I have been trying to rationalise my love for these hiphop variant covers, which is clearly a little ridiculous but I wanted to understand why I felt so strongly for them and if other people do too. Hip hop music was the first music I truly loved and I never even knew non-gangster rap even existed as a young teenager, until I went to university. It was the introduction of albums like this very one that had me digging in the sales at HMV looking for classic hip hop albums, that until then I had never heard of. I took great joy in finding other people who enjoyed the beauty of the music that I seemed to have newly discovered. What was interesting is that not many people did, except for older fans. A Tribe Called Quest and Q-Tip are not so unknown but few people recognised that Midnight Marauders was widely recognised as their best album and one of the greatest hiphop albums of all time. And now it has become the focus of an Amazing Spider-Man hip hop variant cover…so you can almost imagine the sheer delight on my face. Not only that but to have one of the best artists out there today, Del Mundo, emulate the cover is almost like a teenagers pipe dream. I aggrandise but I do enjoy the subtly homages such as Parker’s pose being the reverse to the original character and the little spiders around the outside replacing the clocks. Spider-Man has a massive supporting cast able to be part of the background faces too and I particularly like the expressions of Jameson and May but also all of the other Spidey heroes. The colouring is perfect in tone and there are the subtle touches such as the blue Spider-Man symbol that tie the homage together. I hope that everyone out there enjoys this cover as much as I do and I have a feeling I shall be wittering on about these variants for the next couple of months!
House Of Flying Scalpels 