Posted in: Comics | Tagged: black mask, Comics, covers, entertainment, hip hop, variant, Young Terrorists

All 13 Young Terrorists #1 Hip-Hop Retailer Exclusive Covers, From Black Mask

Published Mon, 17 Aug 2015 14:30:31 -0500

Last updated Mon, 17 Aug 2015 19:03:02 -0500

Black Mask publisher Matt Pizzolo told Comics Alliance, regarding the Marvel hip-hop variant cover and his own planned retailer exclusive variant covers for the launch of Young Terrorists #1 this week, which he had kept a secret until Marvel announced theirs for October. At which point Black Mask's were already at the printers..

The only albums we share in common are ODB and Biggie, and those were among the ones I was most concerned about doing since both ODB and Biggie died tragically. It really had to make sense for me to be willing to do those homages. I get the cleverness of Ant Man on Biggie and Howard The Duck on ODB, but it really felt cavalier and unsettling. They're mocked up on DeviantArt and Tumblr every day, but it's different to see major motion picture characters kind've mimicking those poses. It's not so much the homage, it's the context.

They showed off a few in that article, but we have the full gallery below. Pizzolli tells us,

Unlike the Marvel thing, it's not random. The book is about radical street politics and the sensibility really comes from hardcore hip hop, the book even opens with a Nas quote. So we did the covers as an homage to the types of art that inspired it.

School lockers full of submachine guns. Exploding burger shops. Shootouts with cops. Underground fight clubs and sci-fi porn funding radical militias of furious youth hellbent on seizing their freedom back from… whom? On Main Street everything looks fine, but, just below the surface, America is at war with itself.

Incendiary writer Matt Pizzolo (Godkiller, Occupy Comics) and striking newcomer Amancay Nahuelpan (upcoming Clandestino, Boy-1) unleash this tour-de-force that fearlessly assaults politics-as-usual. Young Terrorists continues the legacy of subversive comics like V For Vendetta, DMZ and The Invisibles, but brings it to the raging streets of contemporary America with a diverse ensemble of angry young anti-heroes.

Young Terrorists will blow minds as it rages against the machine and manically rips the scab off life under the new world order. This is the kind of story that could only be told in comics.

"A dark and brutal tale, told with invention and passion."
– J.M. DeMatteis (Spider-Man: Kraven's Last Hunt, Justice League)

"Smart dialogue, memorable characters, and in-your-face action. It's THE INVISIBLES on PCP."
– Julian Darius, SequArt (Grant Morrison: The Early Years)

What if "The Smoking Man" from X-Files was a real person, and his daughter found out what he did for a living?

The daughter of an assassinated globalist kingpin breaks out of an internment camp and leads her fellow escaped prisoners in a battle against an elitist conspiracy of shadow governments, megabanks, and military juntas in this edgy and subversive political thriller.

Amancay Nahuelpan's fresh, emotive and edgy art style gives kinetic life to the paradigm-shifting story, a return to Pizzolo's street philosophy and punk polemic roots that Film Threat characterized as "unapologetically brutal and surprisingly intelligent."

The 80-page issue 1 perfect-bound prestige-edition launches this new ongoing series, continuing forward with standard 32-page monthly issues.

Pizzolo and Nahuelpan set out to tell one of those fearless, aggressive stories that made them fall in love with comics – early Alan Moore, Vertigo when it was dangerous, shocking b&w undergrounds. They're out to dent people's brains with this thing.

It's a risky book. If you dig it, we hope you'll champion it. We truly believe this is unlike everything else out there, and it will live or die based on influential people like you.