On Tuesday, Universal Music Enterprises announced a new deal
with Marvel Entertainment that would bring back their Hip-Hop Variant program. The
program puts Marvel characters into famous hip-hop album covers for special
edition reissues. LL Cool J’s ‘Mama Said Knock You Out’ featuring artwork from
Tim Bradstreet’s ‘Punisher #1,’ 50 Cent’s ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin’ featuring
artwork from Brian Stelfreeze’s ‘Invincible Iron Man #1’ and GZA’s ‘Liquid
Swords’ featuring artwork from Denys Cowan’s ‘Contest of Champions #1’ are the
first three albums to be getting the comic book treatment. Each album will be available
as a double color vinyl Variant Collector’s Edition and a deluxe edition that
also includes the original comic book and a 3D lenticular print of the cover
limited to 3,000 copies each.
Comic book art has had a place on album covers for decades.
And it hasn’t been for just hip-hop albums either. Hip-hop and rock artists have
booth seen fit to go for a more animated style when it came to packaging their
creative visions. And some of them have even commissioned work from some of the
most important comic artists in the field.
Vinyl Bay 777, Long Island’s music outlet, is taking a look
at some music’s most iconic album covers drawn by some of comics’ most iconic
artists. Here are six covers with some serious talent behind them.
1.
Big
Brother and the Holding Company, ‘Cheap Thrills’: Big Brother and the
Holding Company’s ‘Cheap Thrills’ has one of the most recognizable album covers
of the 1960s. It was drawn by underground artist and noted music lover R. Crumb
(known best for his controversial character Fritz the Cat) at Janis
Joplin’s request. In an interview
with the album’s art director John Berg, it was said that Crumb did not want to
be paid for the work because he didn’t want “Columbia’s filthy lucre.”
2.
GZA,
“Liquid Swords”: For his second solo album, Wu-Tang’s GZA enlisted the drawing
prowess of fellow New Yorker Denys Cowan for its cover art and videos. By the
time of the album’s release in 1995, Cowan had already made a name for himself
in both comics and music, having drawn for both DC and Marvel, as well as
collaborating on the one-time Prince comic book in 1991. As stated above, Cowan
will be revisiting this album cover for the new Marvel / Universal deal.
3.
Gorillaz: Besides being the pet project of Blur’s
Damon Albarn, the other collaborator on cartoon band Gorillaz is artist Jamie
Hewlett. Outside of the band, Hewlett is best known for his irreverent comic
series ‘Tank Girl,’ about a female bounty hunter who becomes an outlaw.
4.
Joe
Satriani, ‘Surfing With The Alien’: The only one of these albums to feature
an actual superhero on the cover, Joe Satriani decided to put a drawing of
Marvel’s Silver Surfer on the cover of his iconic second album, ‘Surfing With
The Alien.’ The character was originally created by the legendary Jack Kirby,
though the picture on the cover was taken from 1982’s Silver Surfer #1, drawn
by John Byrne. Byrne has been a prolific creator in his own right, having drawn
many of Marvel’s most beloved characters, including the X-Men and Fantastic
Four.
5.
Iggy
Pop, ‘Brick by Brick’: For the cover of Iggy Pop’s 1990 album ‘Brick by
Brick,’ Virgin Records decided to reach out to artist Charles Burns. Burns had
been known by then for his more macabre comics, based somewhere between horror
and sci-fi, having been published in Art Spiegelman’s ‘Raw’ magazine and Sub
Pop’s fanzine, as well as commissioned work for the likes of Time and the
Village Voice and his own series of graphic novels.
6.
Korn,
‘Follow the Leader’: When Korn released their 1998 album, ‘Follow the Leader,’
the artwork for the album became very associated with the band at the time. Not
only was it the album cover, but it also ended up becoming the story in both
breakout album single “Freak on a Leash” and the first single from their next
album “Falling Away from Me.” The work was created by Greg Capullo, who was a
comic artist with Marvel in the 1990s and has recently worked with DC drawing
Batman.
It is not unusual for musicians to use comic book art for their
album covers. Musicians in both rock and hip-hop have done so, some
collaborating with some pretty prolific artists. Marvel and Universal’s
upcoming Hip-Hop Variant reboot will be attempting to make the connection even
more clear by taking iconic covers and reimagining them with iconic characters
drawn by Marvel’s best artists. The result is sure to be something special.
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Find some of these iconic albums and more at Vinyl Bay 777.
As Long Island’s favorite new independent record shop, we have thousands of
titles to choose from in a variety of genres. Browse our wide selection of new
and used vinyl records, CDs, cassettes, music DVDs, memorabilia and more in
store at our Plainview location or online at vinylbay777.com. With more titles
being added to our selection all the time, you never know what you might find
at Vinyl Bay 777.
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