http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/01/superhero_comics_series_astro_city_by_kurt_busiek_reviewed.html

Say you’re a grown-up who likes superhero comics but hasn’t kept up with them. Or else you want to like them or used to like them. Maybe you liked The Avengers or Batman Begins. Maybe you liked comics when you were 10, or 15, and now that you’re 29, or 69, or 15, you seek virtues you found in other art forms: reflective, slowly changing protagonists, meticulous world-building, or political thought. Maybe you’ve sought those virtues in current Marvel and DC titles; maybe, at times, you found them, only to give up after facing tangle of back stories, retcons, reboots, and crossover events. Or maybe you read the supposed apex of literary superhero stories, Watchmen, and threw up your hands: Its characters—delusional, cruel, or desperately ineffective— felt more like attempts to kill off a genre than like ways to give it new life.