Last week, I picked my favorite page from Justice League America #83, so you might expect that this week I'd show a page from Justice League America #84. But I couldn't find one. I just don't think any of the pages in that issue are particularly great.

So let's skip ahead to the much better page 14 of Justice League America #85.

Hmm. "The Booster Gold Way." Someone should trademark that.

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If you've ever bumped into the Boosterrific.com 404 page, you already know that my favorite page from Justice League America #83 is this one:

One of the most misunderstood aspects of Booster Gold's personality is just how much of his own self worth is based on being a superhero. That kid is driven.

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I'm not going to try to convince you that DC's 1993 "Bloodlines" event is great. I'm not even going to try to convince you that it's worth reading. But even the bad events have their fun moments, like this one from Bloodbath #1:

There's no wrong time to quote Star Wars. Though, next time, Booster, you might want to quote someone who doesn't fail at his job.

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When last we left our hero, he had just debuted his replacement for the power suit Doomsday destroyed (in Superman #74), and in Justice League America #81 we learn that his 20th-century power armor is not yet up to the task, especially when its servos burn out under enemy fire leaving him feeling as powerful as a sardine in a can.

The issue's finished art is generally too loose for my taste (it never feels like the penciller, inker, and colorist are working as a team), but this page panel layout by penciller Kevin West really works for me. The action starts with the foregrounded Wonder Woman, but led by the departure of Guy Gardner, the central action in each panel slowly moves away from the reader and, importantly, away from Booster Gold, emphasizing his current irrelevance. Well done.

And while I'm praising creatives, I should definitely mention the writing. I'm on record as a fan of Dan Vado's Justice League run as I often enjoy his strong and sympathetic characterizations. Although I find this issue to be imperfectly paced, I'm very impressed that its central dilemmas between heroes all trying to "Do the Right Thing" in a tense political situation feels even more topical now than when it was published three decades ago, making it very re-readable. Kudos.

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I don't know which page I would have picked as a favorite from Justice League America Annual #7 when I first read it in 1993.

I like the Hitchcockian horror-influenced sequences of Booster Gold's talking head running through pages 5, 6, 7, and 9, but none of those pages quite come together as a whole for me. Gene D'Angelo's garish colors combine with Greg LaRocque's loose layouts to create an almost hallucinogenic environment which bothers me more the longer I look at them.

So instead I think I'll choose page 16, where a powerless, line-swinging Fire saves the JLA's resident idiot, Guy Gardner, on the world's largest jungle gym:

I cannot deny it: I enjoy cheesecake "Good Girl" images of Fire. But I also think this example of lurid, sexually suggestive posing works particularly well, thematically, in this dark horror story in which the alien parasites use lust to manipulate their prey, like a page from Dracula, and the protagonist's runaway id creates monsters, like scenes from Forbidden Planet. Cheesecake images here can inspire similar feelings in the viewer, deepening a connection with the story.

(Unfortunately, this particular issue meanders too much to really take advantage of such atmosphere. Too many subplots, too many pages to fill, too many inkers. But still. It's nice to know that Greg LaRocque was trying.)

Horror and sex, working together since man first discovered Fire.

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