The Wu-Tang Clan exploded on the music landscape in the ‘90s, and by 1997, they’d released two critically-acclaimed group albums alongside a number of iconic solo projects and other releases. Wu-Tang really was an Army. Then, in November of 1998, the RZA (who is seen as the Abbott or, as Method Man put it, if the Wu forms like Voltron, “RZA happens to be the head) did the unthinkable: he dropped a solo album for his alter-ego, Bobby Digital, who came straight out of a(n adult) comic book titled Bobby Digital In Stereo. The sound was different (he’d not abandoned samples altogether, but it was keyboard-heavy), and the vibe was hedonism on 10, but it was uniquely RZA, and won critics and fans over, hitting a Gold RIAA certification in Feb. of 1999.
Now, 23 years later after the debut of Bobby Digital in Stereo, the RZA links up with Z2 Comics (who released the Noah Callahan-Bever-penned Cypress Hill: Dos Equis earlier this year) for Bobby Digital and The Pit of Snakes, a graphic novel that will brings the character into the medium which he was born from. “Out of all my creative personas and alter egos,” the RZA says in a press release, “Bobby Digital is probably the best fit, for comics and graphic novels. It’s a pleasure for me to collaborate with Z2 Comics and bring this lush world of creativity into the comic space.”
Promising readers that they will be given things they’ve never seen, the RZA links with writer Ryan O’Sullivan (Void Trip, A Dark Interlude) and artist Vasilis Lolos (Sound & Fury: The Graphic Novel) to give us Bobby Digital like we’ve not seen before. “RZA has always shown himself to be a Swiss Army Knife of creativity,” Z2 Publisher and CEO Josh Frankel says, “elevating every medium he touches, and to be able to help bring an already existing comic/music hybrid such as Bobby Digital to the page is amazing.”
You can check out the synopsis for Bobby Digital and The Pit of Snakes, which is set to drop June 2022, and is up for pre-order right now, and images from the project, below.
Who are you, what is real? This is the question Bobby Digital is seeking to answer. Embracing his id, ego and superego he embarks on a quest to figure out the nature of his reality and himself. He will be ambushed by enemies unknown, he will be tried in ways most men can’t endure. Will he be victorious? Most of all, will he survive the Pit of Snakes?! From the mind of the legendary RZA, Bobby Digital and The Pit of Snakes will coincide with the relaunch of the iconic character and be synced to music that will melt your mind.
