Suicide Squad (Captain Boomerang, Mirror Master)

Late summer going on, so let’s make a best of it: couple of refreshing highballs coming up!

Today’s theme is Suicide Squad, and I’ve put up a compilation, please check out Recipes and downloads. I should point out that I did not include every single S-Squad member in the compilation… checking out my published cocktails so far, you’ll notice that there are many, many cocktail namesake characters who have been in the Squad for a while.

Cramming all of them into one single PDF would’ve made it too long and depressing to wade through (and there would’ve been too much repetition from “Batman: friends & foes”-compilation). Instead I selected about ten characters, whose drinks vary from dry to sweet, from sour to bitter… a compact take on Suicide Squad.

And now, without further delay…

 

CAPTAIN BOOMERANG

3 parts Foster’s (or some other Aussie beer 🙂 )

1 part sala syrup

1 part gold tequila

Build into a suitable glass. Adding ice recommended.

In Plastic Man I used sala syrup because its taste “streches”. Well, balanced with the sourness of cheap n’ nasty gold tequila the overall taste “goes there, far away”… and then it comes back! ;P

The combination itself is too tense, but adding a lots of beer evens it out nicely… and I can’t stress enough: it’s “absolutely essential” that you use lager from Down Under 😀

Colour has nothing to do with good ol’ Captain, it’s all about the “boomerangish” taste… the next drink leans more heavily on the colour theme of the villain. And I botched the photo, even after multiple takes 😦

 

MIRROR MASTER

(Dedicated to Test Subject K., a long time Mirror Master fan… and calm down K-Man, I’ll design that Pied Piper Cocktail someday. I made TMNT pretty quickly when you insisted 🙂 )

You’ll have to prepare coloured ice beforehand. Water with added booze, to the point where cubes barely freeze.

Orange: Water, Strega and Campari. You’re looking for the “red end” of the orange spectrum, otherwise they will look bland next to striking green ice… this happened in the picture above. Believe it or not, there are same amount of both colours of ice in the glass, but it all looks green.

If you loathe the strong anise kick of the Strega you might want to use eg. Galliano instead of it… but there is actually a good reason for Strega, I’ll come back to it later.

Green: This is simple, water and Midori.

And then the actual drink…

3 parts gin

1 part Triple Sec

1 part lemon juice

1 part simple syrup

4 parts mineral water

Build into a highball glass, leaving quite a lot of room for the ice. Add coloured ice quickly, straight out from the freezer and serve immediately; ice cubes mixed with sugary alcohol are very “soggy” and melt quickly if left lying on the kitchen table.

I dare to say I’m pretty satisfied with this drink, and here’s why…

Colour theme: Repeating myself, but I say it again… I think the taste is most important thing in superhero/villain cocktails: it should represent the character, not just the colour of the drink. I’m willing to give up colour in favour of the taste if I have to choose, but in Mirror Master The Cocktail they actually support each other without any forced compromises.

Drink itself is basically colourless… it represents A Mirror Dimension, its infinite reflections. Green and Orange depict, of course, the colour of M-Master’s thights… but also the fact that he can travel through Dimension safely, from mirror to another, while he has the power to send people to wander around the endless void of that particular Dimension.

Let’s put it this way… Mirror Master is at home in Mirror Dimension, as green and orange ice look nice in otherwise colourless drink.

And this is represented in the taste also, please read on…

The taste: Observant readers noticed that the drink is basic Tom Collins with a Triple Sec twist… but whatta twist it is! The aroma is mean (if it’s too mean, use more mineral water) but it’s supposed to be: he is a bad guy!

And then to the ice… melting process is allegory for unfortunate people who are lost in the Dimension. The changing colour of the drink is not the point, it’s the taste… the crisp sourness of Midori, violent anise of Strega, strong bitterness of Campari… when these are released to the drink, more and more as the ice melt, the aroma changes… it represents your growing despair when you realize that you’ll never get out from the mirror maze.

Don’t get me wrong, the drink will not turn into a unpalatable sludge towards the end: even though you use as much as alcohol in the ice as possible, the sour/anise/bitter are still nuances… but they are very enjoyable nuances, both in taste and for thematical purposes.

And this is why you shouldn’t use Galliano instead of Strega; its vanilla taste is totally out of place in this mean Tom Collins variant.

I enjoyed this cocktail very much, I hope you feel the same. It’s a bit laborous, coloured ice and all, but definitely worth a try.

 

Okay, people… It’s been too long since the last “Girl Power”-post. So, next time… Girl Power, Part 8 😀