Marvel hip-hop covers collected in free book


This year, Marvel Comics has released a series of comic book cover variants that pay tribute to classic hip-hop album covers. Some of the albums that Marvel used as inspiration include Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, Wu-Tang Clan’s Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), Vince Staples’ Summertime 06, A$AP Rocky’s Long.Live.A$AP, De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising, A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders and Run the Jewels’ Run the Jewels 2. Because of the popularity of the hip-hop cover variant series, Marvel is releasing a free, 32-page book featuring reprints of 14 of the cover images.
“The hip-hop variants were a really special initiative that caught fire in the outside world,” Marvel editor-in-chief Axel Alonso said in a New York Times story. “We thought this was a great opportunity to highlight that and make it available to fans for free.”
The comic will be available in participating stores on January 6. That’s a bit late to appear in our Holiday Gift Guide, but a cool after-holiday gift for the hip-hop fan you know. Check out some of the covers below.

Jeff Terich is the founder and editor of Treble. He's been writing about music for 20 years and has been published at American Songwriter, Bandcamp Daily, Reverb, Spin, Stereogum, uDiscoverMusic, VinylMePlease and some others that he's forgetting right now. He's still not tired of it.