The Crusades #11 (March 2002)

Finally some good old knight-on-knight violence.

Even though women shouldn't be put in the position of fighting and hating each other because some guy chose to fuck them both, I still wouldn't mind some Venus-on-Christine violence. It's not right to want that but the libido wants what the libido wants. Until then, I'll happily settle on a battle between the two knights even though one of those knights can't actually fight with medieval weapons and may already be mortally wounded from three point blank gunshots to the breastplate. Did that description of a mortal attack sound too sexy? What if I described it as "rapid penetration causing weeping gashes"? Better?

Oh yeah! The starter lyric! I always forget about it until I open up the comic book.

There's so much "DUH!" in this statement that I can't even imagine the context in which George Arnold felt he needed to write it.

The line comes from the only reason anybody might still mention American poet George Arnold: his poem "The Jolly Old Pedagogue". I can't say what actual pedagogues might think of the poem but it says, to me, "Live life with abandon and without fear of punishment from the next life! Religion is for the dead! Life is for the living!" Maybe that's because I'm an atheist who believes life is a meaningless accident and I don't mind if there's no greater meaning than the one given to all life: be fruitful, and multiply (in the scientific sense of DNA replication and not the Word of God sense! Sheesh!). I just realized I'm an absolute nihilist! If, say, one believes that life was merely an accident, and the only reason life continues is our DNA's built-in requirement to replicate itself (which seems, fundamentally, an inarguable statement, even if some boring twat needs to back it up a step further to apply an overarching creator of that DNA), and that person has chosen to deny their DNA's prime directive, does that not make that person a nihilist? I understand, scientifically, the base reason for life: to create more life. Sure, it's a strange tautology but the reason life exists on Earth is also a tautology: life appeared on Earth because Earth is in a place where life can appear. So if I refuse to listen to my DNA, does that make me a nihilist? Or does that mean I just read John Barth's "Night-Sea Journey" in college and took it too much to heart? Or maybe I just didn't want to be responsible for kids after seeing exactly how responsible my father was having left when I was two years old?

On a related note, I just watched Skinamarink last night and I'm thinking of giving the DVD of it to my father as a Christmas gift with a Post-it note attached reading, "This is what you did to me."

Anyway, the Faux Knight just spent the night in the sewers hiding from the cops. He seems relatively unharmed. Which is more than I can say for poor Philip, the Apostle getting the Garth Ennis villain treatment.

For Philip's next injury, I'm putting my money on rectal prolapse.

I suppose a thug already got a lance up the out orifice so that's probably a bad bet. But then I never was a smart gambler, just a really enthusiastic one.

Detective Petronas must leave as head detective on the knight case because he's yet to catch the knight and not because he keeps sexually harassing Venus. That was a socially acceptable way to act in 2001. I don't mean to say it was a decent way to act or people didn't often say things like, "That Detective Petronas is a fucking creep whose balls need a meet-cute with a steel-toed boot." People did say shit like that. But society, being mostly composed of shit ideas and shit traditions by shit people, was all, "Boys will be boys! Including men in the definition of boys because...". They'd end the sentence there because the shrug emoji had yet to be invented and also people weren't texting each other yet. At least most people weren't! Some of us in the '90s and early '00s did all of our socializing through MUSHes, forums, and email. And even we weren't using the shrug emoticon because who had easy access to Japanese katakana? I'm speaking from an American perspective! I don't know when the Japanese invented the shrug kaomoji but probably pretty quickly seeing as they had a much more useful template of characters with which to express things. Japanese written language was the Commodore-64 Commodore-shifted graphic keys of alphabets while English was just a boring old QWERTY keyboard.

Guys have gotten pretty upset that people began calling them out on their casual sexual harassment of others which is why they've thrown such huge tantrums that usually ruin their own lives, even if they think they're somehow winning in their lives. They can't see that they're just miserable jerks who can find no happiness in anything, afraid to do anything fun that might make them seem gay or effeminate. Being sexist doesn't even make them happy! They just get angrier and angrier until they decide to do a mass shooting. Also why Trump. I propose we just call President Trump, "President ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

Anyway, Venus has accepted a quest to break a blind girl out of a cage.

So Venus does have other clothes!

Some stuff happens to Anton Marx but none of it involves his crotch meeting a boot so it's not that fascinating. He seems upset that he fucked up with Venus but he did get a blow job so maybe call it even? Now some hot shot agent is pursuing him for a television gig as the next Morton Downey, Jr. He's rude, he smokes, and he's got a big mouth; I think that's all it takes to be Morton Downey, Jr.

The Pope heads back to Father Trinidad's church because he's still concerned about his immortal soul for some reason. Somehow he thinks God's forgiveness is all a game and a person can fool God with a bunch of loopholes if they just tick all the right boxes before or after committing a sin. But Father Trinidad has become a sneaky motherfucker himself! He's now working with the knight! Has he always been working with the knight? I suppose that makes sense. It's how the knight knew where to find The Pope's men during the First Crusade. Now the knight knows where and when The Pope will strike against the Russian crime lord, Bocc.

But forget all that boring shit! Look at what Venus is wearing now!

Overalls with no shirt! My absolute favorite lady outfit!

Overalls are the most clothing Venus has worn at one time even though The City by the Bay always runs toward chilly. This must be her standard "I'm going to break a blind girl out of a cage in the sewers outfit by sawing through the padlock with the smallest hacksaw in the world" outfit. Venus spent more time coming up with her outfit than her plan to save the little girl, Cela, so cutting through the lock takes much longer than she expected. So much longer that Godfrey the Knight arrives while she's sawing, grabs the key off of a peg right next to Venus, unlocks the cage himself, and throws her in. Then he marches out to kill the Faux Knight.

I scanned this panel because it's critical to the plot.

The Faux Knight kills Bocc with a mace to the face and tells Bocc's men they can join with The Pope or die later. Then he casually exist Bocc's hideaway and runs face first into old Soit quit mal y pense himself.

The Crusades #11 Rating: B. And that's the bloody end of this issue! Stupid cover! Not a single panel of knights fighting! Everybody who worked on this comic book should count their blessings that Kelley Jones decided to dress Venus in those overalls. I can look past my disappointment with the lack of knights fighting being that Venus was dressed to satisfy my kinks. Um, also she did some really smart stuff too and had a great personality! Too bad she's locked in a cage without any thing else to change into next issue and maybe she might even need to make a tinkle? I'd assume they wouldn't show that on panel but this is a Vertigo comic book! You never know what they're going to put to paper as proof that this is Mature Reading. God bless them!

The Crusades #10 (February 2002)

The Russians are not attacking him with hay; those are stylized bullets.

Arguing against my own caption, I don't know for sure what those yellow strands poking at the Faux Knight are. Maybe they are straw? I'm not the arbiter of all artistic interpretation! Maybe they're penises about to bukkake all over the Faux Knight as he jerks himself off with the Russian flag while one of the most famous gay penises of the United States strains over his left shoulder? What this actually looks like is one of those blank covers used for signings. I'm just going to scrawl Tom King's signature on the white space and send it to CGC for grading.

The lyric for this month seems proper rock and roll being that it references the devil.

I'd better limber up my artistic interpretation skills before tackling this one.

At first glance (and a shallow and narrow glance it was), I felt this quote was antisemitic. But obviously the places of worship would have to be flipped and/or flopped for that to be true. My next thought was that it was testimony to the strength of God versus the Devil; God's house is a temple while the Devil only manages a small chapel. But then I decided to research the singer who sang this quote and discovered his album, The Anatomy of Melancholy and assumed this was probably from that. So perhaps what Robert Burton means by this is that the Devil resides in us all. Joy and worship and love must always, at differing parts of a person's life, turn to sadness and grief and anguish. It's not a comparative but a simple statement of fact. God's temples always have a small chapel off to one side where the Devil has set up shop.

Reading the Wikipedia entry on The Anatomy of Melancholy (after looking up Robert Burton to make sure I was mixing him up with Richard F. Burton, one of my favorites (died at 69 years old, that memelord)), I became thoroughly interested in reading this 400 year old book. I became even more interested in it after it said some of the people who admired the work because I am, if nothing else, a child who of a world full of advertisements and a current member of the inspiration age where so many people believe that simply being inspiring is worth the stupid fucking "content" they "produce". Anyway, the people who admired this work which made me think, "Yeah, I definitely would enjoy this!", were Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Charles Lamb, and Nick Cave. Plus one of my all-time favorite reads are the Richard F. Burton's notes to his translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, so why wouldn't I also enjoy this super old fogey shit? It probably has less pictures than all the other stuff I read though (including Burton's translations which have some really saucy images! He also translated the Kama Sutra!).

The real knight, searching for the hot and nubile and barely clothed intruder in his underground kingdom, sees the television news crew reporting that he's currently rampaging it up on the streets of San Francisco. "That is not me," he tells the burly bearded war vet who resists from making a jerk off motion when he says, "I can see that," because he doesn't want to lose his jerk off hand. The knight rushes off to beat up the other knight looking like one of Kelley Jones' best attempts at Bane living in a sewer like Killer Croc while wearing a medieval helmet.

I can't experience Kelley Jones' style without immediately thinking of the Knightfall story arc in Batman.

Once the knight rushes off, Venus decides to stop the interview and go snooping about the knight's demesne. Burly bald guy doesn't seem as worried as he was in the previous issue about her being a reporter and ruining his free living situation by alerting the public to it. He just warns her to be careful and goes back to watching television. Man, I get it. I just re-watched Rankin and Bass's The Return of the King for the first time in who the fuck knows how many years. My cousin had the soundtrack to it and we were constantly singing, "Where there's a whip, there's a way!" But this time watching it, I was shocked to realize I think I got my whole philosophy from the song "It's so Easy Not to Try", apparently thinking that it was life advice and not a warning!

"It's so easy not to try,
Let the world go drifting by,
If you never say hello,
You won't have to say goodbye.

It's so easy not to try,
Never stay around to cry
Move along when troubles come,
Like a mindless butterfly.

For what good is it to love?
When the loving always ends?
Travel on the road that's straight.
Not the one with hills and bends.

Back at The Pope's property, the Russians abandon their plan of "There are more of us than the knight and we have guns while he has a stupid, unarmored horse that we could shoot and a lance" for a new plan: run like motherfucking cowards while forgetting they have guns completely. It works out for the two Russians who the knight forgoes chasing but not for the one he does.

Oh, it also doesn't work out for the cop standing around going, "Something don't seem so kosher in dere, ey?"

It's so easy not to cry,
When a cop gets disemboweled.
When his guts they hit the floor.
Maybe I cry but cry for more!

Sorry. Was that inappropriate? I guess I was just working out in the yard on my Wicker Man this morning and I'm all juiced up on anti-cop fervor!

Bocc and one of his men finally realize the Faux Knight's greatest weakness: the mortal beast he rides upon. They manage to trip it up and the Faux Knight flies off and lands on his face. If he didn't just Christopher Reeve himself from that fall, he's probably not long without a bullet in his head.

Do I need to apologize again? Sorry about the Christopher Reeve thing. But the guy knew what he was doing when he decided to ride a horse. That's dangerous shit and if I've inspired just one person to not get on a horse, saving them from a catastrophic injury, by being so cynical and dismissive about Reeve's accident then I'm a Goddamned hero.

Underground, Venus re-introduces herself to the blind girl and her dolly.

Two things I learned about Mrs. Marjoram from this interaction: her sight works and she's gay.

Venus and Mrs. Marjoram engage in some small talk where they decide that Mrs. Marjoram and the little girl (Cela) will spend some time above ground with Venus if they can get Godfrey the Knight's permission. Venus seems to think that won't be too much trouble because the little girl is blind and Venus can just get some lockpicks for her cage and pretend she got the key from Godfrey while speaking in a deep voice, "I am Godfrey and you can go with this lady with the huge tits."

The Faux Knight gets shot three times in the breastplate at point blank range. He gets back on his horse and runs from The Pope's property. Is his armor bulletproof or is he already a dead Faux Knight riding? The cops arrive by helicopter but they're so interested in the Faux Knight that Bocc and his right-hand man decide to take this opportunity to invade The Pope's house and murder him. This Second Crusade still has two more issues to go after this one so I don't think it'll be that easy.

Bocc makes it to the door to The Pope's panic room so that he can yell through it that he's got the devil on his side (because The Pope has, you know, God on his side). Then he looks at Philip who seems to need a little more of the Garth Ennis treatment and shoots him through the throat. I'm sure he'll live because that's his lot in this series. Seagle just decided to out think the readers and have Philip lose his voice over all the other things I listed he could lose last issue. Then they finally make a run for it before the cops make it onto The Pope's property.

I had no idea I was going to wind up siding with the Russians but they fucking own a VW bus! Team Russia all the way!

Anton was supposed to meet Venus at her place at eight but I guess she got confused what with the big adventure she's been on and all. So she drops by Anton's place where he's getting a blow job from Channel 3's Christine. So while I'm happy that it looks like they'll be breaking up, I'm not happy that Anton got a blow job out of it. Fuck that dirtbag. Venus storms out only to run into Detective Petronas who's still badgering her about getting into a relationship with him because they're both Greek and from the same community in Melbourne, Australia. Nobody ever mentions Venus's accent because she's mostly lost it while Detective Petronas gets picked on by other cops all the time because he hasn't lost his accent and also cops are jerks. So now Venus has to deal with two assholes. Maybe three depending on how horrible the guy from The Chronicle is. Being that he's a man, odds aren't great that he's much better.

I'm not a self-hating man! I love myself and my male gaze. Have you not read anything else I've written? Have you not seen the panels I choose to scan that don't matter at all to plot but have a fine lady ass in them? It's just — and I think most men would agree with this because so many men are of the "No Homo" variety — guys are fucking gross! I'm not saying penises are gross. Penises are the only decent part of men. But any man who thinks they have to somehow portray "manliness" are generally the worst kind of people. Men who don't give a shit about people attacking men because they see themselves as individuals and not living up to some stupid toxic idea of masculinity? They're okay in my book! But I still don't want to kiss them! Gross! We could exchange hand jobs though. That'd probably be okay.

I don't even know what's happening in this scene. Did I read the words? Who fucking remembers?!

The Crusades #10 Rating: B. Look at that ass in the panel above! Based on that panel, I think if you lined up two bald guys just right and took a picture of their heads, I could masturbate to it. Am I going to continue the farce that this is somehow a review site? I don't have anything intelligent to say about anything! But some people just want to see the grade I gave a comic book they've read. Not that I've ever met anybody who has read this comic book! Anyway, next issue, I think the knights are going to fight. So if you want to see how that turns out, be here whenever the fuck I write the next "review"! I have a sinking suspicion that the knight's are going to cross swords, if you get what I'm saying being that this story takes place in San Francisco and people sometimes use the word "sword" as a slang term for "penis".

The Crusades #9 (January 2002)

This could have been a Doom Patrol cover.

You know how in the Doom Patrol television series, Cliff kept an over mitt on his hand so that he wouldn't feel anything with his finger which was the one part of him that could suddenly feel as if it were human because he was saving that experience for when he first got to hold his grandson? Yeah, lame. I would have been finger blasting buttholes like crazy with that finger.

But enough about me and the places my finger has been! Let's read about boring knights running around boring San Francisco boringly murdering boring crime lords without a single exciting finger blast in the whole thing. Unless . . . no, no. No way Anton puts any effort into sex with Venus other than shoving his P-twanger directly into her lady hole until he spurts Twinkie paste.

Time for some sage advice from a classic rock lyric to start us off!

So? The fast might actually get to the butthole finger blast party despite a few skinned knees. The stupid wise jerks will be too old to enjoy it what with all their wise arthritis and unskinned knees.

Which one of Shakespeare's albums do you think that quote was from? I'm going to guess Macbeth. If it was one of his histories, then I had zero chance of getting it right anyway. I'm not even going to look it up. I don't care! I'm too busy stumbling to the next stink orgy!

This issue begins with The Pope admiring the horse of his Faux Knight (is that a Magic the Gathering card? I totally wouldn't know because only geeks with clean smelling fingers play that game) while poor Philip stands nearby shitting his pants. Philip's the guy who has lost an ear, hand, and leg to the real knight. He should be nervous because he still has an ear, a hand, two arms, a leg, two eyes, a nose, his penis, his testicles, and his head to lose.

Does anybody else really, really, really feel like playing some Risk right now?

Anton Marx decides to do his radio show on the streets so he can interview everyday citizens of The City about their feelings concerning the knight. Isn't that a job for Baba Booey? Doesn't Anton have a Baba Booey? I never understand why news organizations do people on the street interviews because the kind of people who would stop to do a people on the street interview don't have any facts about anything and all of their opinions are barely thought out delusions poorly perceived interpretations of reality. At best! Whenever the local news winds up in my neighborhood and I have to walk through whatever the fuck they're shooting on my way to the store or a finger blasting butthole party, I always chant, "FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK," so that they can't put my image on television.

Last issue, since Sara was dragged behind a cable car for a thousand meters, Venus's old boss, Patricia, offered her a second chance at her job after firing her just a day or two previously. Venus agrees but on one condition: she gets to treat Patricia like the gigantic asshole she is. Patricia didn't actually agree to that part; Venus just took it upon herself to add it to her job description.

I've never had the opportunity to yell at a boss like this because I never lasted long enough under a shitty boss to get this angry. I just fucking quit.

I once had a manager cry during my performance review because I wasn't being her friend. Her review was basically I was doing an outstanding job but she couldn't recommend me for a raise because I was a big meany jerk who didn't kiss her sweat-pants wearing ass. I chose not to complain to Human Resources because her sister was head of Human Resources. I just made a mental note to quit when I get a chance. That chance basically came when a woman I was training didn't show up for work the day before Thanksgiving and my manager, Barb, was pretty angry about it. After lunch, she and her sister were crying at her desk, having discovered that the woman I'd been training died from carbon monoxide poisoning the night before. My brain was all, "Fuck this. I am not dying while at this job!"

I'm also beginning to suspect that Venus has exactly one top and it's not exactly appropriate for work. I mean, if I were a boss, I'd be all, "That's too much fabric! Go home and get changed, young lady!" But what do I know? Maybe Venus is like me and she just wears what she wants to wear at work to the job interview. If she gets the job, she figures her outfit was good enough for the daily routine. Of course in that last job I was talking about, my jeans and a shirt interview casual were trumped by Barb's sweat pants and pajama top. As soon as I walked in and saw her, I was all, "Cha-ching! I got this!"

While storming out of Patricia's office, Venus runs into the guy from the Chronicle who offered her a job in an earlier issue. He's still offering her that job but he also offers her his penis in the same exchange. Where's a butterfly I can reach out to so I can say, "Is this unprofessional?"

Bocc and the Russians, having seen the knight unloaded on The Pope's property, decide to go after him directly.

Weird how bosses are often portrayed as huge assholes, right?

Finally having options in her career and her sex life, Venus takes complete control of her life. She's screamed at Patricia and now she goes to let Anton know that something's got to change or she's gonna wind up getting some Chronicle dick. She demands to see him at her place at the same time Christine from Channel 3 has demanded Anton show up to reward her with terrible sex for airing his tape. Part of me wants him to go to Christine's so Venus will, hopefully, break it off with his sorry ass. But the other part of me wants him to skip on Christine so that she destroys his career! Both choices, Anton gets fucked in some way. Why can't he get fucked two ways?! Oh! Maybe the knight will cut off his head so that he misses both meetings, thus losing Venus and his career. Oh! And his head! Best option!

To get the job at the Chronicle, Venus needs a sample story. She's been working on outing the knight so she decides to continue with that. She goes back to Underground San Francisco to investigate the knight and the blind girl. While searching the ruins, she comes across a burly bald man watching sports on television. So all the torches are just for effect? They've got electricity down in that hole?

How is this guy more interesting than a medieval knight and the blind girl he keeps in a cage?!

Venus still has her sights set on a story about the knight. She's just making this guy comfortable so he'll spill all he knows about the knight. Which doesn't take long as he explains everybody living in this old city have seen him. They simply steer clear of him because he's fucking nuts.

Bocc and his men attack The Pope and come face to face with the Faux Knight. The media catch wind of the battle and get the Faux Knight on camera for the entirety of San Francisco to see. At the same time, the real knight drops in on burly bald man looking for an intruder in the tunnels. Venus remains hidden but gets to see and hear him up close.

Is that the face women make when they're creaming their jeans?

The Crusades #9 Rating: A-. I have a soft spot in my heart for the phrase "creaming" in the context of a woman becoming aroused. Obviously as a young child watching Grease, I would have no context for what "The chicks will cream" could even mean. It just meant they'd be all happy or excited about a car or something! So one time at a family function, I sang the line in earshot of my mother and she snapped, "Don't say that. That's gross!" That was the first indication to me that it was dirty but I still had no idea how a chick could cream or what it could possibly mean! Could guys cream? What was so gross about it?! Did it have something to do with breast milk?! My mind went crazy trying to work on the problem without realizing I just didn't have enough context to ever figure it out. I still don't know how chicks cream! Could somebody explain it to me over a voice mail? Preferably a woman. And slowly!

The Crusades #8 (December 2001)

If that's the knight's actual face, I can no longer take this book seriously as urban horror.

This comic's cover game gained such dizzying heights that it was bound to plummet precipitously at some point. Even an average cover was going to stand out after all the other great covers. And while glancing at this one from afar, I thought it was continuing the tradition of climbing aesthetic heights. But then I picked it up and looked closely at the faces of Venus and the knight and reality struck me like a poorly thrown lawn dart. Don't argue with me now about how every lawn dart was thrown poorly because they were given to the most daredevil, blind-to-their-own-mortality group in the world: 8 year olds; I'm in the middle of a thought! No, wait. I was at the end of my thought. We're all good here.

Lyrics time!

Am I too modern to understand Victor Hugo?

Sure, sure. I understand Victor Hugo when his characters sing "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" or "I Dreamed a Dream." But I don't remember the song "Liberation is not Deliverance." Did Susan Boyle sing that on her second album? I suppose the sentiment is that you can help people escape their current situation but without changing the systemic problems that led to the situation from which they needed liberation, you have not provided deliverance from the problem. Does that sum it up well enough? I'm not a professor of French literature and I've never read Les Misérables. One time at a used bookstore with my cousin Jasmine, we were browsing a shelf with Hugo's novel on it and Jasmine suggested I should read it. And I was all, "No, I'd rather not." At some point, due to our scrounging, the book fell from the shelf to the floor in front of us. Jasmine declared, "It's destiny! You have to read it now!" I casually picked it up, put it back on the shelf, and replied, "Oh no! It was destiny that I put it back in its place!" And destiny has been maintained ever since as I have avoided reading it!

The issue begins with Venus being assaulted by the knight. I mean, it's just the police stable boy but she hallucinates that he's the knight. So he's definitely not the knight.

Or is he?!

So the knight, I mean the stable boy, politely and sweetly kicks Venus out of the stable. Seems like a missed opportunity to please all the Lady Chatterley fans in the world who read this screaming, "FUCK HER IN THE DIRTY HAY! AND BY THAT I DON'T MEAN BUTTHOLE BUT, HEY, THAT WORKS TOO!"

What was so obscene about Lady Chatterley's Lover that the old white men who ran Britain were so scared of? That it portrayed a woman who couldn't be happy in a relationship where her sexual needs weren't being met? Oh, you know, now that I wrote the thought out, I could see how scary that would be to a bunch of men who treat their partners like sex doll that cooks and cleans. "I say! Is that man whose penis doesn't work because of a war injury supposed to be reminiscent of all the masters of the house who don't see the point in bringing our women to orgasm every, or any, time we perform the act of copulation?" *tink* (That tink was the monocle falling out of his wide open eye.)

The stable boy goes back to work after showing Venus a big black blind horse that she's definitely seen before. He's all, "That horse is useless! I hope it dies!" Then he leaves. But the horse is all, "I don't want to die! I want to eat Venus's butthole!"

Venus also wants that.

Inside the blind horse's little horsey home, Venus discovers a hole. It wasn't there when she entered but suddenly appeared under her as she walked inside. She loses her phone during the fall so now it's like she fell in a hole ten years earlier. How did people get rescued out of holes when they didn't have cell phones? Did they just scream as loudly as possible, "I've been Baby Jessica'd!"

While Venus readjusts her top that her boobs almost certainly fell out of during the fall, Anton Marx gets arrested for imitating the knight in front of City Hall. It's like people can't just dress up in armor and ride horses around stabbing evil assholes like crime bosses, cops, and healthcare CEOs. It's a travesty against every single thing American stands for!

Under the Presidio, Venus discovers not just old, unused sewer tunnels but an old part of San Francisco that somehow sunk perfectly during the 1906 earthquake and was easily paved over.

Seems reasonable.

Venus hears a small child talking to God and follows the voice. She finds a young blind, one-armed girl in a cage with a Missy doll named Mrs. Marjoram. Venus, weeping and at a loss for words, takes the girl's hand to comfort her. That's when the girl realizes Venus isn't God at all. Oh, and by "God", she means "Godfrey". Judging by the throne and the medieval artifacts and the scroll that reads "The Royal Order of the Garter," the name of the knight is Godfrey. But why he's keeping a blind girl in a cage, who can say? He also loves to ride around San Francisco at knight popping skulls with his mace. He's a weird guy.

The little girl calls for help and Venus hears the sounds of clanking armor coming her way. She grabs a torch and makes a run for it, finding her way out of the caverns using some of her esoteric knowledge gained by being a fact checker. Once free, she flees back to civilization where blind horses don't eat buttholes and little blind girls don't scream, "GODFREY!", directly into your face at full volume. Although is what's waiting for her (Anton Marx's unsatisfying dick game) really any better?

Back in The City, Anton Marx gets one of the best experiences in the world: the first time a new person puts their hand down the front of your pants and holds your cock as it gets hard. But he refused to go any further because the person holding his cock is Christine from Channel 3 and her demands are that he fuck her to a point that she agrees it was a good fucking before she puts his knight on the back of the horse stunt on television. Anton knows he can't perform well enough to get his video on television so he turns her down and says he'll only fuck her after the video airs.

Venus discovers Sara's in the hospital and goes for a visit.

No, no, no. Your friend is a dick who hurts innocent people, Sara. Venus's friend is just a guy who keeps little blind girls caged up like any old regular person might.

The Crusades #8 Rating: B+. Some people might argue that the first time somebody puts their hand down the front of your pants isn't better than all the subsequent things that will happen after that. But I argue the novelty and surprise of the moment earn way more points than the eventual sexual pleasure derived from all the other awesome stuff that happens later. Another great first moment: when you're rubbing a woman's back while lying in bed with her and your friend Doom Bunny and you say, "If I rub any lower, I'll be rubbing your ass," and she responds, "You can rub lower." That may be the hardest I've ever been while lying next to one of my friends. Sorry, Doom Bunny! God, it was so worth it! That's not why this comic book got a B+ rating. This comic book got a B+ rating because that's the rating I chose out of my fucking ass. I liked it but was disappointed by the cover but not much else. See? Easy peasy!

The Crusades #7 (November 2001)

Another great cover! This one by Teddy Kristiansen, artist on Seagle's House of Secrets.

This series is fucking killing it on the covers. It feels like everybody was queuing up to get a chance at working on this book. It feels like maybe Vertigo had a far looser style that let artists get way more imaginative than the regular DC Universe covers. This doesn't usually feel like it but I believe it's supposed to be an urban horror book. It wasn't really until this cover that I felt that vibe.

The lyric that begins this month's comic is by a band called Nietzsche.

I'm not sure this is true but he expresses it so authoritatively that I can't help think, "What the fuck do I know?"

I suppose Nietzsche means that what raises our ire when he witness suffering is that the conditions under which most people suffer aren't senseless in the overall arc of the moral universe (or maybe he is?! I suppose one gets angry and screams at the stars when one finds their life has taken some tragic turn, no need to blame anybody expressly to be angry that this universe wasn't one that formed with all soft edges and kittens) but senseless in that the suffering people see is the kind that could be ameliorated by a more just populace and civilization. Why do people have to go without when there is actually plenty to go around? It's senseless that some should have so much extra while others have nearly nothing. And society doesn't form in ways that buoy everyone; they're formed by expressing opinions that people must earn the very basics of life in ways that aren't natural but society pretends are. Tradition, law, and societal convention are all just lies forming the fabric of some agreed upon list of ways to act. When somebody goes against these things, people see them as having stopped earning their right to the things civilization and society provide. They are left to suffer because they are no longer earning their way, however that manifests in the current age and mores. What Nietzsche is saying is that we don't get angry at the starvation; we get angry at the people senselessly hoarding food they do not need, at the cops keeping hungry people away from garbage bins where food has been thrown out, at those who would rather let fruit rot on the ground than allow the hungry to feed for free.

Or maybe he means something totally different. When's the last time I mentioned how stupid I am? Oh, you probably already realized that because I'm reading comic books.

So what's this got to do with this issue? I don't know! It would make more sense if I thought about the lyric after I read the stupid comic book!

Oh shiz! I forgot about poor Sara! I'm so mad at the senselessness of her suffering!

The knight, once again, doesn't murder the Russians but pretty much kills a bystander. It's gang warfare medieval style! The faux knight's whole point is to scare the Russians and get them to back off The Pope's territory. So he's not willing to kill the goons; he just wants to give them a message to send to the Russian gang leader, Bocc, while roughing them up quite a bit. But poor Sara suffers horribly by being dragged behind the cable car. The police get there just as the knight rides off. They find Sara one gigantic skinned everything unconscious behind the cable car.

While Sara's being dragged to her near death, Venus and Anton fuck. After they fuck, they discuss the Praying Mantis. Venus knows a lot about a lot of stuff so I think she's not just referencing how sometimes the female will cannibalize the male after procreating; she's also referencing that the longer the male remains copulating, the less chance he has of being eaten. She's fucking warning Anton that he'd better make her come or watch out!

I can't scan any of the scenes between Anton and Venus because they're all so naked and my blog is going to become Adults Only if I keep scanning naked panels every chance I get. But believe me, they're pretty racy! Whoo boy! So hot!

Oh no! Venus may start equating "having sex" with "my friend gets hauled under a trolley and nearly decapitated!"

Selfishly, I still want to see Venus have sex with Anton because it's so fucking hot! But if she does become too traumatized to have sex with Anton for the rest of the series, I'd be pretty happy about that too. That guy fucking sucks.

Detective Petronas finds out the knight was after Russian crime boss, Bocc, by scaring one of the two Russians attacked by the knight to death. It's supposed to be a pretty tense scene but it's opposite a page that kept distracting me.

You can bet I rushed through the hospital scene to get a gander at this page!

I'm not horny! You're horny!

I love when the kids criticize each other for being horny on main. As if there's any other place to be horny! Let your horndog flag fly! We're fleshy, lustful, sexual beasts! Express your wanton desires and major kinks! Unless your kink is disgusting and then nobody wants to hear about it. I'm not going to mention any of those because I don't want to kink shame people into missionary. Fucking weirdos.

The next day, the knight attacks more Russians on BART.

This fucking knight ain't got no chill.

It's about time the real knight got off his ass and made an appearance. His horse must be well rested and freshly watered. The blood's been washed off his armor. Some evildoer's making him look bad on the streets above since he's now gotten at least three innocents killed or nearly killed. The real knight will probably show up at the end of this issue. You can't leave the readers without the real knight for this long.


The Pope basically tells Father Trinidad that he's paying some guy to be the knight for him. He mistakenly thinks that means he's off the hook and has no more sins to confess. Father Trinidad is all, "Um, dude. Everything is a fucking sin. You accidentally glance at a choir boy's ass, that's a sin. You casually think about your mother while you're pissing, that's a sin. You make a jerk off motion every time you pass by a homeless guy, that's a sin. You hire a man to go around in armor killing innocents and threatening Russians, you'd better fucking believe that's a sin too." So The Pope is all, "Oh shit! Okay! I got some confessing to do then, if you put it that way."

Look at all the missing body parts! Phillip is to Seagle as Herr Starr was to Ennis.

The Russians, being driven off of Tony Cutone's old territory by The Pope's knight, decide to give up on it. Instead, they decide to take The Pope's territory figuring it'll be easier than dealing with that knight. Ha ha! Stupid The Pope! He fucked himself good!

Venus continues to search for the knight, heading out into the park area of the Presidio to an old stable. While sneaking around it, she's grabbed from behind by somebody with a big glove on their hand! It could be a gauntlet but it's probably a gardener's glove. Or a hawker's glove!

The book ends revealing that The Pope has been driving the guy in armor and his horse around town in a moving van. I guess the big confrontation between the knights will have to wait until next issue.

The Crusades #7 Rating: B+. The faux knight sucks. He keeps hurting innocents and making them suffer senselessly. It's really causing me some severe indignation! I can't wait for the other guy to come back because his murder feels way more black and white. What's he waiting for? Pope John Paul II to give him the go ahead?! Start cracking criminal skulls, you lazy bastard!

The Crusades #6 (October 2001)

Wild Second Knight appeared!

The First Crusade finished last issue. I don't know how or why it finished. Was it simply because it had been five issues? I don't feel like the knight accomplished anything. Maybe that's the point. Historically, the Crusades didn't actually accomplish anything either. I mean accomplish anything useful. I mean "useful" in the sense compassionate people who try to make the world better than the day before would use it and not the way some racist asshole would use it as in "The Crusades were useful because Christians slaughtered a lot of Muslims." Although in that sense, the knight's First Crusade was successful because he slaughtered a bunch of The Pope's henchmen? Perhaps that was the point of the First Crusade: to let those who would do evil know somebody will punish them. That's why he raised his flag at the end. The knight has a foothold, he's outed himself (with the help of Anton Marx), and maybe he even stopped The Pope's accumulation of more city property to be turned into a casino. Oh shit. Never mind. I just figured it out.

The knight's first crusade is over because he took Jerusalem (the New Jerusalem School!) and planted his flag there. Duh! How fucking stupid am I that it took this long to figure that out? By "this long," I mean 23 years. It's possible 30 year old me understood that but since I don't remember it, I can't actually claim to have figured it out until just now.

I'm gonna need some context for this lyric.

Antonio Porchia was an Argentine poet. His Wikipedia page describes him as an "very influential, yet extremely succinct writer." I'm not sure what the job of the "yet" is in that description. Are influential writers usually rambling and incoherent? As for the quote, it's above my brain's paygrade. I suspect it's being used, partially, because the knight haunts San Francisco, a phantom, of sorts, prowling the parks and alleys. And most people don't experience loneliness to such a degree that you'd imagine they have to make up people to cure their loneliness. So I suspect Antonio is suggesting that the people we know, the people we fill the empty spaces with, are phantoms created by us because we can't actually know them to the degree we believe we do. We project our own versions of people onto themselves, like a slide projected over a teacher at the front of the class. Perhaps he's suggesting if we didn't fill in all the gaps of another person's personality with our own imaginings, we would never feel close to them. We must believe they are that which we believe they are.

After the lyric, the Second Crusade gets going full swing when a couple of goons with guns flee into a diner believing a man in full armor on the back of a horse known for murdering the fuck out of people won't crash through the glass doors after them. They did not become goons for their brains.

What fucking evil did the waitress commit?! Was she pissing in the coffee?

The knight has proven that he doesn't take a whole lot of care in reducing collateral damage. And we've also seen the knight wearing at least two different helmets (if not more though it's hard to tell between the "real" sightings and the recounted sightings) so seeing this new helmet may not mean anything. But we've also just seen two knights on the cover so it's quite possible that we've finally got that copycat knight on the loose. Maybe that's why the Porchia lyric at the beginning! It's mostly just for the whole "remains alone" part. The knight cannot remain alone when other crime bosses begin filling the night with their phantom versions of the knight themselves.

After the night kills the waitress but nobody else, he says, in English, "Aye! Whatsa matta you guys? Dis ain't youse turf! Aye! Tella youse bosses to get lost, eh?" Then he says, "Evil to him who evil does," and his horse shits all over the corpse of the waitress who must have been skeet shooting kittens on her off hours.

I'm not scanning the page where the knight speaks but I assure you with my 100% guarantee of only lying about 80% of the time that I'm not lying about his accent and you shouldn't be mad at me for doing a bad Australian accent. Or Spanish. I don't know, Flemish? Wherever Mario is from!

I guess it's possible she was shot by the Russians. But the knight (if this is him) really doesn't give a fuck about bystanders.

It does seem weird the knight cares about gangland turf wars. He seems more the type to just kill people who are hurting innocents. But then again, he did claim the New Jerusalem School as his own. He's a home owner now and nothing aggravates home owners more than somebody jerk walking on their lawn. I don't own a house so I don't know if they get even angrier at other things. I do walk on other people's lawns though and, hoo boy, old men sure can yell loudly!

The police have publicly admitted that the knight exists but only because they suck at their jobs and everybody already knows the knight exists because it keeps killing loads of people and leaving corpses with mace-smashed skulls and axe cloven torsos. Cloven? Cleaven? Cloved? Cleaved? What I'm trying to say is the fictional police of this comic book are just as terrible as the real police of the not comic book.

The Russians have moved in on Tony Cutone's territory since Cutone was murdered by The Pope's men. They're the ones the knight threatened in the diner. Now they're trying to extort all the local business that Tony used to and the knight from the diner who probably isn't the real knight makes another appearance already to hack off some Russians for not listening the first time.

Two bloodthirsty attacks in ten pages when he barely showed his helmet that much across five issues previously? Yeah, this guy's a fake.

More evidence this isn't the real knight: he's way too mouthy and he stabbed a patron for simply cheering him on. That don't sound like the knight Chuck told nobody about!

Detective Petronas investigates the crime scene at the diner and discovers another clue that I would have noticed if I'd been given a chance to look around: the knight did not paint a cross in blood and shit at the scene. He always does that! It's his calling card from God! For once, the cover of a comic book didn't lie: there are two knights!

Anton finally drops by to see Venus after days of ignoring her as he tried to use the knight to propel his career forward. But now that the knight is common knowledge, he can go back to being regular old jerkface shock DJ Anton Marx. Venus allows him in even though she knows he's a turd and terrible at sex. Goddamn dick must be so super good if a woman as hot as Venus will put up with all this bullshit plus no orgasm just for a meager taste of it.

Anton knows he'll have come long before Sara does so he doesn't mind.

But Sara will never arrive! She's headed that way on a cable car with two additional passengers: the Russian mobsters! Suddenly, the sound of coconuts being banged together disrupts her daydream! Sara stands up to see what's happening as a massive man in armor leaps from his horse and onto the cable car. He shoves her out of the way, snarling in a very non-French way, "Move!", before he advances on the thugs. Sara's arms pinwheel! She teeters off-balance as the cable car trundles down one of The City's steep hills! She attempts to grab a brass pole but her fingers just graze it and she tumbles backwards out of the cable car! No! Not Sara, a character I didn't mention a single time in the first five commentaries!

Noooo! You were my 8th favorite character in this comic book!

The Crusades #6 Rating: A-. San Francisco now has two knights to deal with! Ha ha! In your face, tech bros! Angel investors soon gonna just be pure angels, amirite?! Let's go! Medieval justice, baby! Although I am sad to see that the new knight has no respect for innocents and only wants to kill Russians and is only concerned about maintaining his boss's turf. He's got to be one of The Pope's men, right? It would be fitting! The Pope sending out his own knight on his own crusade!

The Crusades #5 (September 2001)

Ah! My old friend, Duncan Fegredo!

Duncan's not actually my friend. That was a figure of speech. He did quite a few covers for one of my all-time favorite comic books, Peter Milligan's Shade the Changing Man. He also did the interiors on Milligan's classic, Enigma. It's nice to see some of his work here. The artist's work on the covers of this series, just five issues in (six!), have been absolutely stunning: Bill Sienkiewicz, Christopher Moeller, Kent Williams, Daniel Zezelj, and Lee Loughridge. How did this series not do huge numbers looking so stunning on the shelves? Just gorgeous paintings sitting next to all those other four-color covers. Although it was Vertigo, so if it was sitting with all the other Vertigo titles, maybe they just didn't stand out. What with Dave McKean building fucking sculptures for Sandman and whatnot!

Last issue ended with loads of non-houseless witnesses catching sight of the knight just before he disembowels a bunch of The Pope's men. I only mention that the eyewitnesses aren't houseless because we must face the facts of the status quo: they will never believe anything a person filthy from living on the streets says. The status quo proudly wears the blinders of their peers and refuse to listen to somebody who may be mentally ill, or struggling with addiction, or simply down on their luck and unshowered. The status quo fucking suck dolphin dick. That's a multi-tiered insult because just imagine how horrified you'd be if you saw somebody sucking a dolphin's dick. You'd be all, "That's fucking disgusting! And yet they went through all the effort of finding a pod of dolphins in the ocean so that they could engage in this perverse way!" But then you're mind would clear a bit from the shock of the strange sight of a dolphin's penis being absolutely munched on by this weirdo and you'd have a much clearer thought: "That dolphin did not consent!" But then the dolphin would probably lock eyes on you and wink and you'd realize the dolphin was totally into it. Dolphins are horny!

This month's lyrics from Pope Urban II:

Oh religion! You take every opportunity to prove your arbitrary shittiness!

The worst leaders in the world encourage the worst people in the world every way they can. And by letting everybody know that their sins have been pre-absolved, Pope Urban lets them loose on the Jews and Muslims to do their worst. The Pope knows he's pre-forgiving murder, rape, theft, and blasphemy. He's proclaiming, "Anybody who wages a war of terror in the Church's name shall stand among God's chosen!" As if God had not already proclaimed the things His followers must not do. As if the living representation of God can say and do and proclaim whatever they want and God just has to sit there and shut the fuck up. Man, if the God of Christianity were real, and everything that led to the building of the Catholic Church was because of God, don't you think He'd have rained feces on Rome for forty days and forty nights? Don't you think He would have punished Pope Urban some...what's that? Pope Urban II died before ever learning of the conquest of Jerusalem? Praise God!

Let's play a fun game! Let's see what else Pope Urban II said while telling a bunch of Christians that all their sins will be forgiven if they die in this war against the Muslims and Jewish people:

All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested. O what a disgrace if such a despised and base race, which worships demons, should conquer a people which has the faith of omnipotent God and is made glorious with the name of Christ! With what reproaches will the Lord overwhelm us if you do not aid those who, with us, profess the Christian religion!

So big shot Pope Urban II immediately reminds people that he's allowed to speak for God so shut up. He also reminds them that the infidels are demon worshiping jerk-faces. And if that wasn't enough to get all the lazy poor assholes not suffering enough for God already off of their fat asses, he surmises, "Just think how worse God will make your life if you don't do this!" People love to defend religion because it brings hope to so many and I sometimes let down my militaristic atheist guard at that thought and agree, "Yeah, yeah. It must bring comfort, believing that nonsense." But that comfort is a selfish comfort where somebody cares only about their own immortal ego! And by caring so much about their ego surviving the terror of death and nonexistence, they'll do almost anything their spiritual leaders demand of them in the name of God! I know I'm ranting at shit that happened one thousand years ago but I also have eyes that can look out of my window today and ears that can hear the self-serving demands for faith and loyalty and a nose to smell the stinking rot of decaying souls perfumed up with patriotism and Christian pride!

I'm so much happier when I just ignore it all! But especially those jerks who express disdain for atheists as if they live in a world where atheists are forcing their opinions down their throats on the daily. I wish atheists were as vocal as Christians and pseudo-Christians! The status quo are so attuned to hearing daily Christian messages in the most mundane aspects of their everyday lives that they just don't even register them anymore. They're fucking constant and everywhere. But then one person responds to some religious thing quoted at them with, "Enh, I'm an atheist," and whoa Nelly! Look out! How dare an atheist express their areligious status! What a fucking whiny narcissist! What an overbearing chud of a human being! How dare they shit all over the comfort people gain from religion by saying, "I'm an atheist!" Bah! Go fuck yourselves!

I'd like to point out that I'm writing a blog post on my blog not directed at any person. It's impersonal. But anybody responding to this with attacks against me are personal attacks and they will not be permitted! I do not permit them! You are not remitted in entirety all penance for all your bully sins!

Oh shit! I forgot there was a massacre taking place!

I don't think this is the real knight. He's missing his snake horns!

Is this the first time the knight's been shown from a perspective that wasn't explicitly somebody else's story or Venus's frame for reference alone? We've seen how she sometimes daydreams and gets lost in her own fantasies. Could her witnessing of the knight have been exaggerated by her imagination? Could this be the same knight but seen more realistically? Or is it a fake? I think it's a fake because I'm one of those Internet dudes who doesn't believe anything just so that I'm never fooled by anything who then goes on to believe every shallow conspiracy theory by some YouTube crackpot. "I'm too intelligent to be fooled by mainstream ideas! I only believe theories formed from the fluffy cobwebs of some nutcase's mind that have never been tainted by the process of experimentation!"

The knight gets shot in the helmet a bunch and it looks like the bullets have gone right through yet he keeps on fighting.

And he's got the voice! I'll admit, there's a 3% chance that I could be wrong about this being a fake!

On closer inspection of some previous panels, it looks like the bullets are ricocheting off of the helmet. So I'll lower my chance of being wrong to 0.03%.

All the priests running screaming into the hallway forgetting that God has their back even more than regular people. Unless maybe they never really believed that? They find the door barred from the outside and begin sweating like a priest trapped in a dead-end hallway with a paranormal knight slaughtering people just around the corner. Is that a saying? If not, I guess I just coined it. You can use it if you want. It's about as comprehensible as any of Jesus's parables! Probably more so. It's plainly stated; it's just not catchy.

The knight winds up killing one of the priests as the criminals throw him in the knight's way and flee further into the school. That's okay. If he's an actual knight from the Crusades, he's got carte blanche to commit as many sins as he wants in the name of his mission. I just learned that like five pages ago!

Meanwhile, Anton Marx has been hauled into the police precinct to be questioned by Petronas again. But this time, the detective has a warrant so he can hold Anton as long as he wants. Or until Anton's lawyer starts talking about suing the city.

The Pope's men have one move: throwing more of The Pope's men into the knight's weapons.

Father Trinidad (the priest being paid by The Pope) discovers Venus and leads her away from the carnage. One of the other priests remembers Jesus once said, "I kick ass for the Lord!" So he's going to help himself and go take the school back from The Pope's thugs. It's possible he became brave because he heard all the criminals being slaughtered by the knight and then it went quiet and now he's all, "I'm going to do something!"

Venus didn't actually want to move away from the carnage so once Father Trinidad runs off to help the other priests, she wanders back into the school where she, once again, comes face to face with the knight.

What the fuck was Kelley Jones on when he drew that first panel? Or should I blame the inker, Jason Moore?

After that panel in which Venus looks like Ms. Plasticman, Cameron Stewart takes over on the inking. Maybe something terrible happened to Jason Moore as he was drawing that panel?! Maybe he just got frustrated because Seagle hadn't given him a panel to draw Venus's nipples and this was already halfway through the comic book. He had to take some time off to draw some covers for The Dead to get right with the world once more.

Cameron Stewart takes over just in time for some people to die!

This doesn't look anything like hipster Batgirl!

That's the priest who decided to take back the night. He shoots the jaw off some thug's face and then gets got by the knight for having done justice in the name of the Lord while not having Pope Urban II's blessing. Evil is evil so you gotta pay, you know? I mean evil is evil if Pope Urban II hasn't pre-forgiven you!

Nearly everybody dies except Venus and Father Trinidad and a few nameless priests of the New Jerusalem School. Also the guy who got his hand cut off earlier gets his leg cut off too. He escapes because Seagle's giving him the Garth Ennis treatment. He's still got plenty of body parts to lose in subsequent issues. Priest Rambo gets his brains blown out as well. Ultimately, only four major witnesses survive (the priests of New Jerusalem School don't count. They didn't really see much): Venus, Father Trinidad, Mr. One Hand and One Leg, and one other of The Pope's men. He might have a name but what am I? His father's keeper's keeper of his son's name?

The knight paints another cross from blood and shit and flies it over the New Jerusalem School. Is that his headquarters now? Venus doesn't get any answers about who he is; Father Trinidad tells her he's "the knight," like some smart-ass motherfucker who needs a mace to the skull. And Anton admits to everybody that he didn't ever know the identity of the knight but that he wasn't lying because what he meant was he knows the kind of guy the knight is. He's another smart-ass mother fucker who needs a medieval weapon bashing.

The Crusades #5 Rating: B-. So that's the end of the First Crusade. It ended with a bit of a whimper which might be why, ultimately, I found this title pretty forgettable. The knight's just some medieval Batman who may or may not kill you as soon as rescue you being that his code of ethics are a complete fucking mystery to everybody. What if he begins killing street masturbators? Are those a thing? Those must be a thing, right? Am I protesting too much about knowing about street masturbators? Heck I barely know what masturbation is let alone streets! I'm inside like 95% of the time! You're a street masturbator!