Grim and gritty is one note and does get one-note very fast.

I'd argue that Spidey shouldn't be grim and gritty. Some nods of the hat to the vagaries of life, certainly; reminders that being a hero comes with a price, of course. But no need for grim and gritty.

That said, the main problem with it is that the army of imitators were not as good as the inspiration. Not everyone is Frank Miller or Dave Gibbons. The imitators took the superficial stuff (gritty crime, some graphic violence) but left out the inspiration, the romance, the poetry.

Born Again is pretty gritty. Kingpin is a right nasty bastard and Daredevil and Ben Urich go through the wringer. But Thor is presented as a great, awesome god. Cap is a true super soldier. The Avengers are beings we can look up to, be awed  and inspired by. And the whole story is about redemption of our hero; no matter how low he is brought, ultimately the Kingpin cannot break him, and he ascends again.

A lot of the stuff that followed seemed to wallow in bringing the heroes down to a lower level, in denigrating them, without any need to ever elevate them again.

"Watchmen...the best mainstream comic ever produced."

Yeah, and George W served his country honorably during the Vietnam police action.

as long as the main comic audience is 30+ white males with warped perceptions of what woman are, comics will remain the same.

I don't know how colour and gender perception are responsible for the decline of fun in comics.

IMP.

Over the years, a few writers and artists have tried to swim against the tide -
- as I did with GENERATIONS, for instance. In fact, when I did BATMAN &
CAPTAIN AMERICA, which basically spawned G1 when Marvel and DC decided
not to play nice any more, I said I hoped my book would be popular enough
to create a new "trend" in comics -- FUN!

Perhaps it did, or helped. Writers like Kurt Busiek, Mark Waid and Alan Moore (and yes, he did help to start the grimness) have tried to keep fun alive, or bring it back.

IMP.

Ok, two words in this thread have summed up my feelings about both today's mainstream superhero comics (from the big two), and comics that I currently read (both new and old):

glum (describing the former)

FUN (describing the latter)

Superhero comics should be fun, sure they can have some grim and gritty periods, but even then the fun should come from seeing how our heroes overcome their adversity (which I think perfectly describes "Born Again", which I really didn't like much).  

••

Run that past me again?

••

Some years back, in one of those recurrent and always pointless "Batman
could beat Galactus" "debates", one of my "fellow professionals" declared
that OF COURSE Batman could beat Galactus, because Batman would
CHEAT.

The only thing that depressed me more than someone making a
statement that so obviously missed the core of the character (Batman
cheating??) was how many "fans" jumped in line to agree.

Today, the characters all too often seem in the hands of people who
simply don't GET IT, and whose off-kilter notions are supported by
readers who are equally (and sometimes even further!) off the mark.

Who watches the Watchmen? Well, you know what? Nobody should NEED
to.

Maybe I wasn't as clear as I should have been.  "Born Again" had aspects that I liked (adversity, and redemption), but it had a whole lot more things that I disliked (what happened to Karen Page, what the Kingpin found out about Daredevil, and there wasn't as much FUN there in general).  It was a bit too grim and gritty for me. Which is why I said that while it showed our hero overcoming all that happened to him (which I was cool with), it wasn't much fun to read (the reason I didn't like the storyline). I hope that clears things up a bit.