This may come as a shock to those of you who have previously sifted through my incoherent ramblings about Wonder Woman or tried to make heads or tails of my crudely drawn Superbad parody featuring Captain Marvel, but I've never posted, or written or drawn anything for posting, while drunk before. In fact, I've never been drunk before. Because I don't drink at all. And never have.
Why do I mention this, and what does it have to do with superheroes and/or comics? Well, a few weeks ago, I found myself co-planning a going away party for one of my friends, and my co-planner and I decided that we'd serve our friend's favorite drink at the party. That would be a key lime martini, which I , of course, had no idea how to make. So I spent a few hours at a local library researching drink recipes—and man, there are a lot of different ways to make that one particular drink—when I ran across something called a Black Green Lantern.
Being easily distracted, I soon found myself searching the Internet for drinks named after superheroes, and found quite a few, most of them named for DC heroes, which I found a little odd, considering that historically DC's superheroes have all been moralizing sticks-in-the-mud (Punch and soda were the two drinks served at most JLoA/JSA get-togethers in the old multiverse days), while Marvel's heroes have been more likely to light up a stogie and crack open a beer. One of their biggest heroes was an alocholic, after all, and cans of beer seems to affect Wolverine in a manner similar to the way cans of spinach affects Popeye.
Now, I don't know how widespread any of these drinks are—I'm not sure you could go down the corner bar and order a Batman or an Iron Man, for example—since I guess anyone could put any combination of anything in a glass, call it whatever they want, and post it on the Internet. In fact, I thought about doing just that, making up drinks reflective of my favorite superheroes (Like, a shot of vodka in a pitcher of room temperature water with a rim salted margarita-style would be an Aquaman, for example), until I realized my lack of knowledge of alcohol would make that a very short, very uninteresting post.
So instead of inventing new drinks based on superheroes, I figured I could do a post of pure reportage. Here then, are all of the drinks named after superheroes I ran across. Feel free to share any others you know of in the comments section.
Okay, in the panel at the top of the post, Clark Kent may have been sipping on a frou-frou girly drink in front of Hal and Ollie (Hey, when you’re as strong as Superman, you give a damn what a couple of puny humans with a magic ring and a bow and boxing glove arrow have to say about your masculinity), but Superman actually has his own signature drink.
Not that I could actually ever imagine him drinking it.
Superman
1 oz gin
3/4 oz dry vermouth
1/2 oz apricot brandy
1 oz mandarin juice
1 tsp grenadine syrup
Shake with a glassful of broken ice and pour unstrained into an old-fashioned glass. Add a speared cherry, and serve in an old-fashioned or rocks glass.
For some reason, the words “Superman” and “gin” just really don’t go seem to go to together all that well to me, you know?
Batman is a total teetotaler, only sipping soda water, which probably doesn’t help maintain a reckless playboy image, but does keep his mind sharp and his body fit should he need to lunge into action as the Dark Knight. But he too has his own drink (That's not really Bruce Wayne in the panel above, but a white Martian impersonating him).
Batman
33 cl Battery energy drink
4 cl Gordon's gin
10 ice cubes
Mix all. Serve cold. Serve in a highball glass.
Oh, I get it Battery energy drink. Gordon's gin.
Neither of the two recipes below are actually named after the superhero Robin, but they have the word “Robin” right there in the name, so they seem like they’d be decent sidekick drinks to the Batman drink above.
Of course, Robin is too young to legally drink, and he seems like a good, upstanding kid who would never break the law, even if he was at a party and Gar Logan had legally purchased the alcohol and nobody was planning on driving, flying or teleporting home that night.
But perhaps Roy or Garth laughingly stir one of these up for Nightwing at Titans reunions.
Round Robin
1 egg white
1 tsp sugar
1 oz absinthe herbal liqueur
1 oz brandy
Shake with ice and strain into a wine glass.
This one sounds super-repulsive, but at least it’s got some protein in it. Raw eggs are good for people who are in intense physical training in the art of combat, right? I think I saw that in a movie once.
Robin's Nest
1 oz vodka
1/2 oz white creme de cacao
1 oz cranberry juice
Shake all ingredients with ice, strain into a cocktail glass, and serve.
Now Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman I could see getting her drink on. She believes in and probably still worships Dionysus, after all. I imagine her drinking dark wines out of flagons, but I see she has a drink named after her.
Wonder Woman
2 oz Midori melon liqueur
2 oz peach schnapps
3 oz orange juice
1 oz pineapple juice
2 oz cranberry juice
Carefully layer ingredients, in order, into an ice-filled hurricane glass. Serve unstirred, garnished with a cherry. Serve in a hurricane glass.
That sounds pretty delicious, actually. I can totally see Steve Trevor getting shitfaced on those when on leave, then dialing Diana Prince up in the middle of the night and sobbing to her over the phone, asking her why it is that Wonder Woman doesn’t love him like she does.
There were a surprisingly high number of drinks called the Green Lantern, which is kind of odd, because, first of all, I always assumed GL was one of the least known superheroes among the civilian populace, and also because, to a man, I picture all of the Earth-born Lanterns as beer drinkers. (Well, actually, I guess I could see Kyle dowing some kind of coffee and liqueur concoctions, and/or maybe Red Bulls and vodkas, depending on where he was doing his drinking).
Of the variations, this seemed to be the most basic...
Green Lantern
1/3 part Midori melon liqueur
1/3 part fresh orange juice
1/3 part 7-Up soda
Mix all ingredients together in order, shake once and pour into a hurricane glass.
To Guy Gardnerize it, substitute PBR or Schlitz for the Midori. And the orange juice. And the 7-Up.
Black Green Lantern
1 oz Courvoisier cognac
2 oz Hpnotiq liqueur
2 oz Midori melon liqueur
Place five ice cubes in a coupe glass first. Pour Courvoisier, then Hypnotiq, then Midor. Stir (do not shake) and serve.
Hey, don’t glower at me, John Stewart! I didn’t name it; I’m just posting what I found.
I’m not sure if J’onn J’onnz, Manhunter from Mars, imbibes or not (cow milk goes better with Earth cookies, anyway), or if there’s even any point to drinking alcohol when you can control your body on a molecular level, but I could see him in his human alter ego John Jones guise ordering one of these, and laughing to himself. It sounds like it might be a little on the sweet side, and J’onn’s certainly got a bit of a sweet tooth.
Mighty Martian
1/2 oz Absolut vodka
1/4 oz Midori melon liqueur
1/4 oz DeKuyper Sour Apple Pucker schnapps
Pour all contents into a cocktail shaker with ice and shake well. Strain into a shot glass and serve.
This seems close enough to be Red Tornado’s signature drink.
Red Hurricane
1 oz Bacardi Limon rum
1 oz tequila
3 oz cranberry juice
Pour over ice in a hurricane glass. Stir, and serve.
Oh, wait a minute, you can’t drink, can you Red Tornado? Because you're just a lifeless, unfeeling android. You can’t enjoy the sensation of liquid splashing down your throat, the bittersweet taste of cranberry juice, or the slightly elated feeling known among humans as “a buzz,” just as you’ll never again taste the sweet green apples in your wife's kiss, nor smell the lavender in your daughter's fine, black hair.
You’re not going to cry, are you Red Tornado?
Oh, you are going to cry.
Man up, Tornado!
Black Orchid
1 oz Blue Curacao liqueur
1 oz black rum
1 splash 7-Up soda
1/2 oz cranberry juice
1/2 oz grenadine syrup
Shake all ingredients except 7-up in a cocktail shaker. Strain into a sour glass and top with 7-up. Serve in a sour glass.
Okay, this one’s gotta be a coincidence. I can’t imagine Black Orchid the superheroine has a drink named after her, Neil Gaiman miniseries or no Neil Gaiman miniseries.
Tony Stark, being an alcoholc, doesn’t drink anymore. But he sure did back in the day, so much so that he had a drink named after his heroic alter ego.
Iron Man
3 oz Seagram's® 7 whisky
3 oz vodka
fill with soda water
ice cubes
Mix seagram 7 and vodka in an old-fashioned glass. Stir. Add a few ice cubes, fill with soda and stir gently.
Maybe even more than one...
Tabletop Iron Man
1 oz Jose Cuervo Especial gold tequila
1 slice lime
1 pinch salt
Pour Cuervo Gold into shot glass and serve with lime and salt. Take salt and snort it up your nose, take shot, squirt lime in your eye. Use a napkin to clean up.
I would guess this is probably named after the other meaning of “iron man,” as in a man who’s so tough it is as if he were made out of iron.
And I also guess this is a drink one “enjoys” after already having had enough other drinks to makesnorting salt and squirting lime in your eye sound like a good idea.
The Odinson is, of course, more of a mead man, but the mighty Mjolnir did inspire a drink with the potency to slay fire trolls and ice giants alike.
Hammer of Thor
4 oz Aristocrat vodka
5 oz cranberry juice
3 oz Milwaukee's Best Ice lager
Stir ingredients together in a highball glass, and serve.
And if thou aren’t slain after drinking a few of these, then clearly thou aren’t drinking enough of them.
This one is actually called the Invisbile Man, and he’s only a (sorta) superhero in League of Extraordinary Gentleman. But given how few drinks named for Marvel heroes I could find, I think this would be a good one to alter into a drink named after Sue Richards. Not sure how one goes about feminizing a drink, or changing the gender of a drink, though.
Can we just collectively decide to add a “wo-“ in front of the “-man?”
Or serve this in a shapely wine glass? Or add an umbrella?
Invisible (wo)Man
2 oz gin
1/2 oz brandy
1/2 oz triple sec
3 oz ginger ale
2 dashes orange juice
Add triple sec, brandy, gin, and orange juice to a highball glass filled with ice. Fill with ginger ale and serve in a highball glass.
Yellowjacket
2 oz pineapple juice
2 oz orange juice
1 1/2 oz lemon juice
Pour the ingredients into a cocktail shaker half-filled with ice cubes, and shake well. Strain into an old-fashioned glass almost filled with ice cubes, and serve in an old-fashioned or rocks glass.
Hey waitaminute, this is a virgin drink. Oh Hank Pym, you colossal pussy you. I imagine Tony sure made fun of you about this when the Avengers would go barhopping back in the day. At least until he realized he might have a problem.
Beast Juice
Scale ingredients to servings
2 oz white rum
4 oz chilled Mountain Dew Code Red soda
4 oz chilled Red Bull energy drink
Stir together in a highball glass, and serve.
I could actually see Henry McCoy two-fisting and/or two-footing these before a night on the town with Wonder Man…or an all-nighter in his lab trying to find a cure for a mutant genetic disease of some kind.
Jubilee
1 oz tequila
1/2 oz gin
1/2 oz vodka
1/2 oz Blue Curacao liqueur
1/2 oz lemon juice
1/2 tsp superfine sugar
4 oz club soda
Pour tequila, gin, vodka, curacao, lemon juice and sugar into a cocktail shaker half-filled with ice cubes. Shake and strain into a highball glass almost filled with ice cubes. Top with club soda, garnish with a cherry, and serve.
Hey, what’s with the teen heores having all the drinks named after them? There’s no Colossus, Wolverine, Cyclops or Phoenix, but I found three different drinks called a Jubilee something or other. This is the straight Jubilee…there’s also a Silver Jubilee and a Jubilee On The Block. I haven't read very many comics featuring Jubilee over the years, and the few I have, I kinda wish I could un-read, so I don't know if she even drinks. But she does seem to enjoy Royal Crown cola (You can get that in New York state?). So if I had to guess, I'd imagine she drinks rum and RCs. Or maybe just straight Canadian beers, to imitate her idol/crush Wolvie.
