DC meets hip hop mash-up

"little kon-el" at the DC Universe message board asks what would have happened in the "British Invasion" had never occurred at DC in the 80s, offering up his take on what might have happened if DC Comics had recruited Russell Simmons instead of Alan Moore:

In their ring, Russell Simmons had art and rap contacts to help create a new and innovative line of comics, akin to Jack Kirby's New Gods stories, where we would have comics that appealed to street culture. Because Crisis effectively ended the titles, new ideas had to be brought to the forefront.

Dwayne McDuffie came on board, along with Christopher Priest and Marv Wolfman and George Perez and Run DMC and Kurtis Blow to help create a new line that aimed towards a wider demographic. Marv Wolfman already had in mind of adding a more racially diverse mix of superheroic icons into DC Comics and, combined with the street credible hip hop and graphitti artists that Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin brought to the table, recreating Superman for the 1980s.

Superman was now black and had a new Supergirl that was every bit his equal and the love of his life. Wonder Woman, as revitalized by George Perez and the Ad-Rock, was a Hispanic woman revitalized by Mayan mythology in order to fight crime in Boston. Batman, rewritten by Rev Run (with input from Spike Lee) now lived in a racially divided Gotham City, a suburb of Atlanta, where Bruce Wayne grew up as a mortician's son that fought crime at night.

It's an entertaining read that eventually sees a team-up between Rob Liefield and Vanilla Ice; go check it out.

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