holy shit it's a teal deer get in the car
I mean, sure, I like the characters in question being human and thus having flaws as sure as they have virtues, but chiefly, I want to read about the superheroes being superheroes, not soap operas in spandex.
See, this is why I liked the DCAU so much, and why I like Marvel Adventures so much now. They go and have adventures and fight crime and supervillains and stuff--but the characters are also perfectly human and interesting. It's well-balanced. And that's the so-called "kids' stuff"--the characters are better presented than they are in the stories meant more for grownups, and the stories themselves are more interesting.
One of my big problems with the current mindset of the Big Two are that they try too hard to make their stories MATURE!!!!!, trying to bring in as much angst and death and blood and rape and soap opera lunacy in, thinking that that's what makes stories interesting and "mature," when it's not necessarily true. It comes off as being the little kid trying on his dad's shoes and going "looky, pa, I'm a big boy now! Look how grownup I am!" It just winds up infuriating people instead of drawing interested readers.
It is entirely possible to make a mature, complex story without turning it into a soap opera or becoming annoyingly dark and EDGY!!!!!! or anything. It's not even that hard; if I had to say, honestly, it's probably easier to write a well-balanced story. A lot of the GRIMDARK EXTREMENESS!!!!!!!! just needlessly complicates matters.
I mean, I loved Watchmen. I love Sandman. I love Hellblazer. But even then, there's a balance between the characters as humans and the characters as heroes. Some of my favorite Hellblazer chapters aren't the ones where John is being magically awesome--some of them are when he's just being human, like the short "One Last Love Song" and "Counting to Ten."
Yeah, I don't know what all that was. I just started ranting and just stopped when I had to let the cat out. I'll go away now. :D