After talking this through with friends, which I'll freely admit is a supremely silly thing to do, I've figured out why I don't like the vast majority of superhero comics being published by Marvel and DC: they're being written like 10pm dramas. I can watch Law And Order: The Rape and CSI: Lubbock any time I want on the TV. When I pick up an issue of JLA, I want to see something different. Maybe it could be the world being saved instead of DC's big three sitting around a table, calling each other by their first names, reviewing files on people who are actually out doing interesting things. Also: Red Tornado sucks and nobody can make me care about him, no matter how much Johns, Meltzer, and Winick seem to want the DCU to be stuck at 1978 or thereabouts.
At first,the reason the whole "DC's big three calling each other by their first names constantly" that Meltzer does bugged me in a strange, ineffable way that I could never quite clarify to people who liked it, but I've narrowed down an exact cause. It makes it sound like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are mundane, regular people and I don't like that. Being in the Justice League should not be the equivalent of an office job. Saving the world is not something you do between bouts of standing by the copier, taking care of that action item list, and lunch breaks.
A lot of people like the "humanity" that Johns, Meltzer, etc have brought to the DC Universe. I really can see the appeal, especially in the aging fanboy demographic. They've got concerns in their life they want to see reflected (in some way or another) through the fiction they're reading. They want to see the effects of "real world" events (divorce, death, crime, etc) make some impact on the people they've been reading about for two or three decades. I get these in other media or in comics outside of the superhero genre. I want more superhumanity than humanity in comics featuring people in brightly-colored costumes.
In addition to those, you can be my fake internet friend on MySpace and follow me on Twitter and look at my photographs on Flickr before buying me a present from my Amazon wishlist. Heck, you can even shop at my Amazon shop if you want to help make sure I have booze money.
