2023 "JLI as NWA - Straight Outta Compton" art by Rod Allen

I wasn't super impressed with most of the entries into CBR's The Line it is Drawn: Comic Characters on Famous Album Covers, although it was far better than the truly awful Unlikely New Avengers Lineups from the following week.* I mean, there were two versions of the Fantastic Four doing Abbey Road. How much more basic can you get? Also, actually published comics often do this shtick nowadays, so where's the novelty? Rod Allen, who seems to be a current star contributor to this project, bucked the trend with two actually good ideas. One was Flamebird doing Taylor Swift's 1989, which was inspired and well executed. The other was just cute, taking the abbreviation of the lighthearted Justice League International as a cue to interpolate with similarly abbreviated infamous gangsta rappers whose full name I can't use on a PG-rated blog. J'Onn stands in for Ice Cube (I figure he's more of a Dr. Dre, but the placement is preferable) while Booster, Ice, Fire, and Beetle fill in the rest. They trimmed out a member for this composition, and I think having Guy Gardner pointing his power ring at the viewer Eazy-E slot was a missed opportunity, but still a fun piece. Check out Rod Allen's Instagram for more.

*It wasn't (entirely) the artists' fault, as they were at the mercy of some really stupid, trying-too-hard-to-be-difficult reader suggestions. Admittedly, I'd just texted a joke to my friends about how every Marvel character plus Beetle Bailey and Heathcliff had been Avengers by this point. Kind of hard to parody a concept long committed to self-parody.