It's still a banjo.
As an indie cartoonist, who doesn't do superheroes and only ever even tried it in an aborted sample once(posted here a while back), I certainly don't think that. I'm saying that SPIDERMAN comics don't aspire to that. Spiderman is not the medium, good Christ. Marvel IS the McDonald's of publishing. You are aware there's more to comics than superheroes. I know it's hard to remember nowadays, but they do exist.
Kraven's Last Hunt? Have you tried maybe AGE OF BRONZE or BERLIN, or TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE. Or Eddie Campbell's new ALEC omnibus? Or even Alan Moore's non-superhero work?
The way you describe it, comics shouldn't aspire to be more than pretentious treatments of the superhero. Which is what's wrong with comics today. Funny how we're right back to where things were till the likes of CEREBUS, AMERICAN FLAGG and LOVE & ROCKETS. But with most of the best creators(including Gilbert Hernandez) having long since channeled themselves into superheroes, I guess one has to settle for what's there. But superheroes are a weak and silly vehicle, WATCHMEN aside, for what is possible to say in comics. As good as a superhero comic is, it's still only a really good superhero comic, it's still, however masterfully done, entertainment. It's like being the best banjo player in the world; it's still a banjo. The problem with mainstream comics, as Grant Morrison(who should know) once said, is that if you show the slightest flair, you seem like a genius. And something that in any other genre would simply be as well-written as it ought to be in the first place is considered a masterpiece, because the general accepted level of craft in the mainstream is set at such a low bar to begin with.
As for editorial stamping all over creativity, I've got news for you: ever since at least the days of Jim Shooter at MArvel, that's ALL mainstream comics. Even Vertigo. (Only Epic ever had anything like a hands-off policy) Editors in mainstream comics are what producers are to TV, and the idea the creators are in control, especially on the big books, is an illusion, only born of the fact that it's not the names of editors that move product.