The Crusades #2 (June 2001)

This ain't weird for San Francisco.

The only real question when seeing a knight in armor standing on top of a taxi in San Francisco is this: is he part of Pride, part of the drug scene, or is it Renaissance Festival season across the Golden Gate in Marin County? It's also possible Gwar is playing at the Cow Palace but the odds on that are pretty low compared to the others.

Man, I just made myself so sad and nostalgic for the Bay Area. If I had to guess, I'd say at least half the concerts I've been to in my life time were at the Cow Palace.

For those curious about the lyrics that begin this issue: Missy George Eliot!

It's been so long since I've read Middlemarch, I doubt I'd be able to pick it out of a line-up if it stood on stage in front of me next to Vanity Fair, Bleak House, and Jude the Obscure. It's weird knowing you've lived life and done things during that life but have no memory of them whatsoever anymore. Am I still responsible for everything the me did when I was reading Middlemarch if I can't even remember the fucking plot? I think every terrible thing I did around the time should be attributed to a me that isn't me anymore at all. Um, not that I did anything terrible around that time! I don't think this was terrible but one time, I told this gay guy Michael once that I wasn't interested in having sex with him and then lay on the couch in the dark with him on the floor nearby thinking, "Do I want to have sex with him? My penis seems to want to!" But I didn't have the nerve to wake him up and say, "You know what? Let's do this! Please go easy on me, sir!" Man, if that had been the plot of Middlemarch, I bet I'd remember it then!

Holy Crusades! This issue begins in the past. It's only the second (third!) issue and we're actually going to get some back story?! Will there be a worm hole? A Legion teleportation accident? A holy fucking miracle?!

Content Warning: The Crusades were 98% racist.

The Crusades were probably 100% racist but I'm going to allow for a slight margin of error due to so many poor and uneducated people being swept up in the fervor who maybe just thought they were joining a parade of racists.

Check out the side-eye on his Jew. He's all, "Fucking this shit again?"

I was first introduced to The Fiddler on the Roof in middle elementary school due to the way television worked in the '70s. That is, there were like nine channels worth watching (if you don't count that one channel on UHF that showed the scrambled porn station, Private Screenings. Seriously. Look it up!). Three of those channels were network affiliates. Two were PBS stations. And four were local channels that showed a bunch of syndicated stuff (two on VHF (channels 2-13) and two on UHF (all the other numbers!)). In the San Francisco Bay Area, channels 2, 12, 20, and 36 were the main local stations. Channel 4 was NBC, 6 was CBS, and 7 was ABC. Channels 9 and 54 were PBS stations. I don't remember what channel Private Screenings was on but I tried to watch it on occasion!

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, on the weekends, you had those channels to choose from. As a kid, I didn't like sports, so that cut down on some choices. Movies and musicals were big fare during the day on Saturdays and Sundays. It's where I first saw The Fiddler on the Roof and I mostly remember loving the first half and being bored to death by the second half. I definitely didn't understand the context of the movies and I certainly didn't learn and retain the word "pogrom" for at least a decade later. I just knew the first half of the movie was fun and the second half of the movie was a huge downer! Oh, I bring it up because that side-eye Jewish fellow made me think of the word "pogrom" because he definitely can tell it's, once again, fucking pogrom time!

Oh sure. Sign me up. You look like you're having a fucking blast.

One guy answers this fanatical crusader with some smart words and the crusader isn't happy about it.

Oh, by "smart words," I just mean they were all, "No thanks, sir! I'm just going to keep doing Jewish stuff!"

Judging by the snake-horned helmet, the crusader questioning Christo-fascist angry dude is our Knight of San Francisco. We're learning either he has a different moral code than your typical crusading Christian or he's just lazy. I'm not sure if his problem is with killing Jewish people or killing 600 Jewish people.

Back in San Francisco, we learn the scene wasn't technically a flashback although it probably was anyway. What it was was Venus reading a book entitled Crusades and Crusaders which apparently is a history book and not a role-playing game. She's learning about how ruthless and terrible and racist the crusaders were because she's curious as to how racist her soon-to-be new boyfriend might wind up being. You know she's gonna fuck the knight! This is a Vertigo title!

Last issue ended with Venus stumbling upon another gangland hit. This issue begins with Venus reading more about crusaders and waiting in the office of her therapist because she's convinced she's hallucinating the entire thing. In the middle of the issue, as she's talking to her therapist, she recounts what happened just after last issue ended and the gang members saw her seeing them doing their killing. And while the reader gets the story in visuals, the dialogue that goes along with it belong to Anton Marx and his co-host, April the Lesbian, as they discuss Anton's theories of the knight.

As a white male, Anton Marx doesn't worry if this guy's agenda is his own because he's probably racist. He's only worried if he's working for somebody else that might have a beef with mouthy radio personalities.

In the middle of the fight scene where the knight chops off the hand of one of the Pope's men, DC has purchased a double page advert for 7th Edition Magic the Gathering. It's not that I find it weird that Magic the Gathering took out such a large advertisement. It's the tagline they use that begins, "Back in Black," on the left page, and then finishes with this on the right.

Um, whut?

True story: one time at a Magic the Gathering tournament in San Jose, I used my Maze of Ith ("Target attacking creature becomes untapped. This creature neither deals nor receives damage as a result of combat.") against an attacking Serra Angel. This must have been in '95 or '96. The kid across from me was all, "You can't do that because Serra Angel doesn't tap." And I was all, "Excuse me? What kind of nonsense is that, you stupid mother fucker? Don't make me get up and shove the rest of your deck up your virgin asshole!" Okay, maybe I wasn't that angry. But I was confused. I was all, "The maze targets an attacking creature. The angel is attacking. Therefore it does no damage. The tapped or untapped bit doesn't matter." But he was a stupid motherfucker and could not be swayed by my ability to read a fucking Magic card. So he called a judge over and the judge was all, "Oh yeah. That's a new ruling. The Maze works on the angel." And since the judge ruled for me, I did not flip the table over out of irrational anger at the thought that somebody had previously ruled that the maze couldn't work against the angel?! What kind of shit stupid ignorant motherfucking motherfuckers live in this world with me?! READ THE FUCKING CARDS, YOU MORONS! Anyway, I lost in the next round because a guy who was about to be decked played Feldon's Cane which I'd never seen and didn't know what it did and by the time I'd read the card, he'd already shuffled his library back into his deck and I decided I didn't want to have to shove his deck up his virgin asshole as well and just decided not to argue that I Counterspelled it and just decided, "Fuck Magic the Gathering tournaments and the fucking bullshit cheating stupid motherfuckers who play in them."

What I'm saying is, "Yeah, yeah. I can see the stupid jerks I played with and traded cards with loving the shit out of a 'the Serra Angel is old enough to be fucked now' advertisement.

Vertigo-mandated tits and ass.

Earlier, Venus had an issue with getting lost in thought while doing research. Now it's becoming worse as she's daydreaming (or hallucinating) random events. It's probably brought on by the stress of seeing a knight hack off the hand of another human being. Or because she became super aroused after seeing it. Or maybe she just finds therapy super horny.

Later, Venus heads over to the New Jerusalem School to ask the priest who ran out to stop the criminals if he'd seen the knight as well. When she gets there, she's turned away because Pope's men are already in the building using violence to get the priest to sign the school over to The Pope. I guess so they can sell the land to the casino? Or build there own? Or something.

The issue ends with Venus ambushing Anton Marx at his coffee joint. He seems super embarrassed to be seen with her for some reason. Is she hideous? Are Anton and I looking at different women?! Why wouldn't he want everybody to know he's having sex with Venus?! Before she can tell him that she was the knight, Detective Petronas shows up to arrest Anton. He doesn't say why because it's the last panel and it's like a big twist to get the reader to buy the next issue. "Why was Anton arrested?! You'll have to spend another $2.50 next month to find out why! What's that? You were already going to buy next month's issue because you love seeing Venus naked? Oh, okay. Maybe we should have ended with her slipping off her underwear!"

The Crusades #2 Rating: A. It's like the knight's just a big, weird, interesting red herring to get eyes on this comic book. Readers curious to see why a knight crusades around San Francisco pick up the comic book. Then they get interested in the characters and the mystery and the mob violence and the boobies and mostly forget about the knight. The knight's just flavor text on a Summon Boobies and Mystery Magic the Gathering card of a comic book.