Canada Day Cocktails!

Canada turns 150 this year! To celebrate, we’ve come up with some truly Canadian cocktails to keep the party going this July 1st.

Dark Horse Day Cocktails

Dark Horse Comics turns 30 this year and to mark the event, June 4th is Dark Horse Day! After grabbing your promo bundle from a participating shop, relax and raise a glass to another 30 years with these Dark Horse Comics inspired drinks!

Civil War: Scotch versus the World

The last weekend of March we hosted our first whisky and superhero pairing event at Happy Harbor Comics in Edmonton which raised money for Team In Training. With the Batman v Superman and Captain America: Civil War movies hitting theatres this year we gave the tasting its own epic showdown between three scotch drams and three international whiskies. For the North America premiere weekend of Civil War, we’ve decided to share this special roster of whiskies so you too can have your own whisky throwdown.

Spoiler Cask #4-April 20th 2016

Not much for spoilers this week, instead we talk about Emerald City Comic Con and taste three whiskies: Tomatin Decades, Clynelish First Editions and McCarthy’s Single Malt from Oregon’s Clear Creek Distillery.

Emerald City Comicon 2016

From April 7th-10th the Seattle Washington State Convention Center was packed full of cosplayers, geeks, gamers, collectors and more! It was very heart-warming to see all the little Rey cosplayers each day as we made the rounds in Artist Alley. Although no strangers to cons, this was our first time attending Emerald City so we made a whole trip out of it, first visiting Portland before heading to Seattle.

Image Expo 2016 “Nothing is impossible”

Waiting for the Image Expo to begin, the screen on stage read “Comics in your Image”. An interesting statement when you consider the crowd in the room was largely comprised of white males. It’s no secret the comics industry has a diversity issue. The keynote address by Imge publisher Eric Stephenson tactfully commented on the need for diversity, all without ever actually saying the word. He emphasized that “Nothing is impossible” in the realm of comics. It’s a common enough saying told to children, “you can be whatever you want to be”, but it’s not always obvious in our daily reality. Girls used to be told that comics are for boys and people of colour rarely see others like them in media or politics. But “it’s not enough to believe in change, you have to do the hard work”. That hard work is certainly showing in the upcoming releases from Image.

The Sandman Whisky Pairing

Recently, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt stepped down from being involved with the film adaptation of the comic book Sandman as a result of creative differences. The importance of Sandman can’t be over stated as it was a change from the usual Superhero fare. It also makes for a great study of comic art history and techniques. Written by Neil Gaiman from 1989 to 1996, and more recently Sandman: Overture which concluded in 2015, the fantasy series starts out rooted in the DC universe and a number of DC landmarks and characters pop up throughout the story but it’s framed in such a way that knowledge of the DC universe isn’t needed to enjoy the comics. By the end of the first volume it grows into its own unique world. If you loved Neil Gaiman’s book American Gods you’ll most definitely like this comic as it uses many of the same elements. In both stories, gods remain a part of the world so long as there are humans to believe in them. Sandman, however, does not focus on the gods but on one of the seven Endless. The Endless can not cease to exist and represent different facets of humanity: Dream, Destiny, Death, Destruction, Despair, Desire and Delirium.

Sample Sips – Century Reserve 21

After the last Sample Sips Grain Showdown I became particularly interested in other 100% grain whiskies that are out there and discovered there’s actually a decent selection although very few are locally available. Thankfully the whisky community is a very sharing one!