By Dustin Cabeal

As a practice, I don't like to bunch issues together for review, but there are instances in which I simply don't have anything different to say about the issues. I would be copying and paste my review twice which just seems tacky to me. I've seen it done, but I personally don't like it. I mention this because my thoughts and feelings on these two issues are the same so hence, one review.

If you're going to incorporate music into a comic, I am the person you want to check it out. I love comic about music. In the same token I am also a harsh critic for comics about music because when they're done well, they're magical and when they're done poorly, they're some of the hardest comics to read on the planet.

A Rapper's Words is somewhere in between all that. It's not so much a comic book as it is an illustrated music video. The narrative is rapper Quanstar's lyrics and nothing else. There's no dialogue and no characters to follow. It's visuals paired with lyrics. What keeps that from being terrible is that the lyrics are decent. They flow quite well; there's intelligence to their construction that's rather interesting.

The lyrics on their own inspire visuals, if it were just music, your mind would be creating the imagery, but instead there's art. The artist does okay. The art is clean and easy to follow, but none of it seems to make the lyrics pop. None of it is that impressive or creative that you look at it and say, "That's exactly what I had in mind." Instead, it's pretty much just a visual representation of the lyrics, but as shallow as possible. The art doesn't support the lyrics, but instead shows what they've already said.

Comics are many things. You can create them many ways, and I'm not saying that A Rapper's Words is wrong in its creation, but when the narration leads the dance and never trusts the art to lead, you're making a comic in title alone. These two issues never resonated with me nor did they make me curious enough to look up Quanstar's music. Great comics about music stay with you like a great song, but an average comic is quickly forgotten.

Score: 2/5

A Rapper's Words #1-2
LINK TO PURCHASE