deerstalker
https://www.blackenterprise.com/makers-mark-hbcu-collaboration/
Following their successful collaboration with Howard University alumnus Josh Mercer in 2022, distillery Maker’s Mark has announced two offerings from its new Private Selection bottling program. As Essence reported, they have tapped two alums from two of the most prestigious HBCUs in America, D’Angela Proctor from Spelman College and Harold H. Montgomery, Jr. from Morehouse College.
In a continuation of the seed planted through their initial collaboration with Mercer, the bourbon distillery will use these distinct drinks created by the pair to honor the history and heritage of their respective collegiate experiences. Proctor named her drink “Undaunted 1881” in a nod to the founding of Spelman as well as her consulting firm and content creation company, Undaunted Content, which she formed in 2019. Proctor chose notes of vanilla, caramel, cinnamon, and nutmeg in an attempt to express the grace, tenacity, and complex nature of the ladies who called Spelman home over the institution’s near century and a half of service.
Montgomery, who is a Morehouse graduate and business owner, called his creation “1867 The House Standard,” which pulled inspiration for its taste profile from his favorite cigar brand. Montgomery also sought to respect the culture of leadership exemplified by Morehouse and its vaunted past alumni through his bourbon composition. The Private Selection program allows for restaurant or retail partners as well as everyday customers to create their unique blends of bourbon similar to Proctor and Montgomery Jr.
According to the Maker’s Mark website, the program “is a first-of-its-kind barrel program. It allows our retail or restaurant partners to purchase a barrel and explore their own taste visions of Maker’s Mark – much in the way our past-and-present Maker’s distillers defined theirs.”
The two Makers Mark Private Selection bottles will retail for around $75 and like their previous limited-time HBCU bottle created to honor Howard University, will be made available just in time for the two college’s homecoming celebrations. At the present time, they will only be available for purchase in a select quantity at Atlanta’s My Friend’s Bottle Shop starting on Oct. 27.
RELATED CONTENT: SiriusXM And Pandora Turn Up The Volume At HBCU Homecoming Events
One of the big questions left over from the Ms. Marvel series was all about the origins of the bangle left to her by her grandmother—the one that unlocked all the incredible powers within Kamala Khan. Well, thanks to The Marvels, we now know the truth. That cosmic bangle is but one of a pair, and they are older than history itself. They have deep ties to Marvel Comics lore. The Marvels reveals Kamala’s bangle is one of two Quantum Bands, one of the most powerful artifacts in the universe. They connect to a character who was an Avenger for many years, as well as one of the Guardians of the Galaxy.
The Marvel Comics’ Quantum Bands Were Weapons of the Protector of the Universe
In the comics, the Quantum Bands were ancient and powerful energy-manipulating devices that most humanoids could wear. The ancient cosmic entity named Eon, whose statue was shown in Thor: Love and Thunder, possibly created them. Although it’s also possible they are even older than he is. Eon then appointed a mortal champion to wear them, giving them the title of Protector of the Universe. The Quantum Bands were weapons, but also revered symbols of the Protector of the Universe.
The power of the Quantum Bands comes from a place called the Quantum Zone, where all the energy and power in the Marvel Universe actually comes from. The Quantum Bands store energy from the Quantum Zone, but if they ever cut access to that power coming from the Zone, then these instruments would have to use whatever energy they had stored within them. And once that energy ran out, without access to the Quantum Zone, they would be totally useless.
The Powers of the Quantum Bands in Marvel Comics
These bands allow whoever wears them control over the electromagnetic spectrum, and can sap the energy away from both lifeforms and machines. They can project energy beams of varying degrees of power, and can even make hard light constructs (similar to DC Comics’ Green Lantern). They grant the wearer a degree of strength, invulnerability, and flight. The bands even allow the wearer to make cosmic jumps across lightyears under their own power. They do have their limits though. The Quantum Bands can’t be used to control psychic energies or magic of any kinds, as those powers originate outside known reality.
Quasar Wore the Quantum Bands in the Marvel Comics Universe
In the Marvel Universe, there have been countless Protectors of the Universe who have worn the Quantum Bands. However, two are the most famous. The first was Wendell Vaughn from Earth, a.k.a. Quasar. Wendell Vaughn was a scientist working for S.H.I.E.L.D., who was studying the Quantum Bands which they had acquired. When the terrorist organization A.I.M. attacked, Wendell put them on, and became the superhero known as Quasar. Even though he was not granted the Quantum Bands by Eon, the entity eventually deemed him worthy of the status of Protector of the Universe. He eventually joined the Avengers, and served on many missions with the team over several years. In more recent times, he’s shared the Quantum Bands with another Earth scientist, S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Avril Kincaid.
The other most famous wearer of the Quantum Bands was Phyla-Vell, daughter of Mar-Vell. In the cosmic crossover event Annihilation, a deadly energy wave reached across the universe, initiated by the Lord of the Negative Zone, Annihilus. Wendell Vaughn lost the Quantum Bands to Annihilus during this event. Later, Phyla-Vell managed to steal the bands from Annihilus, and became the new Quasar herself. As the new Quasar, she joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. During her time as owner of the Quantum Bands, she was able to create the Quantum Sword, a weapon unique to her. When she died, the Quantum Bands returned to Vaughn, although Phyla eventually returned to life.
The Quantum Bands in the MCU
Fans believed the bangles Kamala used in Ms. Marvel were the Nega Bands, the traditional Kree weapon of Captain Marvel. But In the MCU, we learned they were actually the Quantum Bands. These creations were millions of years old, and split up at some point in time. Although they never explicitly stated where their power comes from in the MCU, there is the Quantum Realm, which might as well be the same thing as the Quantum Zone from the comics. So it may be their source of power. The villain of The Marvels, the Kree warrior Dar-Benn, found one in a remote world. When she briefly had both that one and Ms. Marvel’s in her possession, she could tear a hole in spacetime itself.
Unable to control the incredible power of both bands at once, Dar-Benn died while fighting the Marvels. However, the Quantum Bands themselves survived. We see Kamala at the end with only one on. Will Kamala wear both in the future? Or will someone else wear them? The bands unlocked Kamala’s powers, but those powers are innate to her. Perhaps Wendell Vaughn will appear in the MCU soon. And if not him, Phyla-Vell already exists in the MCU too, as they showed her in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 as a new member.
One thing’s for sure: someone is going to wear both Quantum Bands in the MCU. The question is who will have the honor?
The post THE MARVELS Reveals the Truth About Ms. Marvel’s Bangles appeared first on Nerdist.
…but if it were, I might sound like this.
About a year ago, AMC+ released what was perhaps the best hard science fiction story I had ever seen: Pantheon. Based on short stories by Ken Liu (a name you may recognize as penning some of the more iconic Love Death + Robots shorts), Pantheon was a fascinating multi-narrative saga surrounding the idea of Uploaded Intelligences, humans who have their brain destructively scanned to live in virtual space. It featured an absolutely star-studded cast including Paul Dano, Daniel Dae Kim, Aaron Eckhart, and Taylor Schilling, and that’s barely scratching the surface.
The eight-episode run completely encaptivated me and was must-watch television. My phone was done, my eyes were glued, it would be paused instantly if I had to look away for even a second. As the credits rolled, the most satisfying thing was knowing that the second season had already been produced which means the story would continue, and I would be happy.
You can see that this is not what happened.
Instead, AMC+ announced that the second season would not be airing on their platform which was a weird decision given that again: it existed, it was ready to go, and they were people who wanted to watch. Even if it were just me, I would have very much liked to watch it, and these esoteric business decisions were getting to me. But to add insult to injury, the first season of Pantheon, something that AMC+ definitely owned, was inexplicably removed from their library, because we can’t have nice things.
And this was during a year where media been stricken from the record seemed all too common place. If we look at MAX, formerly HBOMax, we have seen the removal of Close Enough, Final Space, Infinity Train, Westworld, Raised by Wolves, and the preemptive blocking of the Batgirl movie (particularly baffling given the upward trend of Braden Fraser’s career and the allowance of the Flash movie to run amok [in more ways than one]). Disney and Hulu had removed Darby and the Dead, Big Shot, The Mighty Ducks: Gamechangers, Y: The Last Man, and Willow. And let’s not even try to keep of the revolving door of content over at Peacock.
The central point of all of this is that studios are much more concerned with not paying residuals, and you know what, in the capitalist hellscape that we exist in, I can pretend that I can understand. However, as someone who loves media in all of its forms and is a proponent of media preservation, it’s exceedingly frustrating that works of art that I could see as seminal are subject to the whims of razor thin profit margins. And I’m willing to pay to get access to this media. I immediately purchased all four seasons of Infinity Train in a desperate bid to get access to one of my favorite animated series of 2020 and 2021. Even now, I’m aware that if Prime wanted to they could wipe my entire library, and I would have next to no recourse.
But let’s flash forward to early October when thanks to a friend, I caught wind that for some reason, the second season of Pantheon was in fact airing exclusively on Prime Australia and New Zealand and had no discernable release in the States.
Now, I wouldn’t ever promote piracy. Piracy hurts hard working creatives. It denies them of any direct revenue that is generated from purchases or views, and the only thing potentially worse is completely removing any evidence that it ever existed and preventing any legitimate means of acquisition…or you know, something like that.
And it would be a real shame if the second season of a phenomenal science fiction series that may or may not conclude its story as there is no way in hell a third season is ever going to exist. And it would be completely wild if access to the episodes would be entirely dependent on the random whims of a random Prime ANZ executive. But at least *someone* would get to watch it. And at least it would be online.
So in lieu of any avenue to support the animated Pantheon, perhaps the next best recourse would be to just buy a bunch of Ken Liu collections because at least physical is much harder to revoke access at the drop of a dime. And I wish it wasn’t increasingly difficult to watch things on legitimates services as content is subject to just straight up vanishing and that piracy at this point seems less like a crime and more like the only means of digital media preservation.
In the 13th Century, archivists carved 52 millions characters into 81,258 wooden blocks and for 8 centuries that data has been preserved with zero data loss. And we can’t manage to keep a few gigs of video around for people to watch at their own pace. The Tripitaka Koreana serves as a testament to the fact that we as a species are in fact acting as a custodian for our histories and that rampantly preventing stories from being told isn’t necessarily our default way of thing.
And at the crux of this is the simple fact that digital media is so vulnerable. Flash games, shuttered servers, media that exists in small pockets of the internet, USB drives, and circulated VHS tapes. The era of physical media is quickly phasing out. This isn’t likely to be on the same scale of the burning of the Library of Alexandria. I’m not a professional archivist or data technician. Given how much more complicated audiovisual media there is a distinct possibility that it’s significantly more. That’s not really the point though. Any loss of cultural touchstones is tragic. And if as a result of the actions of capitalist overlords culling content, an uptick of nautical behavior started, I wouldn’t say it was morally justified.
But I also wouldn’t say it wasn’t.
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The post To Watch ‘Pantheon,’ I Wouldn’t Ever Promote Piracy… appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.