Posts Tagged ‘Booze’
Dude. DUDE. You guys. I am soooooo proud of this. Here. Drink this. No seriously. It’ll get you fucked UP… Yes.
I am drunk blogging, but it’s totally cool because I’m being supervised. I am blogging HARD. Anything incriminating will so be backspaced. After much testing (such fucking awesome testing [Except for the part where the prototypes were undrinkable and made us want to vomit blood-M]), we’ve invented a drink awesome enough to be as awesome as it is. Awesome.
Hey, drink a damn Abin Sur. What? Yeah. So good, it came before Hal Jordan. And Hal Jordan had a blood alcohol content of, like, a billion (see: Emerald Dawn). What’s in it? Cool your jets, Highball, I’ll tell you.
STEP ONE: A shot of Midori melon whatever. Ask for Midori and whoever will show it to you and you can buy it.
STEP TWO: Two shots of ginger ale. That shit is good. I drink it without booze and that says something.
STEP THREE: Like, a quarter tablespoon of Rose’s red grenadine something or other fuck it. Put it in a spoon. Get it close SO AS NOT TO FUCK UP SURFACE TENSION AND MAKE AN ORANGE PIECE OF SHIT LARFLEEZE ROBITUSSIN FUCK UP. Caps Lock: completely intentional. I’m that serious, you guys.
STEP FOUR: Grab a maraschino cherry and get it as close to the top of the drink as you can. And then get it CLOSER. Plunk it in there gently (GENTLY) and then look at it. Oh, man. You know what you’ve done?
You’ve made an Abin Sur. It will make you the most fucked up dude [or lady! – M] in Sector 2814. Right now. You will have to pass your keys whomever you deem worthy like a fucking Green Lantern deathbed ring (aaaaand relevance brings this to a close!). Do it!
[Also, I recommend drinking these after you’ve already been at it a while. They’re kind of, um, sweet. You pretty much have to pound it. Maybe a real bartender could perfect this, but we’re just mildly alcoholic comic nerds, what do you want from us? -M]
Looking through my comic collection, I see that I somehow wound up owning the end of every Robin’s career as the sidekick. I’ve got The New Teen Titans: The Judas Contract, where Dick Grayson decides that he’s a little old to be running around rocking underoos and becomes Nightwing. I’ve got Batman: A Death in the Family where readers decided to kill off Jason Todd forever and ever and nevermind. And now, I’ve got Red Robin #1-3.
Now that Bruce Wayne is busy getting his skull licked by the Black Hand in Blackest Night (ew) and Battle for the Cowl is over, Dick Grayson has surprised absolutely nobody by taking over the role of Batman. First order of business? Taking the Robin uniform off of Tim Drake (who wants to be known as “Tim Wayne” from here on out) and putting it on Damian (who refuses to call Tim anything but simply “Drake”). Obviously, this is the kind of snivelling brattery that might make the now former sidekick cranky. So Tim has a little pissy fit, slaps Damian (dude, Damian almost killed you in Batman and Son and all you can do is bitchslap him?), knocks over some shit around Wayne Manor, then comes to the conclusion that Bruce Wayne ain’t dead. Revelation!
Tim decides to find Bruce, taking up the tarnished mantle of Red Robin, a persona already used by both Jason Todd (in Countdown to Final Crisis) and Ulysses Armstrong (formerly known as both the General and the shitty version of Anarky). Along the way, Tim is both helped and hindered by a bizarre assortment of characters including friends Cassie Sandsmark and Stephanie Brown (in what may be her last appearance in her Spoiler persona [It’s her second to last. Maybe. -M]), and enemies; the Wild Huntsman (who hasn’t been seen in, like, fifteen years or something and I’m pretty sure is dead), and finally, fucking Ra’s al Ghul.
One of my favorite things about this book is Chris Yost’s decision to use Tim Drake’s thoughts as the entire framing narrative. But there’s no Green Arrow preachiness, here. Instead, you get captions involving everything from the inane (when he blocks a punch by a Spanish guy with robot fire hands, the caption reads “Manos de fuego?”) to Tim judging his own actions immediately after he does them (“Stupid, catching that punch”). You’re along for the ride in Tim Drake’s head, which makes the entire story that much more relate-able.
I’m also digging the art of Ramon Bachs (most famous for some Front Line Marvel work and, holy shit, Dark Horse made a Shrek book?). His drawing of the Wild Huntsman in issue three had me rolling. I don’t know if it was supposed to be funny or not, but in a story with a much lighter tone than pretty much everything else going on in the DCU right now, I found it totally absurd in the best way possible. Unfortunately, Bach only has the gig until issue five. Oh well!
Anyway, this book is awesome enough that I broke my wait-for-the-trade rule. Totally worth getting into if you’re into the Batman: Reborn story line. If you’re gonna drink with this book, knock back some Arrogant Bastard ale since most of the characters in Red Robin seem to be, well, arrogant bastards.
[At least once a month, we’re going to review a comic and tell you what to drink with it. Like wine & cheese snobs, except with comics. – M]
North 40 is a redneck horror story, the story of the Hellmouth opening in the middle of Bumfuck, Egypt without a slayer in sight. My family’s from the South, so when my mom (who recently read up through volume 11 of Fables, god love her) came over the other day, she starting looking curiously at the comics pile, like she does, and plucked up North 40.
“You know what’s wrong with this, right?!”
“Yeah, I know Mom.”
“I-40 runs east-west! Not north-south!”
“Yeah, well demons or something are posessing the entire town, there’s a guy with three eyeballs, and some other dude literally bit someone’s head off, so I’m thinking directional misrepresentation is the least of their worries…”
My mother also once used one of my comics to fan herself –
“Mom! Not with the comic! Not with Batwoman!”
“Oh, hush.”
My mom rules. But I digress. I picked up North 40 #1 on our weekly comics run last month, mainly because… well, I-40 runs east-west, I was curious. North 40 follows the trapped-behind-the-county-lines denizens of Conover County after a foolish D&D nerd and his goth girl buddy read some runes out of an ancient book. By morning, half the town is posessed, undead, growing extra eyeballs, or disintegrating into millions of bugs. But North 40 is more than just gross-out horror; author Aaron Williams has given us a regular gang of scoobies as well.
First there’s the sheriff, whose sense of duty is bigger than his paycheck. Then there’s Luanne, a waitress in the local diner who has somehow been gifted with premonitions. Wyatt, the trailer trash son of a drunk, risin’ above his raisin’ in a crisis. And finally there’s Amanda. Remember how I said there’s no Buffy? Well, there is a Willow and she carries a giant bloody scythe. I’ve read reviews complaining that North 40 moves too fast, but I think this complaint is at least somewhat born of the constantly shifting point of view. The shuffling actually makes the pace feel a bit more frantic, a bit more terrifying – I liked it.
Most of the violence in the book is implied rather than explicit. We often come upon the scene after the worst has happened, when one of the Scoobies walks in, which almost makes the book scarier. Fiona Staples’ art is story-board esque, in a good way – like a courtroom artist documenting the horror as it happens before getting the hell out of dodge.
North 40 is on DC’s Wildstorm imprint, but it feels like a Vertigo book. Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets The Dukes of Hazzard. Go on and spend the $2.99, fix yourself a Jack & Coke (or pop open a Bud Light, if liquor ain’t your thing) and enjoy.
High Five! Comics 