Old School Comics as New Age Rap
East Coast supergroup, Czarface, is merging cultures of expression
In the 90s, my older brother and I collected hella Marvel Masterpieces cards with the other kids in our apartment building. We’d hang out in someone’s bedroom, discussing our favorite comic book characters while Tupac and Snoop Dogg played on Wild 107, the Bay Area’s radio station at the time.
The vast galaxies of rap and comics were distinctively imaginative, bold, and expressive — equally appealing forms of entertainment for first-generation Latino, Black and Asian boys with tons of unsupervised time and a growing fascination with pop culture — helping to define our sense of the world.
Like most kids I knew, I loved hearing hip-hop as much as I loved a good comic in my hands. Back then, though, the art forms could feel very distant from each other. One was meant for crowds of people and involved talking shit, while the other was usually meant for the library or hours on the bunk bed. I could enjoy both at the same time, true, but there weren’t really any hybrid artists intentionally or effectively bridging those aesthetics together. The Wu Tang Clan — whose one-of-a-kind album, “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” sold for $4 million — probably came the closest. But besides that, there was a fat divide between what you’d hear Ice Cube saying on “No Vaseline” and what you’d read in Dr. Banner’s talking bubble in The Incredible Hulk.
The connection was always there, though, deeply tangled beneath the surface—an undeniable sense of thrill, survival, unity, cataclysm, and selfhood provided in both genres.
It wasn’t until MF DOOM popped up as a mysterious entity, like a villain making destructive instrumentals in his hideaway layer in 1999 with “Operation Doomsday,” that I encountered a lyricist who took on a comic-infused persona while pridefully showcasing a quintessential NYC vibe. His defining characteristics are still evocative, decades later, in 2023: a steel mask, dark green hoodie, black durag, and of course, Tims. He embodied the dope creativity and weirdness of American culture and blended them into one mythic stature. And he helped pioneer a now-nerdist subgenre of comic book rap.
MF DOOM is sadly no longer with us. He unfortunately passed away in October, 2020. Still, his legacy is very much vibrant, since he helped to change the way rap albums and beat tapes should be cherished and collected in the same way a mint, first-edition Spider-Man comic would.
Although I’ve seen no shortage of rap icons get portrayed as evil influences by mainstream media over my lifetime, I’ve rarely seen rappers transcend into the integrated world of actual comic book villainy (or heroism). Once DOOM opened that door to a growing mainstream audience, it allowed for a previously untapped multiverse of possibilities to emerge — like this Marvel Comics series that redesigned famous hip-hop albums as comic book covers.
When I heard about Czarface, an East Coast rap supergroup that formed in 2013, I hit up a record store in my New England neighborhood at the time like I would hit up a comic shop as a kid — with a quickness and innocent excitement.
Initially made up of Wu Tang’s Inspectah Deck and Boston’s underground duo, 7L & Esoteric, the two emcees and DJ would eventually collaborate with MF DOOM, Ghostface Killah, GZA, Meyhem Lauren, Open Mike Eagle, Marvel Studios, and more, to make a veritable archive of comic-themed albums centered on boom bap battle rap and urban nerdisms.
The result is a BAM! WHAM! POW!’s worth of music, art, and funky music that disarms much of the typical rap bravado and replaces it with a childishly fun amount of hyperbolic narratives and head-noddingly hypnotic beats. And they also hire the same artist to illustrate and design all of their projects (over 10, to date), creating a consistent aesthetic — much like a comic series.
Their 2021 EP, “Czarface Meets Venom,” is an official part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as part of the 2021 film, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and places the group in the middle of a Venom vs. Carnage battle. Their single, “Good Guys, Bad Guys” is representative of their gritty, lyrically dense, world-building skills.
What I most love most about the group is their ability to effortlessly transport listeners into an epic showdown worthy of any rap head or comic addict’s attention, teaching us that nothing is off limits and everything is within reach within the modern genres.
It’s a bit of a metaphor for the power of American pop culture. How it doesn’t matter if you’re the son of immigrants who grew up doing graffiti or a comic-collecting weirdo (and I mean that in a positive way) who stashes make-believe characters beneath your bed. It’s all a beautifully uncategorizable mess.
But this world is messy, and it often feels like there aren’t as boundaries or borders in our current society as there used to be. It’s for the better, in my opinion. Why shouldn’t we transcend the ceilings imposed by archaic institutions and gatekeepers to make our own shit?
That’s the limitlessly inventive energy I strive to move with. That’s the power of DOOM’s Metal Face. It’s about the music, but it’s also about much more than the music. That’s why I return to every Czarface verse. And that’s why you should, too.