A few months ago I was reading Benjamin Marra’s Gangsta Rap Posse (Traditional Comics)—a comic book series about an N.W.A.-style group that spends its days brawling with rival rappers, fighting a racist L.A.P.D. force, and running lucrative drug and prostitution rackets (while paying scant attention to actually recording music)—and wondering, Who wrote this crazy shit?

Everybody associated with Def Jam looked cool for a decade, then not so much after that. They also appear to have stopped doing cocaine when the ’90s rolled around, for better or for worse.