The intersected space in the Venn diagram of “people who love Marvel comics” and “people who love hip-hop” is most likely pretty enormous. Traditionally having appealed to the same demographic (read: teenage boys), hip-hop has made no secret of its love for a good comic, with countless references across all walks of rap – most notably MF DOOM, Tony Starks aka Ghostface Killah, Eminem, El-P, Public Enemy, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Jean Grae, Run DMC and plenty, plenty more have shown their geeky side.
Over the last few months, Marvel has been giving back to the hip-hop community by releasing variant covers that feature hip-hop album covers. Run the Jewels, Kendrick Lamar, De La Soul, Missy Elliott, Tupac, Wu-Tang Clan and more have received the Marvel treatment. The response has been enormous, and the company have now announced their plans to document the full series in a book of its own.
The New York Times has now reported that Marvel have announced a 32-page FREE book, which will feature 14 choice selections of the variant covers. Speaking to NYT, Marvel editor-in-chief Axel Alonso said that “the hip-hop variants were a really special initiative that caught fire in the outside world.
“We thought this was a great opportunity to highlight that and make it available to fans for free.”
You’ll be able to grab a copy for yourself from January 6 2016.
Check some of them out here. Can you guess every album?
