This is what makes it "creepy" to have kid characters in comics these days. The "realism" that has been shoehorned -- jackhammered!! -- into the books forces consideration of things that used not to matter. And a grown man dressed in an outrageous costume who takes a similarly dressed child into the middle of dangerous situations is extremely creepy. Because the current crop of writers and editors have made it so.

Bravo, JB! 

On a similiar note to people making things the norm now is that in the latest copy of Wizard, the interview with Seth Meyers and Bill Hader from SNL, there was a quote from Hader in which he stated he was on a movie set trying to finish the Spider-man book they were writing and Ben Stiller saw him and asked him what he was doing.  He said he was finishing writing a Spider-man book to which Stiller said was pretty cool.  Hader then goes on to say that people are really ok with it and no one finds it weird that they are writing a comic book.  That is great and all, but why would you care anyway if you are writing something that is your dream?  Why worry about it not being cool to do a comic book.....to me it illustrates a similiar theme of injecting said realism into comics.  Why should anyone feel creepy about writing a dream project for Marvel as a comic fan?  Gotta diss it publicly before anyone will accept it I suppose.

What Im getting from this thread is that most folk are only happy when superheroes are drawn in a traditional manner. As soon as someone (Quitely) approaches the material in a non-standard manner a lot of people seem to take great offense.

Im all for different artists and different approaches, I dont care for the cookie cutter approach to comic art.

I mean, these guys are non-standard.... should they not be drawing superhero comics either?

Ted McKeever:

Mike Mignola:

Sam Keith:

Kelley Jones:

John McCrea

Kevon Oneill

You get the idea...

Well, you're wrong.

Let's not forget that Grandeur is not only limited to Superheroes.

Will Eisner never touched the genre and he had it in spades.  What about Joe Kubert's Sgt. Rock?

Two of the first comic artists that I remember liking, and got me seriously into the art form, were John Bolton, (from the back ups in Classic X-men - my first experince of the X-men, btw) and Barry Windsor-Smith (The Machine Man Limited series)  Neither of those are 'traditional' looking Superhero artists, in fact they draw the most 'realistic' looking people in the business, and they seemed to manage a certain level of grandeur.  It may have been more elegant than other styles but it still had that quality that lifts it from being boring.

I personally think that it comes from something intrisnic in the artwork.  If the Artist involved believes in what they're drawing, and is not condemning it, then that will show through.