But I'm A Cat Person

Josh, constantly: “Hey, don’t go spreading rumors or making a big thing about this, okay”

Everyone else, constantly: “omg did you HEAR about the new AWESOME THING the KING OF THE WORLD just did??”

I mentioned what a big difference it made to be able to work with Photoshop’s full reservoir of brushes. This page also shows off the better sound effects I could make, with fonts (okay, only took advantage of one font here, but still) and vector text-transformation tools. Not sure I ever went back to hand-drawing individual letters, after this.

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The Donkey’s identity still had a lot of people guessing until this page, but here’s where we dump all the clues you need.

For one thing, he’s doing the iconic Alexander Anderson pose, from Hellsing‘s Iscariot Organization.

“Iscariot” has a disputed etymology, but it might be Latin “Sicarius” = English “dagger-wielder” (“sicae” is a type of dagger). A “seax” is also a type of dagger, and the root of the name Saxon.

Judah is just straightforwardly named after the country of Judea. Another variant would be Judas.

(Bonus: that last panel foreshadows a real, otherwise-unnamed, figure in the Gospel of John.)

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“Anointed One” is the literal meaning of “messiah”, and yes, there were a lot of them running around in this era. No wonder the people in Josh’s hometown found it hard to take him seriously. (Mark 6)

Fisham = Bethsaida (“house of fishing”). Khirbet Qana = Cana. Watchton = Nazareth (“watch-place”).

So, all the low-key religious subtext in the devotion we’ve seen Beings express toward their Masters? The inspiration goes the other way. Saxon’s expressions of devotion toward his Master were immortalized as the Christian template for how mere mortals should talk to their Creator.

A comment on the original, trying to grab all the references:

“As long as the people have ears, why not let them listen?”
“Whoever has ears, let them hear” Matthew 11:15

“Visit your home town they said. It’ll be fun they said.”
“(Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.)” John 4:44

“Saxon: And as far as I am concerned, he is the Way, the Truth, and the Light!”
This one’s a bit tricky. The closest I found for position and intent was:
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Matthew 16:16
But post-resurrection there’s: “Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6

Wait, is Saxon PETER?

“Saxon, you’re not helping.”
“Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.” Mathew 16:20

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Speaking of Bill & Ted references: that top right panel is good a translation of the Greatest Commandment as you’ll get. (It‘s recorded as the second-greatest in Matthew 22:35-40, but in the BICP universe, that was a misprint.)

Harp Lake = the Sea of Galilee.

Saxon’s reference to “standing orders” not to donkey-kick any humans seems to suggest that Josh had to give the order verbally, instead of having it built directly into the Contract. But in the present-day storyline, there’s no indication the Donkey has the same freedom that the Wolf does. Maybe Josh went back in and finessed the code later.

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