Somebody, sometime, crashed through that flimsy grate and died.
I'm the worst visual art critic in the world which probably means that I shouldn't be reviewing comic books. But instead, it means I look at an image like this and think, "Did Venus phase through that woman in the skirt? Maybe she's running backwards but her hair thinks she's running forwards? Does the knight often lie underneath this grate jerking off to upskirts? Did Venus just come from a bowling alley or does she wear bowling shoes in some kind of hipster, ironic way?" But seriously, anybody walking over that grate doesn't value or respect their own life.
Once again, I forgot about the song lyrics right up until opening the comic book and reading the song lyric! This one is from a band named Jewish Proverb.
Once again, I forgot about the song lyrics right up until opening the comic book and reading the song lyric! This one is from a band named Jewish Proverb.
Even in their proverbs, Jewish people are taking shots at God!
At first I thought this was an image of Venus's mom dragging her toward some imposing figure in the foreground blocking out half the picture. But, being the super observant person I am who notices almost everything that other people easily notice, I realized it was a torn photo, removing Venus's dad from the image. Also Venus's mom looks like a mushroom. Kelley Jones' visuals usually mean something so that probably means Venus regards her childhood "down under" as having been Wonderland-esque, as in down the rabbit hole, as in everybody was crazy and she fucked a white rabbit.
I don't want to shit all over that Jewish proverb unlike how I often shit all over the Jewish Torah. But not because it's Jewish! I'm just partaking of the Rabbinical tradition of arguing about the meaning of it all and, like the proverb above, shitting on God's omniscience and omnipotence and overall intelligence in general! Can you imagine a religion where the followers wind up being atheist but don't see it as a conflict of interest? That's fucking metal, man. Rabbis everywhere just tearing the shit out of the Torah's asshole, poking holes in it, pointing out paradoxes and hypocrisies, but ultimately embracing it because — let's face it — the Torah's really just a document to prove the Jewish right to the land in the Middle East. That chapter where Sarah dies and Abraham takes her body back to her homeland to bury her is less a loving story about a husband's fealty to his lost loved one and more a long story about Abraham's negotiating a payment for the land where he's going to bury Sarah to prove that the Father of Judaism owns that land. It's just a long-winded receipt!
I'd just like to point out: I don't shit on the Jewish Torah because it's Jewish! I shit on it because it's fucking ridiculous! Before Genesis is even over, you've got three generations of couples having the exact same adventure over and over. Unless it was family tradition to pretend your wife was your sister so you could fool some leader of a nation out of all his riches and asses (and maybe stealing his wells while you were at it), it just reads like a poorly edited manuscript! I will say this though: reading The Bible really does make you understand where all the really antisemitic tropes come from and it made me feel like a horrible person applying logic to this document because I felt like I was leaving an online comment of "Totes agree, dude!" on a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Look, I don't believe any of that antisemite shit (I'm even woke enough to spell "antisemite" the correct and unracist way!). But when your foundational text is just a bunch of chapters of God saying, "Yeah, all that land where everybody else already lives? It's yours! Go get it!", you can understand how people were wary of that sense of religious entitlement. Plus you know that when dealing with the writers of The Bible, you're dealing with that high school debate club asshole who always dreamed about being a lawyer because they could argue so well, especially when you read the story of Onan. You go into it thinking, "Oh yeah! This is that story that explains why you shouldn't masturbate!" And then you come away thinking, "What the fuck? That was just about contract law? How do you make a story about some guy fucking his sister-in-law and then ejaculating all over the ground about a father and God being angry that the spoogy little bastard broke a contract and not about his gross, lecherous mess on the bedroom floor?" But then why am I even mentioning that when Lot's daughters got their father drunk so they could fuck him and Noah cursed his son's sons because that son walked into Noah's tent while Noah was passed out drunk and naked and saw his penis? What the fuck is going on, man?! Maybe if you want me to understand why some guy got so butthurt about somebody else seeing his penis, you should add further details to the story. Was Ham running around town making stubby pencil jokes about Noah's wiener? What's so wrong about seeing your dad's dick? It's a good thing I never had kids because, according to the story of Ham and Noah, they'd be cursed due to that time my step-sister and I were being loud in a hotel room and my dad came out naked to yell at me! The good part of that story is that we kept being loud so then my step-mom came out to yell at us too and she was only in her panties. So I saw step-boobies!
When we last left our non-knight characters, they were all bunched up in Venus's apartment ready for some good old fisticuff style conflict.
I don't want to shit all over that Jewish proverb unlike how I often shit all over the Jewish Torah. But not because it's Jewish! I'm just partaking of the Rabbinical tradition of arguing about the meaning of it all and, like the proverb above, shitting on God's omniscience and omnipotence and overall intelligence in general! Can you imagine a religion where the followers wind up being atheist but don't see it as a conflict of interest? That's fucking metal, man. Rabbis everywhere just tearing the shit out of the Torah's asshole, poking holes in it, pointing out paradoxes and hypocrisies, but ultimately embracing it because — let's face it — the Torah's really just a document to prove the Jewish right to the land in the Middle East. That chapter where Sarah dies and Abraham takes her body back to her homeland to bury her is less a loving story about a husband's fealty to his lost loved one and more a long story about Abraham's negotiating a payment for the land where he's going to bury Sarah to prove that the Father of Judaism owns that land. It's just a long-winded receipt!
I'd just like to point out: I don't shit on the Jewish Torah because it's Jewish! I shit on it because it's fucking ridiculous! Before Genesis is even over, you've got three generations of couples having the exact same adventure over and over. Unless it was family tradition to pretend your wife was your sister so you could fool some leader of a nation out of all his riches and asses (and maybe stealing his wells while you were at it), it just reads like a poorly edited manuscript! I will say this though: reading The Bible really does make you understand where all the really antisemitic tropes come from and it made me feel like a horrible person applying logic to this document because I felt like I was leaving an online comment of "Totes agree, dude!" on a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Look, I don't believe any of that antisemite shit (I'm even woke enough to spell "antisemite" the correct and unracist way!). But when your foundational text is just a bunch of chapters of God saying, "Yeah, all that land where everybody else already lives? It's yours! Go get it!", you can understand how people were wary of that sense of religious entitlement. Plus you know that when dealing with the writers of The Bible, you're dealing with that high school debate club asshole who always dreamed about being a lawyer because they could argue so well, especially when you read the story of Onan. You go into it thinking, "Oh yeah! This is that story that explains why you shouldn't masturbate!" And then you come away thinking, "What the fuck? That was just about contract law? How do you make a story about some guy fucking his sister-in-law and then ejaculating all over the ground about a father and God being angry that the spoogy little bastard broke a contract and not about his gross, lecherous mess on the bedroom floor?" But then why am I even mentioning that when Lot's daughters got their father drunk so they could fuck him and Noah cursed his son's sons because that son walked into Noah's tent while Noah was passed out drunk and naked and saw his penis? What the fuck is going on, man?! Maybe if you want me to understand why some guy got so butthurt about somebody else seeing his penis, you should add further details to the story. Was Ham running around town making stubby pencil jokes about Noah's wiener? What's so wrong about seeing your dad's dick? It's a good thing I never had kids because, according to the story of Ham and Noah, they'd be cursed due to that time my step-sister and I were being loud in a hotel room and my dad came out naked to yell at me! The good part of that story is that we kept being loud so then my step-mom came out to yell at us too and she was only in her panties. So I saw step-boobies!
When we last left our non-knight characters, they were all bunched up in Venus's apartment ready for some good old fisticuff style conflict.
I thought Detective Petronas was going to beat the shit out of Anton. This is better.
It's weird. I don't remember a whole lot about this comic from 22 years ago. But I absolutely remembered Venus's mom when she appeared. Maybe because she's so cartoonish? She feels like a Tiny Toons character.
I just want to mention, because Kelley Jones has been doing such a fantastic job with the art of this comic book, how he deals with the confrontation between Anton and Petronas (just before Venus's mom explodes onto the scene swinging her purse like a medieval flail). Let's take a look at it:
I just want to mention, because Kelley Jones has been doing such a fantastic job with the art of this comic book, how he deals with the confrontation between Anton and Petronas (just before Venus's mom explodes onto the scene swinging her purse like a medieval flail). Let's take a look at it:
I'm ruining the spine of this issue to get this scan!
You almost never see a comic use the gutter between pages as part of the art, let alone use it so literally. Venus becomes the gutter, the gulf, the border between her two worlds she's been trying to keep as separate as possible. And here they are, still on two opposed pages, but finally meeting and facing off with Venus serving as the white space between panels/worlds. Fucking tremendous.
Detective Petronas de-escalates the situation the way no cop would ever do by pretending he has to get back to the station instead of shooting Anton with his service revolver and then never having the murder go to trial because most District Attorneys know that if they ever convict a cop, no cop will ever testify for them again and their careers will be over. Although, have District Attorneys ever thought about how not having a cop for a witness might make their lives better? People hate cops and, last I checked, juries, like Soylent Green, were made out of people! Who needs to get a miserable, lying cop on the stand when you can just submit their lying, bullshit, overtime-tacked-on reports to the court?
After Petronas leaves, Anton discovers one more person who can't stand him.
Detective Petronas de-escalates the situation the way no cop would ever do by pretending he has to get back to the station instead of shooting Anton with his service revolver and then never having the murder go to trial because most District Attorneys know that if they ever convict a cop, no cop will ever testify for them again and their careers will be over. Although, have District Attorneys ever thought about how not having a cop for a witness might make their lives better? People hate cops and, last I checked, juries, like Soylent Green, were made out of people! Who needs to get a miserable, lying cop on the stand when you can just submit their lying, bullshit, overtime-tacked-on reports to the court?
After Petronas leaves, Anton discovers one more person who can't stand him.
Cela using her personal connection to the knight to throw her weight around.
Oh! More Alice's Adventures in Wonderland references with the chopping off of heads. Was I really not that far off with the whole mushroom thing?
Detective Petronas actually was called away and didn't de-escalate on purpose which totally makes sense based on that thing about cops I said earlier. He was called to Golden Gate Park to investigate the murder of the guy the knight caught "tilting windmills." I wasn't expecting the knight to become a gay basher but if he thinks he's working for God and he's 900 years old, I suppose it makes sense. Not logical sense, obviously! Twisted, stupid, irrational, religious sense! The kind of sense that if you tried to explain to an alien visiting Earth for the first time, they'd simply wind up saying, "What?!", about fifty times before disintegrating you.
Detective Petronas actually was called away and didn't de-escalate on purpose which totally makes sense based on that thing about cops I said earlier. He was called to Golden Gate Park to investigate the murder of the guy the knight caught "tilting windmills." I wasn't expecting the knight to become a gay basher but if he thinks he's working for God and he's 900 years old, I suppose it makes sense. Not logical sense, obviously! Twisted, stupid, irrational, religious sense! The kind of sense that if you tried to explain to an alien visiting Earth for the first time, they'd simply wind up saying, "What?!", about fifty times before disintegrating you.
My entire life, I've been able to ignore Ash Wednesday and now this comic book is going to make me learn about it? Feh!
The ashes in the shape of a cross on the forehead are Catholic shorthand for "Repent, and believe in the Gospel." That motherfucker. Here I was believing he was some good guy bringing evil to justice and now I find out that his idea of justice is butting into people's personal lives and forcing them to live the way he's living? Oh wait. I think I already realized that when I suspected the knight was gay and closeted and self-loathing. Now we're seeing the dangerous consequences of society's condemnation of mundane bullshit that's outside the "accepted Status Quo". The only reason anybody feels their lives are somehow hampered by the personal lives of other people is this: they are miserable and they hate seeing other people joyous. And they aren't miserable due to chemicals in their heads being off; they've chosen their misery and hate that other people have chosen not to be miserable. Sometimes, no matter how complicated any situation might seem, I just feels like it all boils down to that. People simply hate that other people seem freer than they are to choose things that make them happy. Dude, you do know you don't have to be super religious and follow ancient dogma that didn't account for about 93% of the things that exist in modern society, right? But even if you want to choose that, you don't have to be so fucking bitter about all of the people who don't choose that. Be happy with your choices and you'll absolutely never concern yourself with the lives of other people!
Stupid knight! He's got me all worked up with his religious homophobia now!
Venus's friend Sara gave her an idea about figuring out who the knight is: get his fingerprints. So she heads back down to the sewers where Syd the Bear is all, "Fuck, this chick again? Can't she leave us in peace?" While talking to Syd, Venus mentions how the knight is currently paralyzed. So if that's true, maybe he's not as homophobic as I thought. Although why would Seagle pull the whole "It's a different knight!" twist two stories in a row? Maybe because the reader wouldn't expect it! It's the perfect bluff!
Stupid knight! He's got me all worked up with his religious homophobia now!
Venus's friend Sara gave her an idea about figuring out who the knight is: get his fingerprints. So she heads back down to the sewers where Syd the Bear is all, "Fuck, this chick again? Can't she leave us in peace?" While talking to Syd, Venus mentions how the knight is currently paralyzed. So if that's true, maybe he's not as homophobic as I thought. Although why would Seagle pull the whole "It's a different knight!" twist two stories in a row? Maybe because the reader wouldn't expect it! It's the perfect bluff!
I can't believe Venus is actually wearing the same thing she's wearing on the cover! It's a Christmas miracle!
It's a Christmas miracle because I'm writing this on Christmas and no other reason. Also it's a miracle in the way most people define miracles: something absolutely normal and controlled by humans but seems out of the ordinary based on one's typical experiences in life.
I just took a break to shower and shave getting ready to go to the sister-in-law's house for Secular Christmas Dinner and I had a thought about the homophobic knight: could it be Syd? Did he steal the knight's armor and go out using the knight's reputation to act out his own self-loathing? Because like the knight, he lives in this underground city that I suspect (and may be entirely making up but I have a degree in Literary Theory and so feel like I can say this as an expert) represents the so-called "closet" in which homosexuals have often been forced to hide their true selves. And, yes, I've read this before so if I'm right, does that not just mean I'm remembering the story from 20 years ago? Sure, I suppose. But if you ever spent any time in my head, you'll have discovered that memories, for me, are cracked, twisted, dried husks of disused brain matter.
Venus and Godfrey have a little discussion about his life back in the 12th century and how Venus can't be evil so doesn't need to fear him and how Venus might be a little bit hot in the crotch of this shirtless beast of a man. But he's still lying helpless on the floor of a sewer dying from a serious infection (which she gives him antibiotics for, so he'll probably be fine). Although just wait until she hears how he killed a gay guy in Golden Gate Park! She'll be so mad he lied about being paralyzed! Oh, and about the gay bashing!
Speaking of hate crimes, there's a weird bald Fester looking motherfucker that's been hanging out at the scene of the murder.
I just took a break to shower and shave getting ready to go to the sister-in-law's house for Secular Christmas Dinner and I had a thought about the homophobic knight: could it be Syd? Did he steal the knight's armor and go out using the knight's reputation to act out his own self-loathing? Because like the knight, he lives in this underground city that I suspect (and may be entirely making up but I have a degree in Literary Theory and so feel like I can say this as an expert) represents the so-called "closet" in which homosexuals have often been forced to hide their true selves. And, yes, I've read this before so if I'm right, does that not just mean I'm remembering the story from 20 years ago? Sure, I suppose. But if you ever spent any time in my head, you'll have discovered that memories, for me, are cracked, twisted, dried husks of disused brain matter.
Venus and Godfrey have a little discussion about his life back in the 12th century and how Venus can't be evil so doesn't need to fear him and how Venus might be a little bit hot in the crotch of this shirtless beast of a man. But he's still lying helpless on the floor of a sewer dying from a serious infection (which she gives him antibiotics for, so he'll probably be fine). Although just wait until she hears how he killed a gay guy in Golden Gate Park! She'll be so mad he lied about being paralyzed! Oh, and about the gay bashing!
Speaking of hate crimes, there's a weird bald Fester looking motherfucker that's been hanging out at the scene of the murder.
Something I learned from shitty thrillers in the '00s is that the guy you see on camera in one scene with one line early on is the murderer.
The scary bald guy got a line earlier in the comic after which the reporter on the scene says, "Who's that guy?!", and then winks at the reader. I'm not convinced that guy's the murderer because I trust Seagle more than that although Seagle did do the Faux Knight story arc so why the fuck am I defending him?! The Hate Crime Knight is either Syd or that creepy guy. Either way, it's a bald man. I don't know if Godfrey is bald as well or else I'd keep him as a suspect too. I'm only looking at bald people for this hate crime because who has more hate in their hearts than bald people cursed by God?
Venus's mother sets her up on another date with Detective Petronas. Venus agrees but insists they go see Anton's twin friends, the brothers who fuck each other on stage.
Venus's mother sets her up on another date with Detective Petronas. Venus agrees but insists they go see Anton's twin friends, the brothers who fuck each other on stage.
Venus becoming more and more intrigued by the incest show is so fucking adorable! Also her mother looks like The Corinthian from The Sandman.
If the Incest Twins wind up dead after this show, the Hate Crime Knight is Detective Petronas! Except he declares while not enjoying the show, he wasn't offended by it at all. Venus, probably hot and bothered from all the twin fucking she just watched happen on stage, begins to warm up to the Detective. But she has to call the night short to go check on her ward, the little blind leper girl.
After the show, some of the Incest Twins' drag queen friends head back home and take a short cut through an alley. The Hate Crime Knight appears, tell them God hates the way they're living, and kills at least one of them. At the same time, Venus, having used checking on Cela as an excuse, has gone to check on Godfrey. All she finds is a puddle of blood! Oh no!
The Crusades #14 Rating: B+. Is it just a coincidence or is Godfrey actually the Hate Crime Knight?! I'd like to think it's a coincidence and a means to get the reader to start doubting the Godfrey. But it could also be the theme of this Crusade! Those who go on religious crusades only do good by accident, doing as much harm based on their religious morals as good. Is that the theme?! I really should read the entire story before commenting on it! Nah, that's how you do academic papers. I haven't been academic since the late mid-'90s! That shit is over for me! I'm a free wheeler now, baby! I wonder how well I would have done in college if more of my papers had the occasional dick joke? Probably even better based on my professor's reactions when I wrote humorous papers! They were always so thankful for some entertainment mixed in with the stupid research!
After the show, some of the Incest Twins' drag queen friends head back home and take a short cut through an alley. The Hate Crime Knight appears, tell them God hates the way they're living, and kills at least one of them. At the same time, Venus, having used checking on Cela as an excuse, has gone to check on Godfrey. All she finds is a puddle of blood! Oh no!
The Crusades #14 Rating: B+. Is it just a coincidence or is Godfrey actually the Hate Crime Knight?! I'd like to think it's a coincidence and a means to get the reader to start doubting the Godfrey. But it could also be the theme of this Crusade! Those who go on religious crusades only do good by accident, doing as much harm based on their religious morals as good. Is that the theme?! I really should read the entire story before commenting on it! Nah, that's how you do academic papers. I haven't been academic since the late mid-'90s! That shit is over for me! I'm a free wheeler now, baby! I wonder how well I would have done in college if more of my papers had the occasional dick joke? Probably even better based on my professor's reactions when I wrote humorous papers! They were always so thankful for some entertainment mixed in with the stupid research!
as a gay comix fan i'm finding this shit fascinating. i'd heard of The Crusades but i had no idea it had persisted for over twelve issues, nor that there was a huuuuuuge (& messy) queer "subtext" running through it. the incest twins are certainly something. i'm wondering if things like venus's body language in the audience were kelly jones' contribution or the writer's
ReplyDeleteI have no memory of even noticing the gay subtext the first time I read it which is weird because it just seems to be screaming it this time (I mean aside from all the overt hate crime stuff happening in this 3rd Crusade, obvs!). Maybe I did? But also, last time I read it, it was one month between chapters and by 2002, I was having way more trouble remembering story arcs with that much time between.
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