I think the shared-monopoly of DC and Marvel, coupled with the Direct Market self-suicide, holds a lot of the blame for the state of today's comics.  If we had multiple, viable companies producing all genres and distributed where all age-ranges would see them, then I think a lot of people who are currently trying to shoe-horn their stories into the super-hero genre wouldn't be present.

As it is now, I think the industry has far too many people who would rather be writing anything but super-hero stories doing it because its the only way to write comics and still bring in a respectable income.  I'm not trying to excuse that kind of opportunism-over-integrity, mind you.  Its still indefensible to spoil one of the best, if not the best, forms of reading for young boys-- all for a guaranteed paycheck and a shot at maybe winding up in Hollywood.

I wonder who would be writing professionally if they weren't writing super-hero stories?

I wonder who would be writing professionally if they weren't writing super-hero stories?

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To my mind, Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Ed Brubaker, and I'm sure others that aren't leaping to mind, are all people who would have varying degrees of success writing in a healthy comics market or in other medias.  I think they are each writers who have talent, but who don't belong anywhere near the super-hero genre: because none of them are willing to let the genre be the genre.  Instead we get pshycho-babble meta-textualizing, action movie screenplays, psychopathic protagonists, and hard-broiled detective stories...ALL of them cloaked in teh imagery of super-heroes.  I can buy into all those things, just not the plugging it into a genre that is for kids.  Let the kids read about noble, non-ironic heroes.  When they get older, let them read about anti-heroes.

Edit to add:  I just read THE KILLER INSIDE ME after seeing a trailer for the movie.  Loved it.  The first person protagonist is a psychopath.  Great, great little book.  Today, who here would be SHOCKED, SHOCKED I SAY, to find a super-hero comicbook on the same premise?

It made me just shake my head in bewilderment. If that's what they're looking for, why not go read some prose like Asimov? Move on and let the kids be kids.

The "Mature" label on comics today is directed at readers who desperately want to BE mature, but have no idea what maturity is all about. And, if the contents didn't smack of pandering, I would conclude the same about the creative talent producing them.