A kung fu master discovers his beer mecca in an exclusive preview of Clown Shoes Beer's Kung Fu Ballet series of comics.
The preview of the next installment in the Kung Fu Ballet series is timed to the release of Clown Shoes' next beer, Ancient Hills. The comic strip is written by Clown Shoes Founder/CEO Gregg Berman and illustrated by artist and designer Michael Axt. The chapter finds Master Clown Shoes as he finds a brewery during his journey across these Ancient Hills, where he is allowed entry and given a job following the events of his origin story.
"I'm personally a comic book geek, to some extent. When I was younger, I was really into it, and then a friend of mine owns a comic book store, so I got back into reading some trades in my adult years," Berman told CBR about the idea of crafting a comic book through beer. "It builds on something I enjoy. We have a full-time illustrator, Michael Axt, who works with the Clown Shoes team and has for about eight years, so we've done some small-scale [comics] that have just been on the cans before."
He added, "It just seemed like it made sense. We really wanted to bring attention to our barrel-aged beers, which are an important part of what we do. [We thought we'd] do some integration with that end of the spectrum of creativity and have fun with it, maybe get some engagement."
"A lot of my inspirations are just little moments of epiphany," Berman said regarding the creation of Kung Fu Ballet. "I play with words and thoughts and ideas in my mind and think about things that might work with the brand. We've done some kung-fu beers, as well, in the past. We had one called Eagle Claw Fist, in particular, and there’s a variation of that called Eagle Crawfish. Kung-fu is something I also enjoy, and I'm actually trying to use some of the really goofy kung-fu movies I watched when I was younger, as some of my influence to put this all together. And ballet -- when you think of goofy clown shoes, it just makes it all kind of absurd and fun at the same time. It resonated when I put that combo of words together, and then this all just started spinning off of that."
He also discussed how consumers will be able to read the comic. "There's a QR code, which you can scan and go to the website to read Chapter 1," he said. "We got really backed up with labels at the beginning of the year, so we couldn't prioritize the comic, but we're catching up and we should be able to get ahead on the comic so there's a really smooth release of the beer and the comic at the same time."
The Ancient Hills beer is a 10 percent ABV bourbon barrel-aged chocolate stout with an abundance of rich flavor. Ancient Hills and the Kung Fu Ballet comic strip are now available to purchase.
Source: Clown Shoes Beer