The Crusades #3 (July 2001)

From morality tale to Lovecraftian horror.

The first page lyrics have been pretty philosophical up until now so Seagle wanted to throw a little spanner in the machine that doesn't like spanners being thrown into it. A toaster, I guess? For this issue, we begin with a diss track from Lord Capulet. It's a pretty simple diss but still hard enough to win a beef against Drake.

I don't know why the image is of Sumerian bowling champion, Enkidu.

Last issue, Detective Petronas arrested Anton Marx for unknown reasons. Was he the knight? Was he behind the gangland murders happening across the city? Did Venus press charges against him for being a terrible lay? Not knowing was the best way to keep the reader's interest because if Seagle had added one more panel where Detective Petronas explained why he was being arrested, every reader would have made a wet fart noise with their mouth and an extended jerk-off motion with their non-dominant hand. Petronas has arrested Anton Marx because he wrote an article entitled, "The Knight: I Know Who He Is." Seems like Anton Marx might be bringing a lawsuit against the city for the most egregious case of unlawful arrest ever perpetrated against a white heterosexual male! If the noun ("male") or either of the adjectives ("white," "hetero") were different, no lawyer would touch the case. Cops have that bullshit immunity thing, remember? Unless they harass a white heterosexual male! Because white heterosexual males who run the country know laws don't apply to them so if a cop tried anything with one of them, it's going to blow up in their faces. It's why white heterosexual males, even the least powerful among them, rarely get harassed by cops (unless they have serious poverty and/or class markers that scream, "I have no power to sue your stupid violent ass!"). You ever see any video where a white heterosexual male screams at a cop who's ticketing or questioning him? If the cop has a tail, it tucks right up between his legs and instantly gets soaked from the piss pouring out of the cop's crotch. And if the white heterosexual male winds up being a judge or politician? That cop fucking quakes right out of his boots, which is lucky for him because of all the shit that instantly flowed down his pant legs and into them.

What seems to have happened is that Detective Petronas brought Anton in for questioning about a case they're currently working on. That's why last issue ended with Petronas showing his badge to Anton and saying, "I'll have to ask you to come with me." He didn't arrest him at all! It was all sleight of hand by Steven T. Seagle to let the reader assume an arrest was being made! And that the arrest was for sexual assault because you know Anton's done a few of them, right? He practically eye-fucks his lesbian coworker on the daily which has to be, at the very least, a misdemeanor in San Francisco, right?

While Venus's rivals for her sexual attentions cockfight (metaphorically) in a police station, she's out chasing down eyewitness accounts of the knight.

I saw Neil Gaiman give a reading at the Palace of Fine Arts many years ago. He did not try to fuck me.

For a city with such a bustling night life, it's strange that only unhoused men and Venus have laid eyes on the knight. I have a feeing he's being seen by far more people than are admitting to it because they're also not admitting to seeing the naked guys roller skating down Castro with their dicks tied together or the little lady herding goats through heavy traffic by the 101 onramp or three-headed dwarf that escaped the backroom of the Ripley's Believe-it-not Museum. There's some weird shit going down in that town; a guy in full armor on a horse ain't so strange. Everybody who's seen him so far has probably shrugged and thought, "This that time of the year those rich assholes go fuck that owl up in the Grove?"

Venus looks like she was modelled after Johnette Napolitano.

The man Venus interviews is one of the houseless guys Anton disrespected on his show a couple of issues ago. He tells Venus about the second time he saw the night.

This story has a lot of justice applied via butthole.


The knight is like Columbo but instead of asking one last question, he always jams his lance up the suspect's butthole one more time.

Remember, this isn't necessarily what happened! The guy telling Venus this account might just like to sauce up his stories with nonconsensual anal penetration.

The houseless guy overheard the guy being skewered by the knight say that The Pope ordered a couple of hits on kids from the New Jerusalem School. Man. A ghost knight riding about the city seeking justice. A criminal overlord trying to scare people away from a piece of real estate he wants to buy. A woman with an ass that doesn't quit and great boobs trying to solve the mystery. This is one of them Scooby Doo cartoons, isn't it?

Yes, the woman with the ass that doesn't quit and the great boobs from the Scooby cartoon is Velma. Daphne can go suck one of Shaggy's heroes.

This is an advert for a video game. I do not understand it.

Does research show that if somebody jerks off to an advertisement, the product somehow burns itself into their mind and they're more likely to buy it? If that works, don't you at least need to know what the fucking product is? Is this for a videogame where you fuck people in the spa at a party? Is the mascot of that website a little sperm guy?

Sorry I got distracted by that advertisement. The image you were probably waiting for was the one from the end of the guy's story about the knight.

Remember how earlier I couldn't tell if a cross was painted out of shit and blood? Question answered.

If you were wondering which pages were inked by Mark Buckingham, they were the four pages with the knight shoving his lance up the guy's asshole.

We learn a little bit about Anton's set up at the coffee shop. He writes his columns there. The people who hang out with him claim they're his friends. He claims they hang out there because they want to be his friends. And since Anton Marx is never wrong, I guess they're a bunch of hangers on. Except none of them seem to like him particularly. That would indicate they're his friends then!

A character I haven't mentioned because it didn't seem too pressing the few times he's shown up is Father Trinidad. He's the priest at a local gay friendly church with a drag choir who's been roped into The Pope's criminal business dealings through threat of violence and large sums of cash (not a threat; actual sums!). He's become The Pope's spiritual advisor because The Pope still wants to believe he's absolved for his sins for some reason. I guess because the good guy would be concerned with that kind of thing? And if he's concerned with his immortal soul, he must be good! When he asks for pre-forgiveness for the people he's going to have murdered, that means he's pre-remorseful and pre-repenting! Father Trinidad helps him with those things.

Later that night, Venus goes to investigate the piece of land where the casino is going to be built (which is right next to the New Jerusalem school). She climbs through a hole in the chain link fence and then the issue ends on a panel that made absolutely sure that I was going to buy the next issue.

Even if it's just in a comic book, I've never seen a horse do oral!

The Crusades #3 Rating: B+. Fairly certain the only comic book I'd read by Steven T. Seagle prior to this was House of Secrets. It's almost certainly why I purchased this book, House of Secrets being one of my all-time top comic books. This series I don't remember quite as well. It could be because of the time of my life I was reading House of Secrets and how it seemed to speak directly to things I was going through. I identified with Rain far more than Venus. This series has all the same hallmarks of House of Secrets: a woman at a crossroads in her life feeling lost but able to set some personal things aside as she investigates some paranormal mystery. Plus it revolves around the characters and their motivations more than the mystery of the knight. Just as Rain's story was more about her relationships than whatever the fuck was going on in the house and her job to witness the trials. I feel kind of bad that I forgot so much of this series when it's really pulling me in. I blame my having been older (30!) at the time of reading this and beginning to have trouble fully remembering the stories from month to month. It's one of the main reasons I quit reading comic books the first time! And it's the reason for this blog! So that I could refresh my memory of every issue of The New 52 a month after having read the last part! But now comic books just cost too much so I'm re-reading all of my old books instead of reading new books at like $5.00 a pop. Yeesh!