Hello everyone, and welcome to the next installment of Investing On A Budget!  The goal of this article series is to provide investors and speculators with low-cost ways to invest in hot properties within the comic book community.  The focus of this article: The Hip-Hop variants!

What Are The Hip-Hop Variants?

Starting in 2016, Marvel began releasing variant covers for several of its books that were homages to various hip hop album covers.  These books are typically really solid investments, due to, amongst other things, the global appeal of hip-hop, the popularity of homage covers in general, the high quality of (most of) the covers, and the fact that most of the variants were for #1 issues.  Marvel has released a lot of these over the years and, as a result, some have become overlooked.  So, lets talk about a few of them now.

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #1

This book is really undervalued.  Squirrel Girl is a phenomenal character with a really devoted following and a lot of potential for a cartoon or TV show appearance.  If you have not read her solo book, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, I cannot recommend it highly enough, as it does a masterful job of reinventing the character for the 21st century and providing some much-needed depth.

Regardless, this book is not likely to lose its value due to the character's strong fanbase and has a very real shot at a value bump from the MCU or other production.  It is very rare to find a low-cost book with a great cover, great storytelling, and great MCU prospects.  Don't miss out.

Hercules #1 and Spider-Woman #1

 

Checkout my weekly MCU Spec article for the writeup on these two excellent investment opportunities.

Angela: Queen of Hel #1

Another great, incredibly undervalued book.  A lot of people were expecting Angela to show up in Thor: Love and Thunder and are now trying to dump her books for a fraction of what they paid.

Given how phenomenal of a character Angela is and the numerous opportunities she still has to show up in the MCU, I think that approach is a mistake.  When you see this book, buy it.

Squadron Supreme #1, Hyperion #1, and Nighthawk #1

I grouped all of these together because there is only one reason to invest in any of them; someone believes that the Squadron Supreme will show up in the MCU.  I use the word "only" because Marvel has tried several times to make the Squadron more prominent and it has never really moved the dial on these books.

These are not the first books to run out and buy. Still, they are some of the only hip-hop variants with MCU potential that can still be found for close to their cover price.

Red Wolf #1

Easily one of the most overlooked hip-hop variant investment opportunities.  First of all, this cover just looks so so cool.  Second, Red Wolf is a consistent source of MCU rumors, meaning the book is unlikely to lose value in the short term.  This dovetails with the third great reason to buy, which is the character's MCU potential.

Kevin Feige has made it clear Marvel Studios wants to tell more diverse stories.  This means there is a strong opening for interesting characters like Red Wolf.  The most likely place for him to show up is in the Echo TV series, as the show will need to fill out a supporting cast and it seems unlikely that the eponymous heroine would be the sole Native American character.  Given how affordable this book is right now, I'd strongly recommend picking up any cheap copies you can.

Conclusion

That's all for this week, folks, but don't worry!  There are a lot more affordable hip-hip covers out there; we are going to talk about all of them soon.  Know any other undervalued hip-hop variants?  Let me know in the comments!

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*Any perceived investment advice is that of the freelance blogger and does not represent advice on behalf of GoCollect.