My long, frustrating search for an artist ended this week, as Scott Hampton and I began our collaboration on The Lazarus Slaves. To celebrate, some friends bought me my first bottle of mead, which we promptly emptied.

Mead is the coolest drink there is. It’s also the oldest. The granddaddy of all alcoholic drinks, it predates beer, wine, paper, Islam, Christianity, Rome, Kirk Douglas and, potentially, written language. Beowulf and Hrothgar drank mead. In Norse mythology, the blood of Kvasir (the world’s wisest scholar and teacher) was mixed with honey and made into the legendary Mead of Poetry, which granted anyone who drank it great wisdom.

As cool as these references are, my favorite is from Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. Mr. Wednesday, a god in disguise, seals a contract with his man Shadow with a glass of mead:

“What is it?”
“Taste it.”
The drink was a tawny golden color. Shadow took a sip, tasting an odd blend of sour and sweet on his tongue. He could taste the alcohol underneath, and a strange blend of flavors. It reminded him a little of prison hooch, brewed in a garbage bag from rotten fruit and bread and sugar and water, but it was sweeter, and far stranger.

“Okay,” said Shadow. “I tasted it. What was it?”
“Mead,” said Wednesday. “Honey wine. The drink of heroes. The drink of the gods.”
Shadow took another tentative sip. Yes, he could taste the honey, he decided. That was one of the tastes. “Tastes kinda like pickle juice,” he said. “Sweet pickle-juice wine.”
“Tastes like a drunken diabetic’s piss,” agreed Wednesday. “I hate the stuff.”
“Then why did you bring it for me?” asked Shadow, reasonably.
Wednesday stared at Shadow with his mismatched eyes. One of them, Shadow decided, was a glass eye, but he could not decided which one. “I brought you mead to drink because it’s traditional. And right now we need all the tradition we can get. It seals our bargain.”

In this scene, Neil Gaiman makes mead the absolute coolest drink there is. I’m a little embarrassed I hadn’t had it before last night, but I’ll have a bottle in my house from now on, for emergency special occasions. Scott, if you’re reading this: We’ll share one soon. It’s traditional.