Secret Warriors #8 (2009)
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Artwork by Alessandro Vitti
Colors by Sunny Gho, Letters by Dave Lanphear
Chef’s Note: John is apparently lacking the relevant bagel and cream cheese files in his robot database. As such, he may not also know how much cream cheese one should put on a bagel. So, for future reference, Mr. Garrett, please take note-
Cream cheese is a spread, not a sandwich filling. This wisdom is so deeply ingrained in American Jewish culture, to which we owe the bagel, that there’s a Yiddish term for the proper portion: schmear. The word itself evokes restraint, its rough schm- sound reminiscent of the knife’s halting scrape. (Compare it with, say, slather, whose pliant consonants evoke a smoothly spread dollop of sunscreen.) Or as Marc Fintz, business development director of Davidovich Bakery in Queens and a fellow cream cheese curmudgeon, put it in an email: “A cream cheese portion should be a shmear. It should be enough to bring out the delicious taste of a traditionally cured bagel. It is a complement to the taste—NOT THE TASTE!”
Chef’s Note: Where are they getting their bagels & coffee from? We know they’re in Alexandria, VA. And we will assume the year is the same as publication: 2009. Let’s take a look at the cup sleeve:
The first view of the sleeve (Fig. 1) suggests a round logo, with some kind of detailing along the top and lower sides. This immediately brings to mind the well-known mermaid logo of Starbucks:
There are over 50 Starbuck stores in the Alexandria area today. Back in 2009, there were over 16,000 Starbucks nationwide, so one would assume at least one of those was in Alexandria, a well-known metropolitan area near Washington DC full of the demographic Starbucks tends to target. Then again, surprisingly enough, the first standalone Starbucks only just opened in 2020.
Furthermore, when I examine the second view (Fig. 2) more closely, the curly detailing seems more like vines or tendrils or… tentacles?
It’s always made me a bit suspicious that the Starbucks mermaid has a weirdly split tail. I know it’s supposedly because she is a siren and not a mermaid, but what if she was something else entirely? Hmm…
Chef’s Note: Happy National Bagel Day!