The ink on the Vought contract was barely dry before Thomas now fully, publicly The Crusader was swept into the grinding gears of the regional publicity machine. His life transformed from the predictable, isolated rhythm of the farm to a blur of asphalt and adoration. He was booked solid on the Midwest Evangelical Circuit: three church revivals one week, a headline rescue stunt in Oklahoma the next, followed by a meet-and-greet at a tractor pull rally.
He lived out of cheap, sterile airport motels, the heavy, crimson armor draped over a plastic chair, smelling perpetually of sweat and road dust. The physical exhaustion was immense, but the spiritual fatigue was crippling. Vought had purchased not his power, but his persona, and they utilized it ruthlessly, deploying him like a moralizing battering ram against the heartland, demanding eighty-hour work weeks and zero spiritual deviation.
His handler, Denton, ensured Crusader's appearances were a finely tuned act of manufactured sincerity. Denton, a man whose morality was purely transactional, saw Crusader as a predictable algorithm: Piety + Strength = Profit.
Denton's entire vocabulary consisted of marketing terms like "vertical integration" and "demographic appeal," never once mentioning faith or salvation, which only solidified Thomas's belief that he was surrounded by heathens.
Crusader would arrive in his dull, heavy armor, the scarred shield gleaming under the stadium lights, only to spend an hour signing merchandise not flashy posters, but cheap plastic Bibles and bumper stickers that read: I Have Been Shielded or Trust in the Righteous Hand. The dichotomy was sickening. Thomas felt his righteous message being diluted by every dollar exchanged. His father's fear of idolatry had become a physical reality, materialized in a line of people waiting to pay Vought for a piece of his 'sanctity.'
This wasn't ministry; it was a spiritual product placement. Denton once suggested signing a large ceramic cross, and Thomas had to use every ounce of his discipline to simply refuse, rather than smashing the tacky idol right there.
The central conflict of these years was the constant collision between the Altar (the devout, pure environment he represented) and the Asphalt (the profane, commercial world he traversed). The schedule was a calculated whiplash. One moment, he would be standing on a makeshift pulpit in a corrugated steel chapel, delivering a fervent, three-minute speech designed to appeal to the elderly demographic "We must stand against the idols of the modern age!" and the next, he would be crammed into a rented sedan, Denton anxiously reminding him to endorse a local politician known for his deep corruption but reliable campaign donations to Vought-backed causes.
The air in the car would be thick with the smell of cheap hairspray and Denton's cynical calculations about quarterly bonuses.
"Just smile, Crusader," Denton would hiss, adjusting Thomas's heavy gauntlet before a rally. "Nod when Mayor Thorne talks about 'family values.' He owns the regional concrete company, and he needs you on that platform. He's a crucial asset for us. We need that local buy-in. It's all about the optics of endorsement. They see you nodding, they vote for the righteous man." Denton didn't care that Mayor Thorne was rumored to be involved in skimming pension funds; he only cared that Thorne's appearance fee helped Vought's bottom line.
Thomas learned to smile and nod, a piece of performance art fueled by the conviction that the compromise was temporary, a necessary evil to keep his family secure and to gather intelligence on the true enemy.
The deception was exhausting, causing a constant low-grade fever of shame and spiritual isolation. He began to pray silently during these endorsements, reciting the Psalms of Judgment to remind himself that God saw the deception, and that the vengeance would eventually be His. But the compromise was corrosively effective.
He became a celebrity, a face recognizable in every state between Ohio and Kansas. His moralizing tone, his unwavering stance, and his deliberately medieval aesthetic made him a mid-tier celebrity with high moral authority the perfect moral foil for Vought's coastal glamour.
He was a perfect fit for a public hungry for old-school heroism untainted by the messy morality of the coasts, a rock for a generation feeling culturally adrift. His popularity proved that there was a massive, untapped market for conservative zealotry.
This is where Vought explicitly positioned him in relation to the company's past and its most enduring, if damaged, asset. Though Soldier Boy was the gold standard for patriotic Supes of a previous generation, his image was already becoming complex and to Vought's analysts messy, especially after his service history made him volatile and unpredictable.
Soldier Boy was a relic of a dirtier, more volatile past, prone to public drunken brawls, sexual assault allegations, and disastrous off-script comments; he was a liability Vought was actively trying to phase out. Crusader was marketed as "The Cleaner Knight," the next evolution of the patriotic hero devout, firm, emotionally contained, always on script, and critically, sober and celibate.
Vought used Crusader as a deliberate contrast, a new, safer version of moral certainty, effectively attempting to rewrite their own history in real-time by presenting Thomas as the moral successor. Denton would explicitly instruct interviewers: "Ask him how he's different from the old guard. Highlight the spiritual discipline. Note that he doesn't drink or swear."
The subtext was clear: Soldier Boy was a brawler; Crusader was a theologian with muscles, a manufactured messiah for a more morally anxious era.
Despite the handlers and the PR spin, Crusader's natural strength and invulnerability made him a genuine asset in the field. His rescue stunts were headline news because they were genuinely spectacular and often far beyond the capabilities of other regional Supes.
He stopped a collapse in a Pennsylvania coal mine by bracing a failing pillar for seven hours, the entire time reciting the 23rd Psalm, focusing the words until the warmth of his invulnerability was a solid, physical shell. He lifted a downed power line in a hurricane with seemingly effortless grace, and walked through a factory fire to save trapped workers, his skin barely warm beneath the crimson leather.
He performed these rescues not for the cameras, but for the brief, pure flash of spiritual stillness they provided the one moment he could use his gift without Denton trying to sell an accompanying insurance plan. In those rare moments of selfless service, the shame would lift, and he would remember the purity of his purpose, if only for a few blessed minutes.
However, the constant praise, the lines of adoring fans who saw him not as a man but as an answer to their prayers, and the profound deference shown by local officials chipped away at the foundation of humility his father had built.
He started to recognize the magnetic pull of the crowd, the rush of seeing his face on a billboard a larger-than-life icon towering over the mundane lives of others and the intoxicating power of commanding respect simply by existing. He wasn't just a vessel anymore; he was Thomas, The Crusader, the man who commanded attention.
This growing pride the very sin his father warned him against, the dangerous lure of idolatry clashed violently with the bitter shame of his daily life. He was a knight, yet he was barred from the kingdom, forced to live in the moral gutter of corporate America, endorsing corrupt politicians and signing cheap plastic toys.
Vought kept him in the regional circuit for a deliberate, calculated reason. He was marketable to conservative communities but lacked the X-factor youth or blockbuster charisma needed for the global stage.
He was deemed "too earnest" and "too angry" for the Seven, who required a level of performative frivolity that Thomas was incapable of faking. His zealous focus on scripture was a niche product, not a global phenomenon like the emerging Deep or Queen Maeve, both being groomed for international success.
He remained just outside the inner circle, close enough to see the hypocrisy the drug use, the rampant infidelity, the corporate indifference to collateral damage but too far to stop it. This deliberate oversight by Vought that Crusader was merely a useful regional tool, a "bread and butter" asset became the final, bitter ingredient in his radicalization. He wasn't just betrayed by Vought; he was underestimated, and that slight wounded his massive ego more than any public slander could have.
By the end of the 1970s, Crusader was celebrated by politicians and beloved by the conservative public. He was Vought's reliable soldier, proud, moralizing on TV, a hero who never missed a prayer breakfast.
But beneath the matte crimson armor, he was a captive, a simmering cauldron of shame and isolation, recognizing that the only thing Vought hated more than actual morality was a hero they couldn't fully control.
The fractures in his faith were becoming spiderweb cracks, ready to shatter at the first true shock. His entry into the next decade would force him to confront the dark reality of what Vought truly expected from their soldiersand what he would be forced to sacrifice to prove them wrong.