And now... the Cocktails.

Hullo again,

Some of you will remember that at New Years' I promised to post up some photos of some of our mighty Marvel UK Cocktails. It was fully my intention to have these posted up within the first week of 2009. Sadly, there were a few technical complications in getting that done. Probably Resolution #1 for 2009 should be 'Buy more reliable Tech'.

Resolution #2 should also probably be not to drink enough of said cocktails that I believe it's a really great idea to pose for a photo with my Little Black Book of Cocktails...



Yeah. You won't be seeing any more of those. There were photos taken across the evening, but the problem with road-testing all of these wondrous creations was that having started around 6pm by the time I reached 10pm I was rather ridiculously inebriated. And while I had thought it would be a great idea to document the evening in photo detail, at the time, this was clearly the expressed wishes of a drunken lunatic.

Sober Mark has right of veto.

I just thank God I didn't Blog while drunk...

Anyway, here in their many multi-coloured glories are some of the It Came From Darkmoor Marvel UK Cocktails.

First up, The Dragon's Claw:



This one actually tastes quite sweet. It's the banana Bols to blame for that. But after taking this photo we really didn't think we'd done justice in showing just how GREEN it really is. So, enter a makeshift cyclorama (That's my theatre roots showing...) and we get a clearer picture:



Now that's suitably green. I finally picked up my copy of the Dragon's Claws trade of Christmas. I'm on a real kick for that series, right now. And for Death's Head, too. Speaking of which:



One Death's Head. I'm sure you'll agree that when I said it looked like fluid directly leached from out of a cyborg, I wasn't far wrong...

And here's a shot 'As close to a Death's Head without your eyes getting wet'.



Why the hell I insisted in taking this photo, I don't know. Hannah was doing most of these (Hence the lack of quite so much blur) but this is one I insisted doing myself!

And of course one Death's Head deserves another...



And, of course, a Death's Head 3.0. For the ladies.



I've just realised that photo how difficult it is to display scale in that last one. I assure you it IS a half pint (Plastic) glass.

And now onto the Doctor Who themed Sonic Screwdriver. Han's been doing this one for a couple of years. It really is alarmingly blue:



But again this photo didn't really do it justice. So a second attempt was in order:



Alarming, huh? Almost radioactive in appearance.

Closer to the other end of the spectrum, in terms of colour, we have the Black Axe.



This one again is in a half pint, due to the amount of spirits in it. It's certainly not unpleasant. But has an initial kick to it not uncommon with the flavour of accidentally consuming some of your other half's somebody hairspray as it hangs in the air, if not mixed well.

Otherwise, it's quite sound. I'm a great believer in the use of Blavod. Contrary to popular belief it does not taste of aniseed or siumilar. It's colouring is black but it does not have any effect on the flavour, which is very much that of a clean crisp taste of vodka.

One more from the list for you:



Now this is a Dark Angel. But dear god, we made several attempts at trying to get this on camera. Basically, the dash of grenadine creates a swirly of deeper red within the orange of the WKD. But by the time we had the camera ready, it had kind of sunk in. Each time.

This was the nearest we got, in this kind of sunrise effect. You'll have to take our word for it.

These two other cocktails were not on the list:

This was Hannah's 'Skrull Invasion' as a tribute to Paul Cornell's The Guns of Avalon storyline in Captain Britain and MI13.



It was actually quite a clever and potent mix of spirits from what I recall, and took forever to get a mix which would actually appear almost entirely undetectable to the eye.

And this was Felicity's 'Tangerine'



Which I believe was buck's fizz based. The problem was, that by the time we'd reached this point of the evening the recipes for these were not jotted down in the book, but elsewhere. So I can't actually tell you with any certainty as to what was in them. I'll try to track those recipes down, and post them up another time.

So that was my New Years'. I hope you all had most excellent New Years' of your own. I know that some of you did attempt a couple of these yourselves, and were inspired to attempt your own also. Please do let me know how those went.

In other news, today is new comics day in America, and we are only hours away from its companion day in the UK. A quick reminder that Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning's Nova #21 is out. I haven't gone on a lot about this series, I have to admit, but it genuinely is a great read. I'd very much recommend picking the book up if you aren't already. Abnett and Lanning were both very involved with Marvel UK, and the way they made the Marvel Space titles their own over the past couple of years has been great.

And while we're on the subject of books you should be picking up, I was very genuinely serious with my post from the weekend. We're two weeks off CAP WEDNESDAY, the release of Captain Britain & MI13 #10.

Pencil it in the diary. February the 11th 2009.

There's been a lot of positive talk about the book on message boards these past few days. Marvel speaking out about the title, and the promo poster that Newsarama put up last week for #10 has got a few people interested in finding out more, it seems. Which is a great start.

Spread the word, people. The more people who know about the book the better. Don't just go out there spamming message boards - nobody likes that. But strike up a conversation. Get talking about the cast, the stories, the creative team. Strike up a dialogue and make your case. One of the best things about this series has been just how close the fans seem to feel to it. I think that Paul Cornell offering his own blog up as a letters page certainly helps with that.

Pay him a visit at: http://paulcornell.blogspot.com/

I want to find you chatting out there on this here Interweb. Or who knows? You might find me.

Until the next time, folks.

Mark Out.