Oh, absolutely, and I'm not saying that every Superman story has to involve people saying 'It's a bird! It's a plane!', or every Batman story involving some variation on 'Criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot'. That's just the base of their character - what makes them such great characters is that they ARE more complex than that; they can be looked at from various different angles, and examined in various different ways, and led along various different paths - they grow and evolve and change. Look at where Wonder Woman is now, for cryin' out loud - she's evolved so radically that she's barely recognizable as Marston's original creation, but she's still recognizably herself. (In fact, it wouldn't hurt if someone tried to bring a few of those original elements back, in my opinion.) The trick is to have a starting point, a place to go back to from where all paths radiate like spokes in a wheel, so that you can retrace your steps if you get confused. If that point is lost or eliminated, then you just have a spaghetti-like jumble of crisscrossing trails, and all of a sudden, you're lost in a maze.