These Marvel superhero/hip hop cover mashups are amazing in every way
Real talk, though Marvel’s cinematic universe is making super cool and fun films, its comics department is doing objectively more exciting stuff. From resetting all of their titles to adding loads of gender, race, and body type diversity into their canon, Marvel comics just can’t stop getting it right. Lest you wonder if this will take away from the fun inherent in comics, you’d be so, so wrong. For the aforementioned resets of marquee titles like The Amazing Spider-Man and Ms. Marvel, the company commissioned a bevy of artists for a series of Marvel/hip hop variant covers.
If you’re going “Wait, what” right now, some explanation: Official covers have to somewhat follow the style of the artists who illustrate the comics, while variant covers are basically like alternative album art, and their special artists generally have more freedom in how they portray characters.
For their Issue 1 relaunch, Marvel chose to have all the variant covers follow a theme, and that theme is legendary hip hop album covers. Comic icons meet music icons for an art collab that’s beautiful, playful, and just really well done.
There are 11 variant covers being released in this series; here are some of our favorites:
Captain America | A$AP Rocky, Long.Live.A$AP
Ant-Man | The Notorious B.I.G., Ready to Die
The Extraordinary X-Men | De La Soul, 3 Feet High and Rising
Ms. Marvel | Lauryn Hill, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
As mentioned in The AV Club, the comics/hip hop crossover has been going on for quite some time:
We didn’t think we could be more excited for the Marvel universe reset, and here we are. We’re all about the cultural conversations happening between creative mediums; and hey, the greatest musicians of our time are actually superheroes in their own ways, after all. (This is somebody’s cue to put together an Avengers-type pop star girl gang graphic novel series. You’re welcome.)
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(Images via Marvel)
