s learning to do. He thinks he’d hate being normal, and that the other two probably aren’t that different from each other. “Maybe I’ve finally found a reason to live, in a place surrounded by death.”
He’s standing next to Maria and looking at Saya as he says this. Saya has an increasingly disturbed look on her face.
Just what is Saya’s assignment from Master Lin?
Commentary
Did Lin tell Saya to kill Marcus because he hates child killers? Did he order her to seduce Marcus and learn all of his secrets? Was Lin’s story about the death of his wife and child the truth? I assume it was, but we know he approves of lying with purpose. He may also have been giving Marcus a hint that someone would be coming for him, or looking for some sign of remorse for killing 12 innocent children. We know, and Saya knows, that he didn’t kill the kids, but Lin doesn’t know that. (Unless, like Dumbledore, he has house elf spies everywhere, telling him everything that happens. Or Marcus was lying and he did kill the kids.). When Lin didn’t see any remorse in Marcus, he may have decided that Marcus deserved to die for the murders. Or at least be further tested in some way.
I have a feeling that new students have to pass a lot of tests before they’re truly accepted at the school, particularly the Rats like Marcus, who have no connections and only sketchy stories to recommend them. This is what Lin is ultimately looking for:
“Once you shed your fear of choosing who does and who doesn’t [deserve to live], you’ll see. Strength feels better than weakness.”
As Marcus pointed out, some of the supposedly toughest kids at the school are posers who’ve been coddled all of their lives. They don’t know how to fight and struggle for their lives and they’ve never been hungry for anything. Almost all of the students are being trained to do a job and will be sent back to the organzations that are sponsoring their educations. They support the school financially, but they aren’t its reason for existing. The students Lin is passionate about are the Rats and the occasional other student who have the fire inside that he mentioned to Marcus. Not a fire for random, sadistic killing, but a passion for vigilante justice and the strength to stand up to bullies and corrupt authorities.
“Who would you kill- world leader, child molester, or thief?”
If I kill the world leader, do I get to install the puppet government of my choice to replace him? Because if the dictator’s brother is going to take over when he’s gone and continue the same policies, there’s no point. I might as well do some concrete good, and save a few kids from being molested.
As both governor of California in the 70s and president of the US in the 80s, one of Reagan’s missions was to cut funding for mental hospitals and deinstitutionalize severely mentally ill patients. Some went to for profit institutions, where they were abused. Some went to prison. And many became homeless, causing a surge in homelessness and street violence in the US in the 80s. I used to walk by the state mental hospital on my way to college everyday, and I remember clearly the sudden appearance of homeless people in the neighborhood when the funding cuts hit. The patients, who had been institutionalized for years, even decades, were literally dumped outside the front door to fend for themselves.
Reagan climbing out of the TV is reminiscent of this famous video from 1986:
Master Lin: “What if I told you there’s a home for people like you? A school where you’d be surrounded by your peers?”
Marcus: “Only what? I dress up like a Viking so you can take tasteful pictures?”
Apparently, what you need is a D&D identity. Billy is an elvish thief named Jizzledim.
Marcus’ locker combination, for anyone who wants to break into the school and search through his stuff: Left 33, Right 22, Left 75
So this is where Glee’s Dalton Academy relocated to after they rebuilt from the fire. It all makes perfect sense now. And they rebuilt in stone, so it wouldn’t burn again so easily.
Rick Remender Opens Up About Bringing Deadly Class to TV
Comic book and pilot author Rick Remender speaking about his hero, the musician and author Henry Rollins, who plays poisons teacher Jurgen Denke in Deadly Class, and about the inspirations for the stories in the books and series:
“I realized I also have childhood stories I’d love to tell. So I thought, “I’ll wrap them up in a high school for assassins. I’ll use the danger as a metaphor for the high emotions and trauma of the teen years.”
“So many of these stories and characters are based on heightened, metaphorical versions of things I went through.”
“I wanted to talk to him about a homeless gentlemen named Paul that he used to mention in his stories. One day he was walking past Paul on the street and Paul said to him, “I always wanted to be a dancer but I never could get the sh-t off my shoes.” Henry turned that into something that was very inspiring to me. It made me quit my job in animation and pursue my dreams to make my own comic books. He turned it into this parable of we all want to be dancers if we could just get the sh-t off our shoes.”
Related items from Amazon.com:
Images courtesy of SYFY.
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