YOUR INTERESTING SUPERHERO THEORY NOTE OF THE DAY: Dirk Deppey a few days ago:

The problem isn't so much that superhero comics are "too adult" as that they're frequently too eager to be taken seriously as something deeper than they really are. The success of Watchmen (and, to a lesser extent, The Dark Knight Returns) rested on the incongruity of the core concept, and only ever really worked as a counterpoint to the other works on the shelves. Watchmen pointed out the perils of introducing too much Real World into escapist fantasy pretty clearly, and yet despite this it somehow became the benchmark for what superhero comics should strive to become. I'm guessing it was the attention from the press that did it; soon it seemed like everyone wanted to be known for writing Watchmen. The result was and is an extended period of High Decadence, where complex and distracting themes are stuffed into a genre originally created to provide a nice escape from reality. Such works are fine for longtime fans of the form, who've exhausted the basic tropes yet still hold them in fond regard -- for people first approaching superhero comics in search of escapist fun, however, works that strive too hard to be something else just don't do the trick.

Bolding added what I found most interesting. I just finally read the much-maligned Dark Knight Strikes Again, and need to do some kind of review.