The powers that be have helped propel Run the Jewels’ impeccable second installment of their album catalog to new heights. For the upcoming Issue 45 of Deadpool and Issue Two of Howard the Duck, Marvel Comics editor-in-chief and apparent Hip-Hop subscriber Axel Alonso channeled the duo’s custom bloody zombie hand and gold chain artwork for both covers.
Killer Mike and El-P spoke of their initial reactions to Rolling Stone about the rare dubious honor.
“We didn’t know it was happening,” El-P says. “We just got told it was happening and we were like, ‘You can’t be serious, that’s not possible, how is that even possible?’ Then they showed us the covers. And it’s f*cking crazy.”
Killer Mike actually had an insider’s track clarifying, “I knew it was happening potentially” seeing that their management had been in previous talks with Marvel about the mock-up. “But when it came all the way through, I was dancing around the room in my Polo underwear.”
Next image; Alonso says the idea came about from seeing his son play football with his friends. “Seeing the way that my 11-year-old son and his friends were improv-ing off of this really vibrant, iconic image…It got me thinking,” he remembers. “If you’ve got this movement around the world from Bangladesh to Taiwan, people are doing their interpretations of this logo, and I got these roughnecks doing it on the sideline of a football game…Maybe Marvel could weight in on this and have some fun.”
Alonso openly cites the “touchdown” line from “Close Your Eyes (and Count to F*ck)” as fuse that lit the light bulb in his head and artists Mahmud Asrar and Skottie Young couldn’t get to work fast enough on Howard the Duck and Deadpool, respectively.
“Comic books are a part of the creative world of a kid in an urban environment,” El-P tells RS. “You might not admit it on record, but you talk to almost every rapper — we all grew up with that shit. I guarantee you like 80 percent of any rappers that you meet probably went through a large comic book phase.”
“Just being perceived as a quote-unquote urban artist, you never get to embellish that part,” Killer Mike chimed in. “So I haven’t been as visible on that side. But anybody who follows me on Instagram knows I’m a thirtysomething-year-old child. I play with toys, comics, that type of shit, so this is like a very big deal for me.”
Hit the following pages to see the Marvel Comics/Run The Jewels collaboration.
—
Photos: Red Bull, Marvel Comics
