365 Days of Defiance, Day 350: Defiance, Oh Yeah! (Today in Comics History, December 16, 1773)

Gather 'round, children, and Unca Bully will tell y'all a tale of a brave, fearless soft drink mixture who saved American democracy on this very day in 1773. (picks up my banjo, starts to strum) Aw, dang it, I don't know how to play the banjo.

Anyway, today's the day, 245 years ago and a universe two or three steps to the right, when liquid hombre Kool-Aid Man and his posse of kids that were suspiciously not his own arrived in 1773 and set about seeing about a thing or two about a thing or two.


from "Thirst in Time" in The Adventures of Kool-Aid Man #2 (Marvel, 1984), script by Jim Salicrup, pencils by Dan DeCarlo, inks by Jim DeCarlo, colors by Ken Feduniewicz and Judi Higgins, letters by Gaspar Saladino
You know, Kool-Aid Man, you are filled to the brim with delicious cooling, refreshing liquid. Did it not occur to you to let one of the great fathers of our country sip heartily at you and quench his revolutionary thirst? No. It did not. Also: why does Kool-Aid Man always carry a smaller version of himself? And how does he ride a horse one-handed? Answer: pretty well, actually.


Another good question: "Father, why are you eighty years older than us?"


Kool-Aid Man: Timecop! And did you ever think, LL Kool A, that it wasn't the best of ideas breaking a big-ass hole in the side of a boat?


Here's somthin' you don't see every day: an anthropomorphic representation of the sensation of thirst having a sabre duel with the mascot of a Kraft Foods product on the deck of a Colonial-era transport ship. Not even in an Alan Moore comic do you see that. Well, okay, that one issue of Promethea.


Of course, for history to be returned to its proper course, the Boston Tea Party must continue as it originally did, so it's a grand thing that Kool-Aid Man captured the Thirsties. Surely this will not affect American history at all, what with the historical accounts of the giant red liquid orb who assisted the American Revolution in its bold cause. And yes, kids, that is why Kool-Aid Man is on the front of the quarter.


And now it's off to save John F. Kennedy from getting thirsty on his drive through Dallas! Good luck, ya big cherry-flavored lug!


And so Kool-Aid finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap...will be the leap through a wall home.