Comic Books - Not Just for Grownups Anymore?

Laura Hudson considers "breaking up" with mainstream superhero comics this week at Comics Foundry, citing the growing juvenility of superhero comics versus the independent comics she reads.

I can, I believe, relate. The remarkably silly (and pitifully sexually gratuitous) take on marriage we saw in Green Arrow/Black Canary: Road to the Altar is only one in a string of examples I could list of places where I feel embarrassed for superhero comics (which I overall love, and read, comics-wise, almost exclusively).

Sometimes, reading Blue Beetle or Checkmate, for instance, I'm amazed at a writer's characterization and insight; reading Hawkgirl or the offending chapter of Green Arrow/Black Canary, I can't help but wonder: Are the writer and I on the same planet? When the writer came up with this, did they expect it to be taken seriously? I don't think I'd "break up" with superhero comics as Laura posits, but sometimes I feel more connected than others.

This feeling of juvenility is--bringing this back to trade paperbacks--one of the reasons I became a wait-for-trader. When I read a magazine, I don't mind advertisements for cars or food or the like, but wouldn't it be strange to open the latest Jhumpa Lahiri novel and find a magazine advertisement every fourth page?

As I read comics, I became increasingly tired of increasingly more childish video game and candy advertisements interrupting my comics reading--my book-reading, that is. In a way, monthly comics are a strange hybrid form of book/magazine--you read them like a story (like a book), but they have advertisements and letters (once upon a time) like a magazine. But more and more, monthly comics felt like a magazine not meant for me--and so I switched to trades.

That's only one of a couple reasons, but I thought Laura expressed her frustration very well.

What might cause you to "break up" with superhero comics?