I am indeed speaking in terms of relative degrees, those of "good for a commercial superhero comic" versus "good as a comic." The former, no matter how great, will always be limited by genre; no superhero comic will ever be able to be as good as MAUS(no, not even WATCHMEN; for those heights you'd need to go to FROM HELL or like that), because something profound said about the superhero genre, in the grand scheme, isn't important, whereas something said about real history or real people(even if fictional), can be.
Superheroes are fun, entertaining and can even touch on allegorical truth, but in the end, they're still superheroes. I've been having this debate for over twenty years and in that twenty years the genre has had ample chances to prove what it can do, and all it resulted in was dark dark DARK, and you folks all complain about that, right? I do not think the genre is capable of bearing what non-genre work can.
I'd take an example from another genre and another medium. ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST is a brilliant film. But it's a brilliant autocritique of westerns. It doesn't say anything about true history, it doesn't say anything about America, it just says plenty about westerns. That's fine, but it's limited.