Here's How Eminem Is Pushing His Album To A New Generation Of Nerdy Suburban Kids

When Eminem made his major-label debut with "The Slim Shady LP" in 1999, it didn't take long for him to take the world by storm. He was an angry, white rapper from a working-class Detroit neighborhood whose technical prowess caught the attention of hip-hop heads, and whose twisted and funny lyrics connected with alienated teenagers across suburbia.

It's fourteen years later, and Eminem has just released the sequel to 2000's The Marshall Mathers LP, which is expected to be his seventh number-one-selling album in a row. The original has sold almost 11 million copies in the U.S. alone.

He's promoting "The Marshall Mathers LP 2" to comic book fans, with this collectible alternate cover of Marvel's "The Mighty Avengers #3," in comic book stores now:

In the Salvador Larrocca drawing, Em chills with Iron Man on the stoop of his childhood house, which is also featured on the cover of his new album. The rapper does not appear in the storyline.

"When the opportunity came up for us to do a variant cover with Eminem and Marvel, we immediately thought about how cool it would be for Eminem to be sitting with one of his favorite super heroes on the steps of the now abandoned house he grew up in," said the rapper's manager, Paul Rosenberg, in a press release.

This is actually Slim Shady's second comic appearance. The first came with 2009's more ambitious one-shot "Eminem/The Punisher" book, in which the rapper and super hero get in a violent battle with the villain Barracuda. It was a special promotion for Eminem's album "Relapse" that both Marvel and Shady Records found fun and beneficial.

This past August, Em tapped into his crossover appeal by premiering his song "Survival" in the trailer for the video game "Call Of Duty: Ghosts."