September is right around the corner, and with it comes many things for many people — chief amongst them, the return to education. As the young ones head off to their public and private schools and the young adults head out to college to pretend they know how the world works, we like always find ourselves focusing on the inbetweeners, heading off to high school for a world full of hormones and mix tapes playlists and drama and all the fun that comes with it.

Of course, most of them don’t have to deal with the potential of being murdered by fellow students while they train how to be an assassin. But, hey, it’s 2014, not the 80’s anymore.

While we at Multiversity do tend to champion a few books here at Multiversity rather consistently, “Deadly Class” is a book that we love to talk about. Whether it’s our praise of the first issue or our celebration of how great the book reads reads in trade, we love to talk about Rick Remender and Wes Craig’s creator-owned ongoing about a group of kids enrolled in a private high school for assassins. And while there are other books of a similar ilk at Image, this book in particular has managed to strike a chord through it’s brutally honest writing and fantastic, emotive artwork — and today, we get our first look at the upcoming 7th issue, kicking off the second arc next month.

Take a look:

How about a round of applause for that Wes Craig fella, eh? Craig has never ceased to impress with each issue of the series; the first issue blew doors down with its inventive and fast-paced layouts, and Craig has found interesting and unique ways to build up the pace and tension of the series overtime. While these five pages come from different points in the store (as noted by the file names that Image sent over), it’s great to sit back and look at the magic that Craig is weaving throughout the pages. Craig and Loughridge do something truly wonderful together, with a beautiful palette that compliments the 80’s vibe of the series and helps to define the book in the stereotypical atmosphere that the 80’s found so dominant — which is something that book actively seems to rebel against, in true fashion, making it all the better.

And while there are no letters for us to enjoy here, it stands worth mentioning that Remender’s involvement isn’t too shabby either. Remender is seeing a bit of a creator-owned resurgence with this title, “Low” and “Black Science,” but I’d argue that “Deadly Class” is arguably his best current work if only because it seems the most honest. Yeah, it has assassins and all kinds of craziness at every corner of the series, but the fact that Remender is drawing from his own tumultuous coming-of-age story and incorporating it into the book only makes the essence of the story that much more palpable and easy to connect with — swords and ninjas and all.

Either way, September 17th can’t come soon enough. It’s going to be a brutal return, from the way things look, but we’re more than ready.

For the full press release from Image Comics, please see below.

Image Comics Press Release

Bestselling writer Rick Remender (BLACK SCIENCE, Uncanny Avengers) and artist Wes Craig return with an all-new story arc of the bestselling ‘80s assassin school series in DEADLY CLASS #7. Jump in on the series that USA Today described as “a bit like The Breakfast Club but with really, really dangerous kids” and that ComicVine called, “a crazy and intense series.”

DEADLY CLASS #7 begins in March of 1988, about four months after the harrowing events of issue #6, when the terrible ramifications of the crew’s actions come back to haunt them. After narrowly escaping death in Las Vegas, Marcus and his remaining gang return to Kings Dominion High School for the Deadly Arts. But they’re about to learn a hard lesson: blood begets blood, and no bad deed goes unpunished.

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DEADLY CLASS #7 arrives in stores this 9/17 and will be available for $3.50. It can be ordered using Diamond Code JUL140453. Final order cutoff deadline for retailers is TODAY, 8/25.

ABOUT IMAGE COMICS

Image Comics is a comic book and graphic novel publisher founded in 1992 by a collective of best-selling artists. Image has since gone on to become one of the largest comics publishers in the United States. Image currently has five partners: Robert Kirkman, Erik Larsen, Todd McFarlane, Marc Silvestri and Jim Valentino. It consists of five major houses: Todd McFarlane Productions, Top Cow Productions, Shadowline, Skybound and Image Central. Image publishes comics and graphic novels in nearly every genre, sub-genre, and style imaginable. It offers science fiction, fantasy, romance, horror, crime fiction, historical fiction, humor and more by the finest artists and writers working in the medium today. For more information, visit www.imagecomics.com.