Music Gets Graphic

The worlds of music and comic books are colliding with increased frequency—and star power.

- Christian Holub

MUSIC IS A GENRE OF SOUND and passion, full of artists transforming their pain and love into sonic power. Comics are a genre of ink and paper, where creators use words and pictures to visualize fantasies of what never was and never could be. Recently, the two art forms have intersected for an unprecedented number of high-wattage projects, with some musicians, like hip-hop duo Rae Sremmurd, popping up in the pages of storied comics, and others, like the Weeknd, building entirely new comic universes and characters inspired by their own established personas: In October, Marvel announced that a Starboy comic based on the chart-topper will arrive in 2018. No matter how music and comics intersect, these crossover projects offer rich, immersive experiences that appeal to performers who like to be hands-on in all aspects of their art. “Comics have a unique point of view that can be very beneficial to adapting music,” says Dinesh Shamdasani, CEO of Valiant Entertainment, which published an issue of the Shadowman series starring Rae Sremmurd this past October. “We’re able to bring the emotions of music into the visual medium more robustly than film.”