“What? He jumped the shark on the fourth installment? It’s not even a comic book cover!” Fuck you, nerds, this week we’re gonna talk about the cover to The RZA’s debut solo album, Bobby Digital In Stereo. What is that? Why are we doing an album cover instead of a comic? Why was I so aggressive out of the gate? Well, forgive me, I’ve been listening to RZA all day and it’s hard to shake off.
RZA was a founding member and producer of the Wu-Tang Clan, the seminal hip hop outfit. The Wu-Tang were every white nerd in the 90’s gateway into hip hop because they’re incredible lyricists and composers with a singular voice who constructed their narratives through the lens of Wu-Tang/ Shoulin kung-fu movies, sci fi, and comic books. All the members took their names from Shaw Brothers movies. Ghostface Killah’s secondary name was Tony Starks. GZA’s solo album Liquid Swords is framed around audio samples from Shogun Assassin, and features an album cover and liner notes art by Denys Cowen, famed artist of Batman, The Question, Green Arrow, and Deathlok.
I shared a room with my older brother growing up, who had the one sheet for Bobby Digital In Stereo on the wall, and I was obsessed with it. The record itself is a fine concept album (though I’m partial to Liquid Swords), but my imagination ran wild as a kid wondering what this impossibly awesome, yet purely hypothetical movie was. The cover is painted by the legendary Bill Sienkiewicz, of Daredevil, Moon Knight, Elektra, New Mutants, Batman, and every other comic book title you could think of. Once again, The RZA and his band mates were all nerds, so when they hired artists for album covers, they knew who to get. Sienkiewicz is bald-facedly evoking 70’s collage-style genre movie posters, in the spirit of Enter the Dragon, Live and Let Die, Superfly, and Coffy.
In 2017, continuing their popular line of hip hop Variant covers, Marvel tapped Bill Sienkiewicz to draw from his own work for the cover of the first issue of their Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. miniseries. A nice wink and nod, and snake eating it’s own tail moment that got my money for a full six issue run.
I drew versions of this album cover all over my fifth grade notebooks. That little kung fu silhouette detail from the bottom lefthand corner still makes appearances in my notebook margins. This album cover fed my imagination for years because it promises a whole movie franchise I still want to see. To this day, it motivates me when I write to include varied interesting ideas and scenes that feel like this poster did to me as a kid, “This movie also has custom van chases, giant guns, helicopters, kung fu fights and hot ladies with masks and rifles?” It reminds me to keep things moving and not stagnate. It’s not a comic book, but it sure feels like one, and it’s remained with me my whole life. And at the end of the day this column is about cover images that stick with us.
And I still want to see this movie.
-Max
The Cyclops Lanterns 