Teamworking Day: Captain Al Cohol 🌭

Brockway: I can’t beat that intro.

Seanbaby: “Fear my alien powers, frozen Yukon cowards! In merely twenty more beers you shall face Captain Alcoho–” wait, holy shit, is that a space? I think this character’s name is actually Captain Al Cohol, like a new father testing to see if the hospital had any rules about naming babies. But the time for thinking is over, fear-faced, caribou-shoed fools! I have finished my twenty beers! Captain Al Cohol incredibly comes among you!

Brockway: I’m worried this is too exactly the punchline a drunk Canadian uncle says to ruin Goodsday, or whatever Canadian Thanksgiving is called. Some of us have been known to doctor comics for hilarity, so it’s important that we are crystal clear up front: This is not a Man Comics. Or rather, it is, but from before Seanbaby was born. Captain Al Cohol is not photoshopped, and it’s not a spoof. This is all real. You’re not going to believe me several times, but this was a sincere effort by the Department of Information for the Department of Social Development, Government of the Northwest Territories to combat alcoholism among the Inuit people.

Seanbaby: A very specific, very serious problem requires a deranged and childlike solution. You can’t fight addiction with policy or funding. You have to put Moldova Superman on a polar bear’s face and get him fucked up.

Brockway: Yeah, philanthropy was way more fun back in 1973, when Captain Al Cohol was written and illustrated by the suspiciously whitely-named Art Sorensen, Phil Clark, and Dale Austin from Arctic Comics. But you can’t assume a person’s ethnicity by a name alone. You need a single comic book panel for that.

Brockway: “Hey Art, what do we know about these here eskimos?”

“Well, first, they love being called that.”

“Got it. What else?”

“Instead of Jesus they got uhhhhh- shamans. And they think all dogs are magic cliff fairies.”

“That’s going in.”

“Plus they’re always saying shit like ‘Leaping honeybuckets!’”

“Hahaha Phil’s drunk already.”

“Fuck it, I’m putting it in!”

“I’m putting it in- m’putting it in your mother!”

“Get this sumbitch another CC ‘n CC!”

“Another Canadian Club and Clearly Canadian coming right up, sir.”

Seanbaby: Whoever drew this featureless landscape was definitely drunk, which is troubling because they were also definitely nine. I mean, leaping honeybuckets, even Rob Liefeld would have drawn a couple lines in the background. If you have no idea how to draw ice, maybe don’t pitch a fucking arctic adventure comic when your boss asks, “How can we stop Native alcohol abuse?” Anyway, this is terrible art, but a pretty good Pictionary clue for the phrase “racist Sarah Palin coloring contest.”

Brockway: We’re not in this for the art, we’re in this for the drunk children. I could rephrase that. Anyway, Kirnik drags a frozen white man home because he loves being framed for Starlight Tour deaths. He brings it to his local poker game because, honestly, it is pretty funny. And then the following happens. These panels are sequential. All of this happens in exactly this order.

Brockway: That’s the drunkest thing I’ve ever seen.

Seanbaby: There was no reason for that guy to say, “LOOK AT THAT BIG THING.” He’d already explained the situation perfectly when he screamed, “TAKURALUGUNA!” It’s a well-known Inuktitut expression meaning “word not found in dictionary” in English.

Brockway: Captain Al Cohol passes out on the ice, gets defrosted by some kindly villagers, explodes into a poker game and runs across the room to uppercut four elderly Inuit men through a wall. He does this wordlessly, unless “ARGG G-G-G!!” is in your Inuktitut phrasebook under “watch out, village elders, you each have a mosquito on your jaw – hold on, I got it!”

Seanbaby: I still have the translator open; I’ll check… okay, so “ARGG G-G-G!!” is an ancient Chukotka curse to banish your enemies through holes in a cardboard box, but it’s normally only used by cartoon mice? This is remarkable to me. Do you have any idea how little you have to know about perspective, walls, and punching to consider drawing this? I mean, I get why The Council for Indigenous Condescension couldn’t get the best guys for this. Still, in a world where shame exists, all of this should be impossible.

Brockway: I’m going to be extremely generous. Maybe Captain Al Cohol isn’t drunk as shit already, maybe he’s brain-addled from being frozen and he thinks he’s under attack. I’m sure he’ll be overcome with regret when he realizes he just killed the entire Elk’s Lodge of Fish Fiord.

Brockway: If a drunk guy in a unitard knocks out your grandpa and hands you a badge that says “CAPTAIN AL COHOL,” the proper response is to give him a high-five and say “KPRX rocks my weekdays” for free passes to Warrant this weekend at the casino.

Seanbaby: Captain Al Cohol parties so hard he has to wear a special badge that says, “If found, call goddamn outer space 80321” What a champion. He has been sleeping one off for one million years and he’s already picked four fist fights before he had breakfast.

Brockway: The comic explains he’s “wreaking a trail of havoc,” but it’s wholly unnecessary. Look at that Family Circus-style adventure path straight from an Inuit bingo den to the community freezer, only instead of good Christian hijinx, he’s leaving behind a wake of senior citizens who just got punched in the back of the head.

Seanbaby: “The white invader named Al Coholic has sure wreaked a trail of havoc through the village, much like his namesake does to underserved communities! Hi, I’m Captain Al Legory on behalf of the Canadian government, here to warn you about getting dumb as fuck with your allegories.”

Brockway: This is the arctic equivalent of leaving the bar through a plate glass window, knocking out a police horse, then getting spotlighted from a helicopter while sitting in a tennis court eating an entire pack of frozen Hot Pockets. It’s relatable, is what I’m saying.

Seanbaby: “Nowhere in my thoughts, though they are detailed and weirdly insightful, do I reflect on the dozen sentient beings I recently punched! Yum, maybe this is their embryos!”

Brockway: Now that he’s distracted breaking his teeth on seal popsicles, the townspeople take advantage and throw a net over the drunkest man they’ve ever seen. “I’m scared!” one says, as a battle cry.

Seanbaby: I’m partial to “HOLY SMOKES, GRAB IT.”, but all seven of these guys have a real way with letters.

Brockway: The people of Fish Fiord make what their insurance adjuster will call “a flagrant violation of the dipshit clause.” They tie down a shitfaced alien hurricane… and force feed him more alcohol.

Seanbaby: I know enough about Al Cohol to know this is how you get cartoon holes in your cardboard.

Seanbaby: I knew it.

Brockway: Captain Al Cohol does the only reasonable thing – he explodes out of his restraints, tries to appear big like a threatened kitty cat, then hurls himself through the drywall. I honestly don’t have any notes for this. This is the best comic book I’ve ever read.

Seanbaby: It’s so awesome. He trashed an entire nation, got trawled like a salmon, and the second he woke up he started doing shots. He leapt dick-first out of a hospital to make his own mosh pit. We can’t even comprehend partying like this.

Brockway: This is government sponsored party! “Hell yeah,” says the Department of Information for the Department of Social Development, Government of the Northwest Territories. “Get out there and rip shit up, kids.”

Seanbaby: I genuinely don’t know what I’m looking at. Earlier, when they threw a net on him, a thing requiring no explanation, seven different men had lines. You remember them. Classic ones like “UAKAGAAAAA!” and “I’M SCARED!” Yet here, where we have no idea if Captain Al Cohol is dying, enraged, or rocking the fuck out, the narrator and every character is completely silent. How hard is it to include something like this?

Brockway: It’s crazy how thin the line is between ‘royally pissed off’ and ‘finally got drunk enough to start a rave.’ I guess we’ll never know which it is, because Captain Al Cohol gets lost on the ice again. We have to assume this is the gameplay loop. Get defrosted, beat the shit out of an assisted living community, power up on their meat, wander onto the ice, get frozen, repeat. But before that can happen, he’s attacked by a polar bear! He handles it with the grace and dignity we’ve come to expect-

Brockway: That second panel is how a recently-divorced political cartoonist would draw Joe Biden running from the Palestine issue. There is absolutely no dignity there. And Captain Al Cohol follows it up by facing right onto an ice floe, fully splayed, and passing the fuck out. This is something David Hasselhoff wakes up to find going viral, it’s fucking incredible they handed this out in schools.

Seanbaby: ha ha I can’t believe Captain Al Cohol has already passed out for the third time and he hasn’t done anything coherent yet. We still don’t know if he’s the last of his kind or if his people are getting hammered and losing fights across countless worlds. Is this their version of diplomacy? Because if so, it rules.

Brockway: Captain Al Cohol crashes his ice floe like a normal drunk would crash a stolen electric scooter. He handles this by “uttering a soul-piercing shriek” and passing out again. I would like to remind you this is the first issue, we are not watching our hero hit rock bottom as he succumbs to severe alcoholism – this is his origin story. He was bitten by a radioactive Molson and fucked up 600 square kilometers of the arctic. Next he encounters the Ravenmen, which is where the actual superhero stuff kicks in…

Brockway: Haha I’m just fucking with you, he shrieks again and flees.

Seanbaby: ha ha ha

Brockway: He was simply too drunk to handle a birdman in his life, and fled before that birdman could explain he’s Ronnie the Hay River Raven and you can’t sleep on the hockey rink when it’s game day.

Seanbaby: Again, it’s not that hard to put in something like this:

Brockway: That’s it for this issue! Let’s recap what Captain Al Cohol has done: Fucked shit up. Perfect comic, here’s the “come back next time” teaser to build up the tension.

Brockway: His own comic book just called him a pussy for losing his shit after half a dose of prescription rum. They give that to Manitoba kids for being extra brave during moosepox vaccinations.

Seanbaby: It’s weird for Captain Al Cohol’s creators to have so many questions for the reader. A Batman comic doesn’t start by asking, “Can Batman lift a car? Like, I know he’s strong, but is he lift-a-car strong? How big, if so? What’s that in kilograms? Sorry, I’m new, I don’t know a lot about bats.”

Brockway: At the start of the next issue, Captain Al Cohol’s hauled up before the whole village to explain his actions, and here’s where we get the tragic backstory. He’s an alien from a planet where alcohol is out of control, and he got so drunk he exploded his wife and kid. He tried to flee the guilt, only he also drunkenly exploded his own ship and landed in the ice.

Seanbaby: This is, word-for-word, the director’s commentary for Apocalypto.

Brockway: Props to the artist, you can really see the townsfolk here thinking “we have fucked up so hard by bringing this superpowered alcoholic murder honkey into our lives.” It’s a devastating, somber moment, followed by a kickass tub party.

Followed again by RAVENMEN.

Brockway: This time, Captain Al Cohol is sober. The only thing that changes is where he points his belligerent chaos. Those Ravenmen don’t stand a chance… against motherfucking Kirnik and his fish bat.

Seanbaby: I don’t think this is what’s happening, but this is exactly how you would letter a comic if the fish was the one screaming.

Brockway: Kirnik does not have superpowers. Kirnik is not given ten times the strength of a man by Earth’s pansy gravity. Kirnik doesn’t have a red unitard and a little badge. You know what Kirnik has? A fish. And with it, he takes out one more Ravenman than Captain Al Cohol.

Seanbaby: Do the Ravenmen maybe represent liver disease? This could be their way of saying fish oil is good for your liver. Because there’s no way this is what it looks like– a Canadian friend group deciding to do bird costumes and fish racketeer in the tundra. That’s insane. And no match for any superhero, no matter how depressed.

Brockway: Yeah, Dennis and his Ravenbros quickly realize they can’t take Captain Al Cohol in a fair fight, so they huddle and come up with a strategy. Here, and I’m not fucking with you, is that strategy in its entirety.

Brockway: It works! Three hugs and he’s down. How will he get out of this one??

No, I’m asking. You tell me how he gets out of this one.

Seanbaby: I know this. It’s making a fearless moral invent–

Brockway: That’s right, he doesn’t! The Ravenmen take him and Kirnik back to their base, torture them, tie them up in bags and throw them in the ocean. Captain Al Cohol lucks out of his bag and barely swims back to shore. He explicitly does not save Kirnik, who also struggles out of his own bag and swims up a moment later. They walk back to the village hypothermic. The Ravenman problem is never addressed again.

Seanbaby: I have gone from thinking this was the work of talentless lunatics to being sure it’s the most accurate depiction of Canadian alcoholism ever written. If you asked this writer what the Ravenmen meant, he would finish his bottle of wine and say, “The raven men who beat me up and threw me in the ocean.”

Brockway: Instead of getting wrecked by birdmen, let’s do a little public service announcement. That asshole Tooktik is holed up in his house getting faced, and only Captain Al Cohol can talk him down!

Brockway: And by talk him down, I of course mean shoulder ram through his door and bottle-fight him. You know how this goes, Superman has handled Very Special Issues like this. Captain Al Cohol is incredibly strong and nigh invulnerable, so he’ll let Tooktik take some feeble swings, knowing it will have no effect, and then the man will break down weeping at the monster he’s become. At which point Captain Al Cohol will show him the sensitivity and empathy he needs.

Brockway: Haha, no, he super-punches Tooktik straight in the gut, gets glassed, then stands there staring at his cut hand in total shock while Tooktik pukes up a $2 bottle of Peppermint Schnapps.

Seanbaby: Things didn’t go perfectly at Tooktik’s intervention, but Captain Al Cohol is learning! He smashed through the door instead of the wall; one step closer to being able to move between inside and outside without making a new hole.

Brockway: We said we weren’t here for the art, but for the drunk children. I take both of those statements back. Even totally devoid of context, just look at that last panel. I would absolutely frame that and hang it in my foyer to impress hot art school freshmen who just learned about Lichtenstein.

Seanbaby: I agree, it’s beautiful. Still, it seems like it could use something.

Brockway: I love it! Speaking of, Captain Al Cohol finds love! It is an abrupt panel.

Seanbaby: “Oh, Captain Al! I never thought I’d meet someone else whose haircut defied all reason! All shape!”

Brockway: Aaaand she is immediately kidnapped by the evil Billy Vermin. “Vermin” is a bad way for any relationship to end, but to be fair, there was no good resolution here. I guess maybe love could heal the wounded little child inside Al that he’s been trying to baptize in malt liquor? It could go that way. OR, and hear me out here, OR… he could joyride a skidoo into a pole.

Seanbaby: “Trusht me, Igmook. Your ice car and this delicious Earth poison is all I need… all I need to fix everything.”

Seanbaby: “Captain Al – his brain seething with drunkeness,” I whisper aloud to myself. “You’re glorious,” I tell the comic, a single drunken tear seething down my face.

Brockway: Let us all experience another silent moment of stolen beauty.

Brockway: I think I literally wrote this as a bad ending in a Choose Your Own Drug-Fueled Adventure parody. He stole the funniest possible vehicle to drunk-drive, and then facing the existential terror of eighty million miles of flat, featureless ice, he crashes into the only telephone pole.

Seanbaby: The only thing better than this comic is picturing someone in 1973 reading it and thinking, “You know, when you put it like that, alcohol abuse does seem like a mistake.”

Brockway: You can’t keep Captain Al Cohol down, except for all the times he’s passed out on an ice floe, or just now when he crashed into a utility pole. He gets up, heads to Billy Vermin’s Human Trafficking Manufactured Home, and charges to the rescue!

Seanbaby: Sounds like this mission calls for a bit of stealth. Luckily Captain Al Cohol has been working on using our Earth doors to enter and exit locations! Show us what you can do, Captain!

Seanbaby: Damn it, almost.

Brockway: Really appreciate that sequence of events. Captain Al Cohol sprints up to the villain’s lair and without hesitation runs face first into the wall, knocking himself the fuck out. Inside, Billy Vermin wonders “was that a thump?” He comes out to find Captain Al Cohol spitting teeth, sitting on his ass next to a Captain Al Cohol-shaped crack in the siding. The next panel has to be Billy Vermin putting down his rifle in awe and saying “Did you just try to Kool Aid Man through the wall, you drunk son of a bitch?”

Seanbaby: Captain Al Cohol is so relatable in moments like this. He has the strength of somewhere between one and ten men, but he can’t tell where he is on that scale when he’s drunk, and that’s the exact same super power I got from a snowmobile accident.

Brockway: Don’t worry, Captain Al Cohol saves the day by passing out until the cops come. That’s seriously what happens! He’s so embarrassed the whole Kitty Pryde gambit didn’t work that he hides in his trailer and sends Lois away. You know what happens next?

No, seriously, you tell me what happens next.

Seanbaby: He makes a list of persons he has harmed and becomes willing to make amen–

Brockway: That’s absolutely right, she is trampled by muskox!

Brockway: I’m sorry to keep stressing this, but those are the exact panels in their original order. It goes:

1. Go away, Lois.
2. Oh no, muskox.
3. RIP Lois.

It’s the Inuit loss.jpg.

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Seanbaby: If only Lois’ headband and hair didn’t perfectly mimic an ovulating muskox.

Brockway: Captain Al Cohol stows away on a plane going anywhere but here, where the muskox memories are too strong. Then he ditches out at the last minute, pausing to call everyone who helped him a bunch of chumps, and flings himself at a passing truck. I’m saying: I relate to this. This is for me.

Brockway: Look at that. Just a limp-limbed, full-body, crotch-first truck hurl.

Seanbaby: This looks like a flying squirrel tried to draw a truck driver from memory, but I’m more certain than ever it is high art created by geniuses. If you party hard enough, this comic speaks to something inside you you thought no one else understood. This is the I Saw the TV Glow for problem drinkers.

Brockway: Jesus, you’re right. I’ve been buried alive and I need to wake up to embrace who I really am: A problem for everyone around me. Hey, speaking of, Captain Al Cohol finds a bar and some locals want to buy him a drink. He handles it with the grace and dignity we’ve come to expect-

Brockway: Just throwing wild haymakers at any blurry shape sucker enough to get in haymaker range. I love it. It’s the perfect way to solve every problem except a muskox girlfriend tragedy. Dibs on the Inuit emo band name.

Seanbaby: I’m sure we’re on the same page, but let me know if this is what you were thinking:

Brockway: No, I was thinking The Muskox Girlfriend Tragedy would be the band and- actually, you’re right, that’s more of a post-eggpunk name.

Hey, you know when you crash a bottle against a table and you’re really feeling yourself so you say some shit like “come and get me now, you fools!” Don’t you hate it when you get immediately crunched by a stick?

Seanbaby: This comic book is all I’m ever going to think about for the rest of my life.

Brockway: I’m so sorry we are on the last issue, but at least it wasn’t an abrupt cancellation. Arctic Comics knew this was a four-issue run only, so they got to close things out proper, on their terms. Here’s the final Captain Al Cohol story to tie the whole arc together.

But first, a little background: Captain Al Cohol was wandering around drunk as shit when he saw a fire and a guy in a window. That’s it. That’s all you missed. Whenever I cut a panel, you should assume it’s Captain Al Cohol with his pants off in a dumpster, crying next to a dead raccoon.

Brockway: Drunks falling asleep with lit cigarettes and burning down their homes was a big problem in the area. It’s a serious tragedy affecting a lot of real, local families, so the best way to talk about it is a comic book where a man houses goblin liquor that turns him into an arsonist were-monkey.

Seanbaby: I think the author is working through something. Because this is how a child remembers you when you burn down three of their homes and leave before they finish kindergarten.

Brockway: Captain Al Cohol follows him, only to realize *gasp* it’s his father!

Seanbaby: Shut the absolute fuck up, I was kidding.

Brockway: That’s completely fucking insane. Captain Al Cohol is an alien who crash-landed on Earth in a drunken accident, why the fuck would his father be here, also drunk, and now some kind of pyromaniac ape king?

Seanbaby: Don’t you dare tell me. This is the most perfect madness I’ve ever witnessed.

Brockway: Well, I’m glad you asked-

Brockway: Don’t squint. Don’t try to read that. Look at Captain Al Cohol’s face – he ain’t listening to that shit, either. That is the face of a man who is waiting to respond “oof, that’s rough.”

Seanbaby: “Father!? Oh, y-yeah, I’m your dad! Um, M-mister… Cohol. I, you remember. I faked my death in space, the place w-where we are from! You’re so smart to recognize me, and now we can be together like before, again. But first, your old man could sure use $500 and some matches… son.”

Brockway: In the end, Captain Al Cohol drank so much he gave himself an ulcer. An ulcer given the strength of ten ulcers by our Earth’s weak gravity! No, wait, just a regular one. That’s enough for him to finally question what he’s doing with his life, and vow to make a change. An ulcer. Not leaving those Ravenmen free to terrorize the village that saved him. Not ski-jacking Kirnik’s sweet new power toboggan and swerving it into the Northwest Territories’ only power pole. Not Lois’ tragic muskox death, or his own father’s monkey arson. It was tummy aches that finally tamed the beast inside Captain Al Cohol.

Seanbaby: When Captain Al Cohol was hitchhiking away from the shattered corpse of his one true love, his last words to her “JUST GO AWAY AND LEAVE ME ALONE,” I wondered how they were going to raise the stakes. Impossible. And then he met his father, who was every story element at once. Amazing. “There is nowhere to go from here,” I thought. But there was. When I least expected it, a minor and treatable side effect! It’s almost too fantastical to imagine. It’d be like Hulk Hogan fucking another man’s wife in a racist sex tape, getting caught in a crypto scheme, then going to his son’s DUI sentencing only to find out he’s been bald this whole time.

Brockway: Here’s the powerful final panel.

Brockway: “No, I’m also named Al C- you look confused. My name is Al Cohol, but I’m not addicted to me. I’m addicted to alcohol. No, the other kind. It’s tough to emphasize capitalization in verbal speech, I just… Listen, do any of you believe in nominative determinism? Hands up if you believe in nominative determinism. Dennis Ravenman, I want to see that hand up-”

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