Won't somebody think of the superheroes?
There's a post on scans_daily of Superman meeting Captain Marvel. It ends with Clark finding homeless Billy(Marvel's alter ego), and opening his shirt.[1],[2],[3],[4].

lovecrafty:

I actually think I find that last two pages disturbing. The older man sitting on a bed in a slum with some homeless boy, and he's clearly undone his shirt? That's just creepy and gross, and not the sort of subtext I want to see in a comic book.

I mean, okay, obviously it's not what it looks like - but how could the artist, writer, editor and others involved not see what it looks like. This isn't the 1950s, were people were genuinely naive enough to not see the subtext of images like these.

I don't have any problem with writers and artist inserting images that could be intrepetted in ways that defy canon -- the sort of subcontextual images that are always popping up here that imply certain characters are homosexual, or submissives, or are references to hentai and other forms of quasi-pornography.

I'm a grown up, I'm open-minded and liberal, and it doesn't bother me one bit if Spider-Man and Venom's relationship occasionally seems to make references to gay rough trade (something I had never realized utnil joining this forum. Thanks?). Also, the aggressor in that subcontextual relationship is...Venom, the villian, the deranged psychopathic killing monster.

But when artists and writers who ought to be aware of the power of their stories and images to convey subtexts create subcontexts in which heroic characters are portrayed as, for example, child molestors, that's not really that funny. That's just disquieting. Especially when you consider that there is a real sex slavery trade in which real children, always from impoverished segments of society, are sold to middle class white men for sex in rooms just like that.

I'm sure someone will flame me in response. [dons fireproof suit]

Oh, you betcha.