Blue Moon Blog

What with the Watchmen movie opening this weekend, and as I’ve been reading up on Hitchcock again of late, it all brought to mind a comic book story I did years ago, just a couple years after the original Watchmen comic book run.

The story is narrated and framed by a Hitchcock-style alien, just as Hitch had introduced his mystery and suspense TV show in the ’50s & ’60s. And I was obsessed with Watchmen then, so created a hybrid, giving him Dr, Manhattan’s “costume,” with and H instead of and M, of course.

A Wee Dram at Munden’s Bar appeared as a back-up story in First Comics’ Grimjack #57. Munden’s Bar is a series created by John Ostrander, a bar based on a Chicago hangout, The Bucket O’ Suds, which coincidentally was the first and only bar I frequented, just a mile or so from the house where I grew up. It was a great old place, owned and tended by good ol’ Joe Danno, who had a shock of white hair and thick black coke-bottle glasses. He was kind of a Harry Carray type. He’d created tons of drinks, a checklist of which he’d had printed up as a business card. I had a bunch of them checked off, but my favorites were the Elixir Lucifer (potent!) and the tasty Monkey Nut. Joe made me only a few Monkey Nuts, ’cause when I requested them after a while, he’d always say he was out: “No Monkey Nut. Try the Coco-Loco!” I did, and it was a good, but no Monkey Nut. For years, I longed for that Monkey Nut taste, until recently tried to recreate it with ice, Bailey’s chocolate cream liquor and Captain Morgan’s coconut rum.  It’s pretty close!  Close enough to take me back to the Bucket, anyway.

Read all of Wee Dram in our Toons section, written by writer, professor, raconteur and fellow Bucket O’ Suds patron, Len Strazewski, who introduced me to the Bucket the night we first met.