Friday, December 13, 2024

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!

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