SLW (Steff) posted on Mar. 14, 2025 at 3:51 PM
My favorite is probably where they're fighting on the floor for a few reasons (and only like 3% of them puerile and maybe 10% of them waggling my eyebrows):

1.) Right before they get into a fight, Booster's thinking about how he can cheer his best friend up.

2.) Ted's not even in costume, Booster's in a power suit that lets him lift tons, has a flight ring AND a force field, yet he's back to the ground; the only realistic way Ted gets to have the upper hand in that fight the way he did is because Booster intentionally let him.

2a.) Because while I am the biggest stan of a Badass!Competent!Ted there is, I don't think he coulda gotten there on his own steam THAT FAST without Booster throwing the fight intentionally. But given Booster's been willing enough to throw a competition before for someone he loves, it's perfectly in line with his character to needle Ted into taking a shot at him and then letting Ted win, all in order to get Ted out of his funk.

3.) I love them so damn much.

Luthier posted on Feb. 14, 2025 at 4:37 PM
Man I gotta find where Booster shops from. A jacket that can change colors every few panels? Sign me up!

 Boosterrific [Official Comment] posted on Feb. 14, 2025 at 7:36 PM
The Amazing Technicolor Members Only Jacket!

SLW (Steff) posted on Feb. 14, 2025 at 11:35 PM
Ted, with the better part of two six-packs worth of dead soldiers. Booster, nursing what looks to possibly be a single draft. And no doubts whatsoever which one of them the light-weight (in the alcohol department, excuse me) is.

Jade posted on Feb. 15, 2025 at 10:45 PM
Booster had enough good looks for the both of them. Love this issue! Though I'm not sure they needed tongue lamination when they were already just eating those "soydogs"...

Rob snow posted on Jan. 31, 2025 at 11:05 AM
Aaaack!

Tiffany posted on Jan. 31, 2025 at 1:11 PM
Double standards and all that.

Morgenstern posted on Jan. 31, 2025 at 2:45 PM
Double standards certainly play a role too, but my assumption here was, that with Fire her "flaminess" was a sign of "powering up" or "powering down". Meaning that if she gets knocked around or down and her flames grow weaker, it is to show that she is getting weaker, while adding more flames shows the reverse. Like in the page shown here. While she is attacking, she is fully covered in flames, but those vanish as soon as she gets hit.

 Boosterrific [Official Comment] posted on Jan. 31, 2025 at 4:07 PM
@M Interestingly, you are essentially equating nudity with vulnerability, which also has potentially sexist implications considering that only the female form is allowed to be so vulnerable in the issue. (To be fair to the creatives here, I agree this is probably a case of reflected widespread gender norms, the aforementioned "double standard," as opposed to any intentional attack on "the fairer sex," and I'm just being hypersensitive because we're conditioned not to notice it.)

Morgenstern posted on Jan. 31, 2025 at 5:51 PM
Is Jonny storm (?), the fire guy from the fantastic four handelt differently? (Seriously asking. I don't think I ever read a FF4 comic or seen one of the movie), he is just the closest male hero who would offer a fitting comparison power wise I could think of.

 Boosterrific [Official Comment] posted on Jan. 31, 2025 at 8:09 PM
I don't want to get to far away from the artistic choices that were made on this particular comic book page, where one nude guy gets his buns hidden while the girl doesn't. Different creatives handle these situations differently, and I really hate to generalize. (I agree that Despero's butt would be distracting, but I suggest that maybe Fire could also have been handled a little more decorously.)

That said, the Golden Age Human Torch was drawn with little lines suggesting rippling flames to give its body form. When that character design was updated into the Fantastic Four's Human Torch, Jack Kirby chose to add lines for belt and gloves to make it obvious that he was wearing a FF costume (of unstable molecules!) under his flames. Succeeding artists have waffled between the two styles, but generally speaking, when any Human Torch is forcibly depowered, they tend to lose all their flames and revert to their costumed forms (with butt cracks fully hidden by briefs).

When discussing the sexualization of Fire, we should definitely remember that sex appeal was injected into the character's DNA after CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS when she was recreated as essentially a Brazilian version of a Bond Girl (fashion model turned spy turned super hero). When Fire's "flame on" persona first appeared in JLA #29, as drawn by Ty Templeton, she was clearly wearing a costume under her flames (similar to Kirby's Human Torch but with a shadowed form instead of rippling lines); that was changed in the following issue which was drawn by Bill Willingham, who first made a name for himself in the 80s drawing sexy women (ELEMENTALS, etc), and continued by Adam Hughes (who was mentored by Willingham). Hughes' interpretation of Fire's powers, in particular, is the version that has stuck.

SLW (Steff) posted on Jan. 31, 2025 at 8:49 PM
I can get into whole treatises on the male gaze and the demographics of comic artists and buyers in the 80s and 90s, but I'll refrain and just say: The thing I like about Adam Hughes is he wasn't afraid to draw the men as beautiful, too. LOL! His version of Booster's definitely one of the prettiest and that Leyendecker-style pose in JLA #35 where he's sitting on the half-wall is one of my all-time favorites. In fact, I wouldn't actually be surprised if that pose was Leyendecker-inspired because I know exactly which painting it would be inspired by. (And if anyone knew how to draw beautiful men, it was J.C. Leyendecker.)

Delightfully, Dan Jurgens also tended to lean into Booster being more beautiful than ruggedly handsome, at least in Vol. 1, which I always appreciated. It's a nice inversion of the various conventions even in the 80s, of portraying women as high-maintenance beauties where men were more shown as the ideal masculine power-fantasy. In both art and writing, Dan showed his creation as being beautiful (and posing as such, and hell, making money as such!) but completely unpretentious and unselfconscious about it, and when you compare it to everything else being written and put out, it was honestly pretty unique. In fact, I'd say it's still rare to find in any media: An undeniably male character who regularly gets called pretty and doesn't take it as some sort of indictment on his masculinity, scrambling around in that particularly toxic cesspool of unkind expectations. I love that.

Tiche posted on Feb. 2, 2025 at 11:05 PM
Mm. Booster is completely confident in his masculinity, but simultaneously completely unashamedly glammed up to the nines. He doesn't wear eyeliner because it doesn't suit him, not because of some chauvinistic stigma. All too often, in both fiction and reality, men who spend hours obsessing over their own image get confrontational and violently defensive when it's brought up. Booster is extremely refreshing in that respect.

SLW (Steff) posted on Feb. 2, 2025 at 11:11 PM
@Tiche - Oh, I dunno, I'd bet he'd rock eyeliner. Not black, though. Maybe blue, though. XD

Tiche posted on Feb. 3, 2025 at 6:30 AM
Oh, blue would definitely work. And gold would fit perfectly.
(You can tell that I don't wear makeup by the fact that I forgot that anything other than black is an option.)

SLW (Steff) posted on Feb. 3, 2025 at 9:34 AM
@Tiche - Oh gosh, I think I've worn makeup maybe ten times in my entire life myself. But you're right, gold would also look good on him! And I sincerely wouldn't put it past the man, given his long-hair phase, to glam it up if the incentive was good. 🤣

SLW posted on Jan. 12, 2025 at 2:05 PM
Whatta hero! Word!