The Crusades #16 (August 2002)

Is this one of those five and a half minute staircases?

Almost speaking of infinity, I was lying in bed trying to come up with more reasons to think Christians are stupid as hell and I began poking the festering wound that is the idea that they can believe in infinity but only if infinity is a big magic Creator that looks just like they do and probably has the fattest dick. They'll scoff at the idea that matter has always existed or time or space or whatever has Who knows? Scientists? Soon enough, they'll pull out a pen and paper and do one of their magic riddles that proves God exists by saying, "Nothing is infinite." And then because they're like a close-up magician with this shit and it's been tested over and over by, like, C.S. Lewis and shit, you'll be all, "Um, a circle?" And they'll go, "A-ha, you stupid heathen, you have fell into my trap! Watch me draw a circle!" Then they're all, "See? A beginning as I, the creator of the circle, put my pen to the paper! Not infinite, you stupid bitch! Where's your faith now, you evil penis worshiper?" And then you'll go, "So you, a human, created that circle that isn't infinite? Just like a human created a God that isn't infinite?" And they'll turn bright red and go watch a Chicago Bears game. That was mostly a true story. Anyway, why don't they ever think, "God is Infinite and has always been. But He made us in his image and we, like, procreate and shit. So somebody must have created God with their omnipotent fanny, right? Some Mother Creator? And God also must shit and piss and get horny?" They can never comfortably sit with not knowing something because the answer "God!" is always right in their front pocket next to their private area which God also has plus the other one probably.

I suppose what Christians are thinking is that God doesn't have sexual organs or places to evacuate waste because he doesn't need nutrition so he doesn't have a heart or a brain or a stomach or a kidney or a liver or any of the other stuff we have that I can't remember. Like a pancreaum maybe? So just like all of their beliefs, the idea that God made us in His image is purely superficial. And what they're also thinking with their dirty little pervert minds is that God fantasized about creatures that put their doohickeys in similar creatures wonkpockets until they both experienced the love shivers (or just the one with the doohickey did way too often than was respectful) and then a baby, made exactly in their image, fell out of the wonkpocket nine or so months later. If God is infinite than God never experienced any of that stuff because he doesn't grow or die because that's a side effect of reproduction because — guess what, motherfuckers — evolution was the best way for life to survive because it allowed for growth and change of organisms across the long term in the way they're formed from the start. So, yeah, God made it all up like a horny fanfic writer on tumblr. He was all, "What if there were a wee creature that looked like Me but it wasn't infinite like Me. So, let's see, I have this mouth that I don't use for anything at all because I don't eat and there's nobody to talk to so what is language? What if this creature shoves stuff in it like fuel (I'll figure out what 'fuel' is later). But the fuel isn't perfectly burned as it travels through the gross shit I'm going to put inside this wee guy so I'll put a tight little hole with loads of erogenous nerve receptors down at its other end (the place where I just have a smooth patch), and foul smelling leftover fuel will fall out of it at semi-regular intervals. Sometimes it'll be hard and sometimes soft and sometimes practically just dirty, smelly water. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea that won't force them to spend a good portion of their lives dealing with! Oh, and what if sometimes they strain too hard and a vein bulges on them and kind of falls out of the orifice and hangs there like a snake sticking out of a hole with an undigested rat halfway down its gullet? Ha ha! They're going to hate me, aren't they?!"

But also God didn't just do that with wee creatures that looked like Him! He made up a bunch of other weirdoes with strange genitals and ways of reproducing and also fucking sharks. Why would a good God make sharks?! I mean, sure, sharks are fucking awesome. But why make a bunch of cool shit and then think, "I need a swimming, living, organic wood chipper to fuck up all my cool creatures!" Oh man. Do I think God is cool now?!

That was actually more related to this comic than you think. Remember, it's called The Crusades! And now, a lyric!

My cynical nature read this way too much like a Wayne's World quote.

It took me far too long to realize Aeschylus (that guy probably hated his parents for that name, amirite?) was saying, "I have no fears when a match has equal partners", and not, "I don't believe it at all when somebody says a match has equal partners." More to the point because I don't know what to say about that, what the fuck is up with that picture from Venus's past? Is that her rolling her eyes at the concept of marriage? Is she rolling her eyes at the two people getting married? Is she rolling her eyes about how long it's going to take to become a sexpot which she'll only regret later after she becomes a sexpot and spends the rest of her life thinking, "Why was I in such a rush to become a sexpot?" Is the groom Addas Petronas going through a Greek arranged marriage? Is the quote tacked on to point out how hard it actually is for a relationship to have equal partners? A fable even? Beats me! I'm still thinking how fucking metal God is for making a living woodchipper!

The issue begins with Father Trinidad and Venus fleeing from the Universal Church of Light and Love because it actually was an alley outside of their church where the Hate Crime Knight just murdered his gay hook-up and lit everything on fire. I was confused last issue because the Hate Crime Knight told his potential sex partner to meet him at the Universal Church of Light and Harmony. You can see how I would have been confused being that the two names were very different and yet super similar, espousing basically the same sentiment. Sort of like when I was an even-stupider-than-I-am-now early teen reading The Lord of the Rings and I couldn't keep Saruman and Sauron straight. Bakshi's animated movie fixes this by calling Saurman exclusively Aruman and also by leaving out the entire siege of Orthanc. I rewatched it recently, as well as Rankin and Bass's The Hobbit and The Return of the King and was surprised that they left out my three favorite parts of the books: Tom Bombadil, the Ents absolutely shitting all over Saruman, and Shelob. Rankin and Bass surely could have added Shelob or Orthanc if they'd just left out all the long-ass fucking scenes of Sam fantasizing about his future, either as a bad-ass ring wielder or where he fucks two kids out of Rosie.

So five pages later, everybody is out of the burning church and the firemen have discovered a dead body with a gray cross on his forehead. Seems like a bit of a waste of pages but I'll trust Seagle's pacing. Was this around the time when editorial began demanding that every story arc be five or six issues so they could easily be packaged in a collection? Or had that been going on forever?

Venus has a theory!

Father Trinidad's about to look inward and have a spiritual crisis. Having aligned himself with a medieval killer, is he any better than The Pope? Has his dog slipped the leash (which was never really there anyway and only built from Father Trinidad's delusions which he shares with every other mortal person that they're in more control of their lives than they ever really are)? Is the knight suddenly killing off his people?! Well, he must be stopped then!

Oh look! It happened on the very next page!

Meanwhile Anton Marx blah blah blah having a shit time blah blah blah losing his show blah blah blah hating life blah blah blah ha ha ha! Suck it, Anton!

Cela has become too much for Sara to handle so she sends her back to Venus. Cela wants to go back underground but Venus isn't quite ready to do that. Even if she thought it was okay to send her back to living in a cage under the eye of a murderer, she's not ready to send Cela back while the knight can't even move. Or thinks he can't move until he gets the urge to kill some gay guys. Venus tells her mom she's going on a date with Addas so her mother doesn't fight Venus when she leaves Cela with her. But actually she's just going on that date because she needs the knight's fingerprints run.

Oh, and maybe she wants some dick.

The knight solves his problems by manipulating a sword and Venus does the same, in a manner of speaking. That's probably why she'll eventually hang up her sex object hat and begin wearing the helmet herself. Then she can kill Anton Marx while pretending it was in the name of God!

Before going on the date, Venus asks her mother why she faced her fear of flying (read the novel by Erica Jong, 1973, to know why this is an important detail about Venus's mother. I don't have time to read everything for you!) and learns that her brother Dmitri (the man in the photo not getting married (the other man is her other brother)) is gay. Venus's mom panicked and now thinks Venus is the only chance for a grandchild. I don't know why the other brother doesn't count. Is he infertile? Does the oldest son in Greek families only fuck their wives in the mouth and ass?

Venus's mother is disturbed by gay men so it's lucky she came to the City by the Gay. Maybe she's the Hate Crime Knight!

Gross. I wish there were a knight killing hetero couples!

Addas believes that the best way to get a woman into bed is to show her all of your red flags at once: jealousy, over-committing, creepy intenseness, homophobia. Oh, the homophobia wasn't on that page! It was on the next page where he's suddenly called away to investigate the murder at the Universal Church of Light and Love/Harmony before Venus can refuse his offer. Basically he says homosexuals are okay with him as long as they know their place and don't get too public about it. Or maybe he's just weirded out by the creepy incest because he is talking about the twins who fuck each other in front of an audience.

Once Addas leaves, Venus goes home, gets Cela, and takes her back underground. She discovers the knight still lying where she left him. But he has ash on his fingers! He tells her a story about how he tried to get up and fell and knocked a torch down but she doesn't buy it. To find out once and for all if he's the killer, she chains him to Cela's cage. If a murder is committed while he's still chained up, she'll know he's innocent. Which seems bad because now she has to wait until somebody dies to prove he's not the Hate Crime Knight? You know how I'd prove he hasn't been killing gay guys and has just been lying there all this time? His pants must be full of piss and possibly shit, right?! Take his pants off, Venus! Take off his pants and check!

Instead, she takes off his helmet.

The Crusades #16 Rating: B+. Wait! You can't end there, Seagle! Who is the knight?! How could Venus recognize him if there aren't really any other character that she knows in this comic book that he can be! Unless it's her father. Could it be her father? Is that why all the family pictures at the beginning of each issue? Could this not only be a story about how the gay lifestyle must subvert the status quo in various ways to keep the status quo from ultimately destroying it with torches and swords but be a story about Daddy Issues?! Are we going to get some kind of morality tale about Venus being a sex object because the last time she saw her father, she was eight years old? Oh man, I fucking hope not! I'd take a guess at who the knight is and why Venus would recognize him except I really can't think of any other people she knows well enough to be shocked at seeing them down here. Maybe she's just shocked because his face is full of maggots!