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Book-A-Day 2018 #283: Descender, Vol. 5: Rise of the Robots by Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen

In a serial medium, there’s always the need to make sure the audience keeps up. So each new installment needs to do some work to give backstory, either with the potted “who they are and how they came to be!” box or flashbacks or whatever.

And when the story is moving quickly, one of the ways to do that effectively can be to slip back in time slightly at the beginning of each new installment, so the end of Section X and the beginning of Section Y tell the same moment in time, and overlap.

Jeff Lemire does that for every single transition in Descender, Vol. 5: Rise of the Robots , which I’m taking as a sign that he’s stomping his foot down on the gas and charging towards an ending in the not-too-distant future.

(I might as well throw in links to my posts on the earlier books, for those of you who are lost or just want more details: one and two and three and four .)

If you haven’t read Descender before, it’s soft-ish medium-future SF (intelligent but not godlike AI, some kind of unexplained FTL, various alien species, a galactic scope) in which planetoid-sized robot “Harvesters” appeared mysteriously about a generation ago, killed a large proportion of the organic sentients in the galaxy, and then went away. Since then, the robots created by those sentients have mostly been hunted and destroyed, for understandable if not strictly logical reasons.

(It’s a second cousin of the Butlerian Jihad, I suppose.)

Our main characters are on the human/robot interface: one special robot boy who was in hibernation since the attacks, the man who was his human companion as a boy, the roboticist that created that robot boy. Plus, of course, a larger cast of soldiers and schemers and killers on all sides of the conflicts — what was a fairly unified, advanced multi-species civilization shattered into a dozen or more nastier shards in the aftermath of that attack.

And it’s all coming to a head now: the Harvesters may be coming back, the local robots have definitely organized and are ready for their own counter-pogrom, and more individual acts of violence are also happening quickly.

Descender is a strong, somewhat space-operatic comic, a little more conventional and action-oriented than I’d expect from Jeff Lemire — but, then again, I’ve never read his Big Two work. It shows every sign of having a real ending, and to be barreling at top speed towards that ending. It’s good stuff: if you like SF, you should check it out.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Pet Sematary Remake Trailer Drops

Paramount Pictures released the first teaser trailer for the remake of Pet Sematary, based on the Stephen King novel.

SYNOPSIS
Based on the seminal horror novel by Stephen King, Pet Sematary follows Dr. Louis Creed (Jason Clarke), who, after relocating with his wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz) and their two young children from Boston to rural Maine, discovers a mysterious burial ground hidden deep in the woods near the family’s new home. When tragedy strikes, Louis turns to his unusual neighbor, Jud Crandall (John Lithgow), setting off a perilous chain reaction that unleashes an unfathomable evil with horrific consequences.

DIRECTED BY Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer

EXECUTIVE PRODUCED BY Mark Moran

PRODUCED BY Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Steven Schneider, Mark Vahradian

BASED ON THE NOVEL BY Stephen King

SCREENPLAY BY  Jeff Buhler

STARRING  Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, Jeté Laurence, Hugo & Lucas Lavoie, and John Lithgow

The Handmaid’s Tale Season Two Arrives on Disc Dec. 4

LOS ANGELES (October 9, 2018) – The “emotional yet soaringly beautiful” (Daniel Feinberg, The Hollywood Reporter) second season of The Handmaid’s Tale comes to Blu-ray™ and DVD December 4th from MGM Television and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. The 4-disc set includes all 13 heart-stopping episodes,  as well as two brand new featurettes that take the viewers beyond the pages of Margaret Atwood’s award-winning, best-selling novel.

The Emmy® and Golden Globe® award-winning drama series returns with a second season shaped by Offred’s (Elisabeth Moss) pregnancy and her ongoing fight to free her future child from the dystopian horrors of Gilead. “Gilead is within you” is a favorite saying of Aunt Lydia. In Season Two, Offred and all our characters will fight against – or succumb to – this dark truth. Standout performances were given by returning cast members including Joseph Fiennes, Yvonne Strahovski, Alexis Bledel, Madeline Brewer, Ann Dowd, O-T Fagbenle, Max Minghella, Samira Wiley and Amanda Brugel.  Moss, Wiley, Bledel and Dowd have all won Emmy® Awards for their performances in the series.  Season Two of the series garnered three Emmy® Awards.

This season also included notable guest appearances from Emmy® Award winners Cherry Jones (Fox’s 24, Signs, The Perfect Storm) and Bradley Whitford (NBC’s The West Wing, Get Out),  as well as Academy Award® winner Marisa Tomei (My Cousin Vinny, The Wrestler).

The series was created for television by Bruce Miller. Season Two was executive produced by Bruce Miller, Warren Littlefield, Elisabeth Moss, Daniel Wilson, and Fran Sears. The series is produced by MGM Television and internationally distributed by MGM.

THE HANDMAID’S TALE SEASON 2 BLU-RAYTM & DVD BONUS FEATURES

  • Season Two: Off Book
  • Dressing Dystopia

THE HANDMAID’S TALE  SEASON 2 BLU-RAYTM

Street Date:          December 4, 2018
Screen Format:    Widescreen 1.78:1
Audio:                   English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Subtitles:              English SDH, Spanish, French
Total Run Time:    Approximately 718 minutes

THE HANDMAID’S TALE SEASON 2 DVD
Street Date:           December 4, 2018
Screen Format:     Widescreen 1.78:1
Audio:                    English Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles:               English SDH, Spanish, French
Total Run Time:     Approximately 718 minutes

Book-A-Day 2018 #282: Multiple Warheads,Vol. 2: Ghost Town by Brandon Graham

I don’t want to call Multiple Warheads just a stoner comic — for one thing, I’m about as far from a stoner as you can get, and I like it quite a bit. But there’s a definite free-and-easy, anything-goes vibe to it that will appeal to the cannabis-inclined among us.

Brandon Graham started Multiple Warheads as a sex comic — I was surprised, several years later, when reading the first collection to find that hardcore-sex scene embedded in the middle of it — but it mutated after that first story into something less gonad-centric [1], a medium-future amble through what seems to be the radically changed former USSR, full of weird technology and various kinds of sapient creatures and lots of dodgy schemes and little-to-no effective government.

After a hiatus, Graham came back with a second cluster of Multiple Warheads stories over the past year or so, and those were collected this summer as Multiple Warheads, Vol. 2: Ghost Town . (The cover seems to make that last bit “Ghostown,” but I think that’s just Graham’s design-style, which leans heavily on punny misspellings and similar wordplay.)

Our main couple, Sexica and Nikoli, are on an extended journey: Sexica is delivering “the warhead” somewhere for a reason that I don’t think was deeply explained in the first volume and definitely isn’t here. They’re “on vacation,” as they put it — Nikoli is definitely away from his usual work, though Sexica’s stealing and sneaking is the kind of thing she can do a bit of no matter where she is.

And so she does.

She connects with some people — both bipedal, neither anything like human, which is par for the course in Multiple Warheads — who want to get into a “wizard’s lair” to retrieve something ancient and valuable. Meanwhile, Nikoli wanders around, get roped into doing some mechanic work, and has a surprising transformation near the end. The staff of the place (hotel?) where they’re staying and the intersecting dancers at a club where Sexica has a meeting with her new partners also get some featured scenes — the whole thing is loose and flowing, with an extensive cast who have complicated interrelationships.

Graham presents this all a bit sideways: he is fond of puns and wordplay, and that comes up in dialogue and the names of things (the restaurant All’s Whale That Ends Whale, one guess as to the main ingredient; a local bodega-ish place is the Manticorner) as well as in labels and other “throwaway” text. So this is a world full of wordplay, where things are named quirkily and those quirks are important.

Ghost Town is, at its core, a caper story — assemble the small team of experts, learn the secrets of what they’re trying to do, and watch them go do it — but there’s a lot of other stuff going on around that. Graham gives Multiple Warheads an everyday, lived-in feeling: his world may be a weird mix of technology and what looks like magic, and his people may look like anything and everything, but they’re all still people, trying to make it through their days and get back to the ones they care about.

Despite the big caper stuff, Ghost Town is quieter than the first volume: there’s a lot here that could potentially have been overly dramatic, but that’s not how Graham plays it.

Multiple Warheads is an intricate delight, full of tiny details and silly sidebars. Each page is a moment to be savored…though some, occasionally, almost need to be decoded. This is definitely not a comic for everyone, but its joys are real, deep, and unique.

[1] Though the sex scene is still completely in continuity, and is referenced on the first story page here — the fact that Sexica got a werewolf penis through her nefarious activity and sewed it onto her boyfriend Nikoli is central to a lot of Multiple Warheads in general and Ghost Town in particular.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

REVIEW: The Faithful Spy

The Faithful Spy
By John Hendrix
Amulet Books/368 pages/$18.99

Every time you think you’re done hearing amazing stories about individual acts of courage during World War II, another one comes along. In this case, the true story of the German plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler comes in a unique graphic novel that is compelling reading for Middle and High Schoolers.

Dietrich Bonhoffer was a devout Lutheran, a member of a large German family, and destined to be a leader. He went to school, became ordained and was a theologian, teaching and preaching while the storm clouds gathered around Germany. The Nazi Party took advantage of the diaspora surrounding the citizenry, instill outrage at their economic plight and hatred towards the ones responsible for their plight – the Jews.

Bonhoffer’s story is told parallel and intermingled with the rise of Nazi power, a primer to pre-World War II history. Once it became clear that Hitler and his part wanted absolute power, resentment grew in a select few who saw through the artifice. As Chancellor Hitler changed the national dialogue and rebuilt their war machinery in direct violation of the Paris Treaty that ended World War I. A weary Europe tried to ignore them until Hitler seized absolute power in the wake of President Hindenburg’s death. Then the war drums began beating.

Hitler’s actions within Germany are carefully detailed so we see how he incrementally seized control, with events not usually included in historic works, such as Hitler altering prayer so rather than praying to God above all, it was God then Hitler. Yikes.

Concerned, Bonhoffer found himself slowly drawn into a cabal that was determined to exterminate Hitler before he could not be stopped. Yet, while Hitler blitzed his way through Europe, the conspirators proved either inept or unlucky (perhaps both). Obviously, the conspiracy failed as we know, but that makes the book no less interesting. While he was never directly involved in planting failed explosives, he was close enough to eventually be captured and imprisoned.

Even while in jail his spirits and faith rarely flagged despite missing his family and his bride. The ending is somber as Hitler failed and Bonhoffer died a prisoner.

Hendrix works in a complex style, mixing long stretches of text with illustrations and graphic storytelling elements. There are wonderful sidebars that provide context for events and personnel and much of the dialogue comes straight from Bonhoffer’s own writings, giving the work authenticity. The work is visually interesting, printed in black, magenta, and cyan tones. His style is compelling and clear, just cartoony enough to avoid looking scholarly.

The creator provides notes on sources and a limited bibliography for those interested in learning more about Bonhoffer and his colleagues. By all means, check this one out.

Book-A-Day 2018 #279: Sebastian O/The Mystery Play by Grant Morrison, Steve Yeowell, and Jon J Muth

What do you do with the quirky minor failures of a major creator?

Well, you can ignore them, and that’s what happens most of the time. You can also try to spiff them up a bit, and get them walking two by two, in hopes that they’ll look more impressive in company. If the creator is major enough and his backlist extensive enough, you might find yourself doing that.

In this case, you did — if “you” are DC Comics and “the creator” is writer and self-proclaimed chaos magician Grant Morrison. And you probably made a bit of money out of it, which is the whole point of the exercise.

But these are still quirky minor failures, even twenty-five years later, and perhaps at this remove even more clearly show Morrison’s characteristic failure modes: a reliance on high concepts even when they don’t make narrative sense, a tropism to stylishness as an end in itself, an unwillingness to actually explain anything that might make his worlds actually plausible, provocative dialogue that neither sounds like human beings talking nor has any solid meaning, and, above all else, the love of flash over substance.

The book is Sebastian O/The Mystery Play . The two things collected are 1993’s three-issue alternate-Victorian serial-killer [1] frivolity drawn by Steve Yeowell (who also did the much better Zenith  with Morrison) and the 1994 spooky, sophomorically “philosophical” bad detective story graphic novel drawn by Jon J Muth (who later fled comics for illustrating children’s books, possibly because of tripe like this).

Both of them are stylish in their own ways; both are entertaining on their own levels. Both also fail on basic levels of plausibility, much like other Morrison works up to his famous JLA run. So maybe his fans will love these oddball early-90s stories, but I tend to think they’re not the right kind of weird — no superheroes, not set in a cool version of the modern world, not obviously transgressive.

Sebastian O is set in a steampunky alternate-Vistorian world that doesn’t seem to have any real reason to be alternate. The title character, a melange of Oscar Wilde, Charles Baudelaire, and Jack the Ripper, is supposedly a genius, but we only see him run around, murder people, and talk about his clothes. He escapes from jail at the beginning of the story, where he was incarcerated for what seem like vague and trumped-up “being gay and subversive” reasons. We readers would thus be on his side, if not for the randomly violent ways he does escape, and rampages through the secret gay-cult society that apparently betrayed him.

I say “gay,” because the narrative makes that clear, though in the usual Mauve Decade euphemisms. But neither Sebastian nor the people he chases show much affection for anyone who is not themselves, and their choice of sexual partners is not particularly important for this thriller-chase plot. Like so many Morrison stories, it seems like an affectation or a signpost rather than anything intrinsic to the story.

Anyway, Sebastian murders his way out of prison, murders his way through his former friends, and finds the fiend behind the whole thing, who frankly seems somewhat unpleasant but not nearly as bad as Sebastian. There is a Shocking Revelation at the end, which, as often with Morrison, doesn’t actually make any sense, and which is ignored anyway. So we’re left with the story of the murderous rampage of a Victorian dandy — if you’re looking for that, you are in luck.

The Mystery Play is more sedate and grounded. The small Yorkshire city of Townley, struggling for whatever reason, is putting on a large-scale production of traditional medieval mystery plays for the Christmas season, dramatizing what seems like most of the Bible for the entertainment of tourists. On the night of the debut of the first play, someone murders the actor playing God.

And, yes, every single person in Townley who talks about this event afterward refers to this as “the death of God.” Not the death of a prominent local doctor, who they all knew, but an amateur acting part that he just took and died in the middle of. And it is Ontologically Important to every single one of them. Morrison’s greasy thumb is particularly prominent with this element, and it overwhelms the entire story.

A single Detective Sergeant is sent from vaguely somewhere else, with no driver and no lines of reporting back to his superiors and no paperwork and no connections to the local coppers. This is of course A Whopping Great Clue, and only the dimmest readers will miss it. It’s also entirely stupid, and wouldn’t actually work for more than five seconds, even before “Detective Sergeant Frank Carpenter” spends all of his time in philosophical musings about God and the Devil.

Eventually, there is another play performed “on-stage” in the story, and it of course is the very end of the mystery cycle, in which Jesus is crucified. Nudge nudge wink wink!

It’s unfortunate that the story is such bullshit, because Muth delivers stunning work here — moody painted pages with stunningly real faces, a fantastic mix of levels of abstraction. Every single page here is absolutely gorgeous, and a masterpiece of the comics art. Shame about the words thrown on top, though.

So Sebastian O is an answer to the question “What if Oscar Wilde was a man of action?” and The Mystery Play similar investigates “What if God were killed during a mystery play?” Neither of those are particularly good questions, and Morrison’s attempts to imbue them with deep meaning fall flat. This is probably why they were quietly out of print for much of the last twenty-five years, and why they will probably slip back into that abyss once the stock of this 2017 omnibus are depleted. Morrison has some little-known gems in his backlist — I mentioned Zenith before, also with Yeowell, for one example — but these are not among them.

[1] Morrison’s main character is a serial killer, and a deeply unrepentant one. Some of the people he kills “deserve it,” but he’s also happy to just slaughter anyone in his way. Since he’s incredibly shallow otherwise, it’s the defining characteristic of his personality.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Watch the new AQUAMAN trailer!

Watch the new AQUAMAN trailer!

Well now. Debuting at the New York Comic- Con, five minutes to give you a really good idea of where they’re going with this one.

Coming this December 21 from Warner Brothers and DC Comics. Starring Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Patrick Wilson, Temuera Morrison, Dolph Lundgren, Willem Defoe, Djimon Hounsou, and Nicole Kidman.

Win a Blu-ray Copy of Ant-Man & the Wasp

Marvel’s Ant-Man & the Wasp was a palette cleanser of a film, a satisfying diversion from the sturm and drang of Avengers: Infinity War. The film hit digital streaming this week and releases on  Blu-ray, 4K Ultra HD on October 16.

Our friends at Disney Home Entertainment have provided us with a Blu-ray copy of the film to give away to a lucky reader. To be eligible to win, please tell us how you think Scott Lang will be rescued from the quantum realm.

All entries must be received no later than 11:59 p.m., Monday, October 15. The contest is open only to North American readers and the decision of the ComicMix judges will be final.

BONUS MATERIAL (may vary by retailer):
Blu-ray & Digital:

  • Director’s Intro by Peyton Reed – The talented creator behind some of Marvel Studios’ funniest and most charming films will invite home audiences deeper into the world of Ant-Man and The Wasp.
  • Making-of Featurettes:
    • Back in the Ant Suit: Scott Lang – Hero and all-star dad Scott Lang keeps the laughs coming for the audience, cast and crew.
    • A Suit of Her Own: The Wasp – Highly trained Hope Van Dyne is now the Wasp. See how some of her craziest stunts and action-packed scenes were brought to life.
    • Subatomic Super Heroes: Hank & Janet – Hank Pym’s wife Janet was lost in the quantum realm. Trace the legacy of these characters and the iconic actors who portray them.
    • Quantum Perspective: The VFX and Production Design of Ant-Man and The Wasp – Explore the movie’s visual effects and production design from a whole new viewpoint, in which every micro and macro detail counts.
  • Gag Reel and Outtakes – Audiences are treated to the hilarious quips that did not make the film as well as exclusive outtakes from Stan Lee and Tim Heidecker.
    • Gag Reel – Join in the fun with these outtakes from the set.
    • Stan Lee Outtakes – Stan Lee tries out a series of hilarious one-liners for the scene in which his car shrinks.
    • Tim Heidecker Outtakes – Check out Whale Boat Captain Daniel Goobler and his improvised whale-watching riffs.
  • Deleted Scenes (with commentary by Director Peyton Reed)
    • Worlds Upon Worlds – As Janet leads Hank through the surreal landscape of the quantum realm, they encounter an intelligent life form.
    • Sonny’s on the Trail – On the hunt for Hank Pym and his lab, Sonny Burch and his henchmen check the security camera of a neighborhood bookstore.

Digital Exclusives:

  • 10 Years of Marvel Studios: The Art of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – See what it takes to bring the MCU to life, and the role concept artists play in bringing Super Heroes from comic book to screen.
  • Online Close-Up Magic University – This commercial will inspire you to expand your mind and maximize your full potential!

In Ant-Man and The Wasp, Scott Lang is grappling with the consequences of his choices, as both the Super Hero Ant-Man and a father, in the aftermath of Captain America: Civil War. As he struggles to rebalance his home life with his responsibilities as Ant-Man, he’s confronted by Hope van Dyne and Dr. Hank Pym with an urgent new mission to rescue Janet van Dyne from the Quantum Realm. Scott must once again put on the suit and learn to fight alongside The Wasp, all while attempting to serve house arrest, assist fast talking-Luis (Michael Peña) and the X-con Security crew, and thwart the efforts of a new adversary called Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and her ally Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne).

Ant-Man and The Wasp returns director Peyton Reed to the franchise and stars Paul Rudd (Captain America: Civil War, Knocked Up), Evangeline Lilly (The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, Lost), Michael Peña (The Martian, Fury), Walton Goggins (Vice Principals, Six), Bobby Cannavale (Vinyl, Chef), Judy Greer (War for the Planet of the Apes, Wilson), Tip “T.I.” Harris (Sleepless, Get Hard), David Dastmalchian (Twin Peaks, The Belko Experiment), Hannah John-Kamen (Black Mirror, Ready Player One), Abby Ryder Fortson (Togetherness, Transparent), Randall Park (Veep, Fresh Off the Boat), with Academy Award® nominee Michelle Pfeiffer (1993 best actress in a leading role nominee for Love Field), Academy Award nominee Laurence Fishburne (1994 best actor in a leading role nominee for What’s Love Got to Do with It) and Academy Award winner Michael Douglas (1988 best actor in a leading role winner for Wall Street).

Kevin Feige and Stephen Broussard produced the film with Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Charles Newirth and Stan Lee serving as executive producers. Chris McKenna & Erik Sommers and Paul Rudd & Andrew Barrer & Gabriel Ferrari wrote the screenplay.

Peyton Reed’s creative team includes Academy Award®–nominated director of photography Dante Spinotti (2000 best cinematography nominee for The Insider); production designer Shepherd Frankel (Ant-Man, Bad Words”); editors Dan Lebental (Ant-Man, Spider-Man: Homecoming) and Craig Wood (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, The Great Wall); costume designer Louise Frogley (Spider-Man: Homecoming, The Finest Hours); two-time Academy Award nominee, visuals effects supervisor Stephane Ceretti (2017 best achievement in visual effects nominee for Doctor Strange); and eight-time Academy Award nominee, special effects supervisor Dan Sudick (2018 best achievement in visual effects nominee for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2).

DISC SPECIFICATIONS (applies to film content only):
Product SKUs: 4K Cinematic Universe Edition (4K Ultra HD+Blu-ray+Digital Code), Multi-Screen Edition (Blu-ray+Digital Code), Digital UHD, HD, SD, DVD and On-Demand
Feature Run Time:Approximately 118 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Aspect Ratio: 2.39
Audio:

  • UHD BD: English Dolby Atmos; Latin Spanish, French Parisian, German & Italian 7.1 Dolby Digital Plus; French Canadian 5.1 Dolby Digital; English Descriptive Audio 2.0 Dolby Digital
  • Blu-ray: English 7.1 DTS-HDMA, Brazilian Portuguese, French and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital, English Descriptive Audio 2.0 Dolby Digital
  • DVD: English, French and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital, English Descriptive Audio 2.0 Dolby Digital
  • UHD Digital: English Dolby Atmos (some platforms), English 7.1 Dolby Digital Plus (some platforms), English 5.1 & 2.0 Dolby Digital, Latin Spanish 5.1 & 2.0 Dolby Digital, French 5.1 & 2.0 Dolby Digital, English Descriptive Audio 2.0 Dolby Digital
  • HD Digital:  English 7.1 Dolby Digital Plus (some platforms), English 5.1 & 2.0 Dolby Digital, Latin Spanish 5.1 & 2.0 Dolby Digital, French 5.1 & 2.0 Dolby Digital, English Descriptive Audio 2.0 Dolby Digital
  • SD Digital:  English 5.1 & 2.0 Dolby Digital, Latin Spanish 5.1 & 2.0 Dolby Digital, French 5.1 & 2.0 Dolby Digital, English Descriptive Audio 2.0 Dolby Digital

UHD Subtitles: English SDH, Latin Spanish, French Canadian, German, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Traditional Chinese, Cantonese, Korean, Thai
BD Subtitles: English SDH, French Canadian, Latin Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese
DVD Subtitles: English SDH, French Canadian, Latin Spanish
Digital Subtitles: English SDH, French Canadian, Latin Spanish
Digital & DVD Captions: English

Winter is Coming as is White Walker Whisky

New York, NY — Send a raven— Scotch has officially entered the realm. In collaboration with HBO®, DIAGEO is unveiling the new White Walker by Johnnie Walker Blended Scotch Whisky and The Game of Thrones Single Malt Scotch Whisky Collection. The limited-edition whiskies are inspired by the iconic characters and the creative world of Westeros and beyond and are here to tide fans over during their wait for the eighth and final season. Even the most revered Maester couldn’t have predicted a collaboration of this monumental proportion.

Groundbreaking partnerships continue to be a strategic initiative for Diageo as they foster exceptional creative collaboration and help showcase the breadth of our portfolioWe are very proud to have our collection of single malts and Johnnie Walker, the number one scotch whisky brand in the world, collaborate with HBO’s most successful TV franchise to develop these limited-edition offerings for fans to collect and celebrate the final season of Games of Thrones,” said Dan Sanborn, Senior Vice President, Culture and Partnerships at DIAGEO.

“We knew there was fan appetite for a Game of Thrones whisky and once we saw Diageo’s vision for a way to collaborate together we knew the idea was perfect and the time was now. From the beginning, they understood that we wanted to create something special, and they’ve accomplished that with both White Walker by Johnnie Walker and the single malt collection. We’re confident fans will enjoy sipping these delicious whiskies as they wait for season eight and beyond,” said Jeff Peters, Vice President, Licensing & Retail at HBO.

The first limited-edition offering available in the realm is White Walker by Johnnie Walker, inspired by the most enigmatic and feared characters on the show — the White Walkers. This blend was created by whisky specialist George Harper alongside the small team of expert blenders at Johnnie Walker. At the heart of this new, innovative blend are single malts from Cardhu and Clynelish – one of Scotland’s most northern distilleries where whiskies have endured long Scottish winters, not dissimilar to the climate north of the wall. This special blend has notes of caramelized sugar and vanilla, fresh red berries with a touch of orchard fruit and is best served chilled – the Night King would have it no other way.

The bottling brings you right to the Frozen North with its icy white and blue design along with the iconic Striding Man now fashioned in armor to fit in among the ranks of the Night King’s forces. Utilizing temperature-sensitive thermal chromatic ink technology, fans will be reminded that “Winter is Here” from an unexpected graphic icy reveal on the bottle when frozen.

The Game of Thrones Single Malt Scotch Whisky Collection features eight, scotches that are all new to the U.S., and are each paired with one of the iconic Houses of Westeros, as well as the Night’s Watch, giving fans an authentic taste of the Seven Kingdoms and beyond. Diageo’s unparalled diverse range of distilleries in Scotland, much like in Westoros, each have their own unique characteristics and produce a distinctive whisky representative of its local terroir. These similarities were the inspiration behind the collection, drawing an authentic storyline between each House and single malt pairing – from the power of water between both House Tully and The Singleton of Glendullan, to the legendary women behind House Targaryen and Cardhu, or the royal lineage of House Baratheon and Royal Lochnagar and more.

These limited-edition whiskies are certain to be as fleeting as the holder of the Iron Throne, so be sure to have White Walker by Johnnie Walker or one of the unparalleled Game of Thrones Single Malt whiskies on hand to toast to the final season before they are all gone.

White Walker by Johnnie Walker will be available nationwide starting October 2018 wherever fine spirits are sold. The Game of Thrones Collection Single Malt Scotch Whisky Collection will be available nationwide starting fall 2018 wherever fine spirits are sold. Suggested retail pricing is included below.

  • White Walker by Johnnie Walker SRP: $36 for 750ml; ABV 41.7%
  • Game of Thrones House Tully – Singleton of Glendullan Select; SRP: $29.99 for 750ml; ABV 40%
  • Game of Thrones House Stark – Dalwhinnie Winter’s Frost; SRP: $39.99 for 750ml; ABV 43%
  • Game of Thrones House Targaryen – Cardhu Gold Reserve; SRP: $39.99 for 750ml; ABV 40%
  • Game of Thrones House Lannister – Lagavulin 9 Year Old; SRP: $64.99 for 750ml; ABV 46%
  • Game of Thrones The Night’s Watch – Oban Bay Reserve; SRP: $62.99 for 750ml; ABV 43%
  • Game of Thrones House Greyjoy – Talisker Select Reserve; SRP: $44.99 for 750ml; ABV 45.8%
  • Game of Thrones House Baratheon – Royal Lochnagar 12 Year Old; SRP: $64.99 for 750ml; ABV 40%
  • Game of Thrones House Tyrell – Clynelish Reserve; SRP: $59.99 for 750ml; ABV 51.2%

Book-A-Day 2018 #276: Sex Criminals, Vol. 5: Five-Fingered Discount by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky

I have two ways I could start this, and I don’t know which one to take. So my indecision will instead be the actual starting point, and I will provide you with two options:

  • Last time out, I noted that Sex Criminals seemed to be sliding in the direction of being a superhero comic about people with sex-based powers, but that tide is now going out.
  • There might be a real honest-to-god ending coming up for Sex Criminals, and not just amusing sex-jokes and vaguely sex-positive character development.
Both of those things are positive, to my mind — the world already has too many superhero comics, and not enough comics that actually end well. So I’m reenergized, at least a bit, which is a nice thing to have happen five books into a series.
In case you’re lost, I’ll repeat the information in the title. The book is Sex Criminals, Vol. 5: Five-Fingered Discount , reprinting issues 21-25 of the Image series written by Matt Fraction and drawn by Chip Zdarsky. For some more context, see my posts on the earlier books: the unnamed first volumeTwo Worlds, One Cop , Three the Hard Way . and Fourgy .

As the back covers explain amusingly, both Suze and Jon make time stop when they orgasm. They discovered their mutual secret the first time they had sex, and used it to rob banks for a while. Since then, they’ve learned that a bunch of other people can do the same thing, and even weirder things.

In the last volume, they broke up. (Um, Spoiler! I guess.) Since Sex Criminals is a reasonably mainstream serial comic with occasional superhero tropisms, we know both that “breaking up the team” is something that will happen every so often and that it cannot be permanent.

I’m not going to throw in a Spoiler! again, but guess what?

This is the volume where nearly the entire sex-powered cast (which is all but one or two of them) are slowly gravitating towards each other, slowly giving up their individual complaints and animuses, for the big team-up against the real villain: the rich guy.

(He is a real villain, too, and a complete asshole, but he’s also the one rich guy.)

From the end of this book, I had the strong opinion that there would be one more volume to get us to the big ending, and it looks like I’m right: random Googling told me that some random Internet guy says that is indeed the case. And if you can’t believe some random Internet guy, who can you believe? (He sourced it to the issue #25 letter column. Does that sound slightly more authoritative?)

So: this is mostly character stuff (plus sex jokes), and the threatened superhero-style all-hands smack-down has been averted, at least for now. There will be one more volume, to fix whatever can be fixed, and give whoever deserves it a Happily Ever After. Stuff actually happens that matters in this book, and it’s pretty much all decisions and thoughts — moments between people. And, again, a lot of sex jokes — what could be better?

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.