Warren Ellis is a well-regarded writer of comic books. He's not as good as fans would like you to think, but some of his stuff is pretty good. I subscribe to his "bad signal" email list, mostly for his jokes. His emails about comics are less interesting, but a recent one caught my attention:

I also read something called IDENTITY CRISIS, written by the American novelist Brad Meltzer. Possible spelling error there, sorry. I can't decide if it's almost obsessively generic or as richly writerly as Alan Moore's first takes on mainstream DC superheroics. He works hard to humanise these characters, and you admire his determination to give them literary weight, but at the end of the day it's The Revenge Of The Elongated Man. And I can't help but wonder if it's the same misguided brilliance that leads people to fashion a perfect 3-D representation of the Last Supper out of butter.

This is a good reason why the "cutting edge" of super-hero comics just isn't as great as the genre's fans and creators would like to believe. Warren Ellis is acclaimed for his daring and revolutionary work, and yet he can't see the possibilities of The Revenge Of The Elongated Man. It's a title idiosyncratic enough for Philip K. Dick. Yes, it would be silly, but all super hero comics are silly, and pretentious to boot. I assume a book called Revenge of The Batman would meet with Ellis' approval, or at least have some potential of weight. I guess comics are supposed to be serious, not idiosyncratic. Which is a shame.