---

CommentatorsJessicaSeanAron Ra Introduction ⇑ ⇓

Sean

Today folks, we have a very special treat for you. Usually it's just the two of us, with our crack internet researching ability and razor sharp wit. But today, we brought in an expert to help us tear into the further adventures of everyone's favorite completely heterosexual duo; Please give a big round of applause for the one and only Aron Ra!

 

Page 1 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	This first panel thanks the convicted fraud and charlatan "Dr" Kent Hovind for the 'authenticity' presented in this story.  Since there is no authenticity to Mr. Hovind, then if you have to thank him for doing your research, you'd better do your own homework.
	Jessica	They keep switching back and forth between "caveman speak" with a complete lack of helping verbs and full usage of the King's English. Pick a dialect and stick to it guys.
	Sean	The only thing authentic about Kent Hovind is his bust. Seriously, he couldn't even stay out of trouble while in jail.

 

Page 2 ⇑ ⇓

	Sean	Actually, Prehistoric humans were much less prone to acts of war between one another. See, in a Hunter-Gatherer society, you don't have a large enough population to support such a thing, as it required enormous amounts of cooperation to take down the big game. Especially when all you have are stone weapons.
	Aron	Why is everyone wearing the same one-shoulder pelt?  They're in a jungle; they shouldn't be wearing fur.
	Jessica	You can see the subtle "Ungawa" in the lower left panel. Great call back to Tarzan there.

 

Page 3 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	It doesn't matter that we don't have any food. We haven't invented gods yet, so we can say we don't have any morals either.  Let's just eat the kids.
	Jessica	Even in prehistoric times there were abusive husbands. Those roots run deep.
	Sean	Only one female is gathering roots? You know, back in those days women enjoyed a little more societal value, as it was their job to do the "Gatherer" half. Yeah, many would stay behind to take care of the children, but I only see one kid in this entire scene.

 

Page 4 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	Woolly mammoths in a tropical rain forest?  Thank you Kent Hovind for your 'authenticity'.
	Jessica	I've never had occasion to cry out "Ahh... I tripped!" when falling over my own feet. Perhaps the artist feels the need to elaborate since his drawing style makes it seem like she's having an epileptic fit rather than just falling over.
	Sean	Sure lady, a hand thrown rock is totally enough to kill a charging mammoth.

 

Page 5 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	I've seen enough Hentai to know where this is going.
	Jessica	"Next on Urotsukidōji, Legend of Overfiend!"
	Sean	Come on guys, this is a Fred Carter piece, if anyone's gonna be ravished by a large hairy beast, it's gonna be a stand-in for the artist.

 

Page 6 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	Yay Borg!  Resistance is futile.
	Jessica	Yes. Between the Borg and Tama (Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra!) the producers of Star Trek should sue Jack's ass into the 24th century.
	Sean	You know, all things considered this is a pretty awesome scene. We got a guy charging headfirst into an angry mammoth while a volcano erupts in the background.
	Jessica	And now the volcano is erupting to boot. Its a pretty bad day to be a caveman/woman.

 

Page 7 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	The world's first cliff-hanger.
	Sean	The cliff was unstable enough to collapse under the weight of a human, but somehow manages to support a woolly mammoth.
	Jessica	I like how matter of fact the old guy is. "Borg die."

 

Page 8 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	Oh, it's a movie.  No wonder they got everything wrong.
	Jessica	Dig the hat on the lady in the foreground. Maybe she's visiting over from the Three Musketeers set. That director is a walking, mincing, Jewish stereotype. Dear god.
	Sean	Really? Because he seems more like a gay stereotype to me. What with the effeminate pose and the hot pink shirt. His name is Dexter? Does this mean the comic's going to end with him going all serial killer on Chocolate and Vanilla bear?

 

Page 9 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	So when the 6 million-dollar man discovers the Geico caveman, it turns out to be Roger Daltry from the Who.
	Jessica	I highly doubt they would use a full rubber mask for those makeup effects. Typically some facial appliances would suffice. Also, those things usually take, like, five hours to apply. Just ripping it off like that would cost hours of time and thousands of dollars. Thanks, guy.
	Sean	I notice that Dr. Lind is handing Jim something, even though he walked onto the set with him, he still thinks he's the hired help. Yeah.... still hard to believe this was drawn by a black man- wait, I just realized that Jim has the same last name as Fred. This may explain a lot.

 

Page 10 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	Do they ever explain why this story takes place in the '70s?
	Jessica	Chick STILL thinks it's the '70s.
	Sean	Probably to stay in continuity with the other Crusader comics. Though it's sorely lacking in Alberto showing up to explain how the Jesuits planted transitional fossils in order to cement their one world Government.

 

Page 11 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	It depends on whether he's a physical or cultural anthropologist.  Cultural anthropologists don't always know about evolution.
	Jessica	Too bad we can't say that about Professor Hovind, or whatever title he's pretending to have earned now.
	Sean	How much you wanna bet Dr. Lind was Hovind's roommate at Patriot University?

 

Page 12 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	After you tell us how evolution is a hoax, maybe you can explain the pediatric conspiracy to conceal the truth of stork theory.
	Sean	Oh sure, because Evolution specifically details the non-existence of the Abrahamic God. There can't possibly be a school of thought where some sort of deity creates the laws of reality and just lets it operate like some sort of "Clockmaker".

 

Page 13 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	The Creation Research Society was refuted en mass by one of their own authors, petro-geologist, Dr Glenn Morton.  He wrote an article on the cognitive bias required to believe in creationism.  He called it 'Morton's Demon'.
	Sean	600 members? Not bad, but here's a list of (as of now) almost 1500 Scientists who accept evolution as a valid theory, all limited to the name "Steve".  You wanna play the numbers game, we got you beat Jackie.
	Aron	Oh of course, scientists are unable to either produce or refute facts because they're afraid of losing their jobs, which have no reason to exist if evolution isn't evidently true.  Maybe these scientists are afraid their true identities will be exposed, as reptilian invaders of the Illuminati who were behind Roswell, the Bermuda Triangle, and Windows 8.
	Jessica	What is that thing in the middle panel? Are we still doing a caveman picture or is this sci-fi now or what?

 

Page 14 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	If praying doesn't work, you could write a letter to Santa.
	Sean	Why would it matter if Dexter was present? He's a Director, not a scientist. Yeah, that's an unqualified profession to voice a serious opinion on the subject, but so's interior decorating.
	Jessica	"What a bummer." Tommy speaks for the audience.

 

Page 15 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	Ask to be teleported there.  According to Matthew 7:7, 21:22 and Mark 11:24, if you're a believer, everything you ask for will be granted, but no one ever asks for something verifiable like that.
	Sean	Or, you know, he's the director of a TV show, and is frequently called away to discuss script revisions and review footage. I doubt they needed to pray, they could have just waited five minutes.
	Aron	Why is it always about what you're required to believe rather than what is evidently true? Oh yeah, because of Kent Hovind.
	Jessica	Mr. Findlayson kind of puts off a Rich Uncle Pennybags sort of vibe. I wonder if that was intentional.

 

Page 16 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	We didn't even need fossils to show them man is an ape, and a monkey, primate, mammal, vertebrate animal and so on.
	Sean	Is it me, or is Jim checking out that Neanderthal's junk?
	Jessica	I can assure you, it isn't just you. And why is the Neanderthal's junk green?

 

Page 17 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	Every creationist organization there is posts a statement of faith wherein they admit they'll refuse to admit when they're wrong, and that they will automatically and thoughtlessly reject, without consideration, any and all evidence that ever arise against their position.  It's just a childish game of pretend.
	Sean	Just what is that dinosaur like thing in the bottom panel? It looks like Yoshi shat out a Skeksis!

 

Page 18 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	Mrs. Leakey's discovery? You mean Australopithecus Boisei? That... doesn't render the chart obsolete as it's not actually considered a Human ancestor, we're not even in the same Genus.
	Jessica	That caricature of Darwin isn't really cruel, just sort of goofy.

 

Page 19 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	As I showed in the 13th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism, Marvin Lubenow got a lot of stuff wrong - on purpose. Don't read books by propagandists; read the actual peer-reviewed works.  One of many misconceptions of evolution is that there was a single series of progression. In fact there are known to have been many groups of hominines living at the same time for a while.  Some lines thinned out while Homo erectus became wide-spread.
	Jessica	The TV series rides on Frank not looking like an idiot to some random douche-nozzle? I guess it really is in danger then.

 

Page 20 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	Some 40 examples of Peking Man were lost in World War II, but they were just a subset of Homo erectus.  Nebraska man was never accepted by anyone in the scientific community, and Piltdown man was a fraud perpetrated against evolution, and exposed by evolutionists, not creationists.  Creationists are just wrong about everything all the time.
	Sean	We also lost the Honjo Masamune, one of Japan's greatest national treasures. World War 2 kinda destroyed a lot of our heritage, yet I don't hear creationists questioning the existence of the aforementioned sword. Ugh, can we go just five minutes into a debate without bringing up Piltdown man?

 

Page 21 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	This comic finally got something right, but still misrepresented that fact.  Neanderthals were never believed to be ancestral to modern humans.  The so-called "missing link" was Australopithecus afarensis, discovered in 1974.
	Sean	No... Neanderthals were another species of human, cousins at best.
	Jessica	I hate to keep focusing on the art but that woman is the fug uglyist piece of work I think I've ever seen in one of Chick's comics. And that is really saying something. Fred Carter must be slipping with age.

 

Page 22 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	Australopiths (including 'Lucy') were apes, just as we are apes, but their traits in the pelvis, arms, legs, teeth, etc, were mostly half-way between humans and other apes, making them the perfect example of a transitional species, and precisely the 'missing link' that had been predicted before they were discovered.  Also they've found hundreds of Homo erectus fossils, and the Java man skull cap was never mistaken for the skull of a gibbon, which is a small ape, not a big one.  This comic gets everything wrong!
	Sean	Completely ignoring Lucy's bipedal pelvis, I have to wonder why the whole "three feet tall" feature gets  touted as evidence against evolution. Surely even in their twisted, inaccurate depiction of the theory they at least acknowledge how much it is centered around change! Doesn't it stand to reason that one of these changes would include size, or do they think the theory involves us evolving from 6 foot modern monkeys?
	Jessica	Didn't this woman have grey hair in the last panel?

 

Page 23 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	We know about anomalies when carbon-dating marine organisms, because that isotope is typically absent in the water, implying an older date.  The lava from Mt. St. Helens was deliberately subjected to a dating technique known to be inapplicable to anything less than two million years old.  It was done by a creationist who was obviously trying to get a false reading on purpose.  I don't know what his moon rock comment is referring to, but Thorium-230 is an intermediate decay product of Uranium-238, and I think some creationists have misreported that as indicating various ages.
	Sean	The moon rocks wouldn't necessarily be the same age, much like our own Earth rocks. It all depends on where these samples were found, what they were samples of, and the conditions they've been subjected to (Direct exposure to the sun's UV radiation can mess with things). While Radiometric dating can be altered through many means, it's still more reliable than the creationist method of tracing Biblical years.

 

Page 24 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	How often do you see a man assaulted by a little old lady for throwing money at her?
	Sean	Not gonna lie, this is funny. The only way it could be funnier is if a terrified holy man was running away from the scene.
	Jessica	You devils! You fiends! You animals! Chick has NO idea how human beings talk. At least throw a *!!@ in there for good measure.

 

Page 25 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	The only dinosaurs that have ever co-existed with men are birds.
	Sean	Even though they claim they have evidence off it, they don't even take the time to cite said sources. So here's a quick rundown of the most famous/memetic ones: "We found T-Rex bones with red blood cells!" A tremendous exaggeration, likely intentional. No such fossil has ever been found, or even claimed to have been found outside of creationist sources. What we did find however was a Tyrannosaurus bone with remnants of a circulatory system. "Human footprints walking alongside dinosaurs!" Aside from the many frauds, the most prominent of these are the Paluxy tracks. While at first glance they appear to be so, a quick examination of the imprints reveal a noticeably non-human gait to the "human" footprints, as well as some serious weathering which gives them their appearance. "X native tribes have recounted instances where they fought Dinosaurs!" Interesting how they latch onto cryptozoological claims of Dinosaur-like monsters, but clam up entirely should something like Sasquatch or the Fauk Monster be brought up. Probably because of the whole intelligent apes thing.
	Jessica	Here we go. Let's trot out all the tired, debunked "evidence" of man and dinosaurs coexisting. Bring on the Paluxy footprints.

 

Page 26 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	One of Kent Hovind's examples of a modern 'dinosaur' is a plesiosaur, which is not a dinosaur, and which turned out to be the carcass of a dead basking shark.  Even Ken Ham of Answers In Genesis told Kent to stop selling the plesiosaur story, because he was making creationists look stupid.  There have never been any credible claims of non-avian dinosaurs, but there have been a lot of confirmed cryptozooligical frauds.
	Jessica	When one creationist tells another to knock it off because they are giving them a bad name you know that what they are shoveling has got to stink pretty bad. So... did God make these two jokers back up into the old lady's car so that Tim and Jim could keep pounding on Frank? (Pardon the pun.)
	Sean	That's... not what the so called plesiosaur looked like. Jack Chick couldn't even bother to look up the picture himself. "Dinosaur-like creatures have been reported in several parts of the world." Putting aside the fact that dinosaur bones are fairly widespread, and that we've had sightings of various mythological beasts like the chupacabra, bigfoot or hodag... no intact carcass of a dinosaur has ever been found. That seems like something that would be fairly common if we're to assume that large enough populations of huge reptiles exist.

 

Page 27 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	It is important to note that belief in gods and souls had already failed critical analysis centuries before evolution or fossils or enlightenment of science.  If evolution were disproved tomorrow, it wouldn't help creationism, because that has already been disproved and can't be resurrected.
	Jessica	Totally unrelated but that old canard about only getting one phone call in prison is totally false.
	Sean	That's one spacious backseat in Tim's car. I imagine they need that extra room, especially if Tommy's gonna get in on this action. Also, what happened to the striped tomato he was driving in the other Crusader comics?

 

Page 28 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	The most important element of Christianity.  It doesn't matter how evil you are, all sins will be forgiven if you but believe, but if you don't believe, then it doesn't matter how good you are, because the only sin that will not be forgiven is disbelief, blaspheming the holy spirit.  So gullibility is the sole criteria for redemption.  You just gotta pretend no matter what.
	Jessica	These guys are one seedy motel room away from the sloppiest threesome you could ever possibly imagine.
	Sean	You do realize Tommy that even if evolution were to be disproven, it wouldn't mean that particular branch of evangelical Christianity (I really don't know the name of it) is the one true faith. Just saying, the odds are just as likely to favor Scientology.

 

Page 29 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	When I was a teenager, I actually lived through this scene, this movement of receiving salvation in Christ, and feeling this weird euphoria as a result.  I was with a friend who would become a Baptist minister.  I asked him, "How do I know this feeling is real, and not some self-imposed illusion?"  He said, "Just keep telling yourself it's Jesus until you believe it".  While he meant what he said sincerely and without any sarcasm, his affirmation of faith was so dishonest, he instantly dispelled by rebirth experience.  That was my last moment as a Christian.
	Sean	I thought only the unsaved laughed that way. Looks like they did pick the wrong religion after all.
	Jessica	I've heard this kind of detailed focus on salvation narratives referred to as "Spiritual Pornography" and it certainly lives up to that moniker despite how close these two sometimes veer towards actual pornography. Do Jim and Tim just have access to unlimited funds or something? Between taking the time to travel to India to save a little boy and posting bail for random schmucks Glenco International must be flush with cash.

 

Page 30 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	This claim about ocean sediment ignores variation in different areas, as well as subduction of continental plates.
	Jessica	If the earth could be proved to be only 6,000 years old it would redefine multiple fields of science. Fortunately, it's not likely to happen anytime soon. BTW, the age of the earth is estimated at 4.5 billion years , not "almost 5 billion." That's off by about 500,000,000 years. Numbers matter, guys.
	Sean	So... are we just going to ignore rising landmasses, volcanic eruptions and  mineral deposits carried by seawater? Because those are kind of a factor too. What am I saying? Of course we're going to ignore them, it negates the argument. A desert's size isn't the sole indication of its age. Deserts form due to a variety of factors, both natural and artificial. The Narib Desert for instance, is actually about 80 million years old. Though this is a moot point since the largest desert in the world is Antarctica, and its permafrost levels do support an old earth conclusion.

 

Page 31 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	This part of the comic is the most fantasy-based.  Yes, if there had been valid arguments, one should change their minds accordingly, as they are here; but in real life, all the valid arguments are on the side of evolution, and creationists should be changing their minds; but we know they're determined not to do that no matter what.  So this page of the comic is a sort of wet dream for them.
	Sean	Someone needs to take Dexter to a chiropractor, he's got a posture like Mr. Burns.

 

Page 32 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	This panel is a projection of the creationist's own faults.  Their statement of faith says they'll never acknowledge any evidence against them, and that they have to keep pushing their falsehoods no matter what.  So here they pretend that we're the ones doing that, and that they're in the right.
	Jessica	Wow... Who is this honest? I am going to serve MONEY!!! Also, kids will lose their souls because of evolution films? C'mon guys. That's just hyperbolic.
	Sean	Well this WAS drawn by Fred Carter, projecting his inner weaknesses is kind of his thing.

 

Page 33 ⇑ ⇓

	Aron	The scientific method works by presenting evidence and hypotheses that can be demonstrated measured and tested, to be sure how accurate it is.  Creationists can't do any of that because everything they believe is delusional nonsense, fairy tales made up in the minds of irrational men; none of it can withstand analysis, because it doesn't make any logical sense.  Since they can't present anything real, and therefore participate in the peer review process, all they can do is fantasize in badly-written comic books like this one.
	Sean	"The Bible says there's only one way to heaven!" so does every Holy Book of every religion.
	Jessica	Sort of presumptuous about Frank there. He could totally come around and be saved before he dies. Isn't that the loophole your religion bases itself on? By the way, here's that book he pushes at the end of every one of his tracts and comics. We may cover it one day.

 

Conclusion⇑ ⇓

Sean	This really didn't need to be a crusaders installment. We didn't get any silly occult shenanigans, large scale conspiracy theories or homoeroticism from our leads. Plus these claims have been beaten into the ground so much they've hit the earth's core. A big round of applause to our special guest for sitting through this tripe with us!
Jessica	Indeed! Thank you, Aron. It was truly an honor and a privilege.

 

Further Reading ⇑

• ⚜ Vintage Page