Those comics still exist. Avengers Academy is a good one, which actually manages to include elements of deconstruction and reconstruction while also playing things straight. It's actually kinda impressive. Unfortunately, it's coming to an end.
X-Factor, under Peter David, is too busy being smart, fun, and awesome to bother with all the stuff you're tired of. Even though they're not strictly superheroes, they still have tons of superhero stuff going on.
Kieron Gillen's run on Uncanny X-Men, prior to Av X, was going that way. Very much just, "Fuck it, let's see the X-Men saving the world." His Journey Into Mystery is incredibly smart, exploring themes of nature vs. nurture, inevitability, redemption, and that sort of thing, and for all that it's using a Guile Hero who saves the day by manipulating everyone around him, also fits into the "superheroes being superheroes" concept.
Actually, Hickman's Fantastic Four and FF would fit, too. Again, really intelligent, high-concept stuff, but at its heart, it's about this family of superheroes saving the day.
In general, it seems like the smarter the book, the more it plays things straight. I guess because the writers don't feel as much need to break the genre down. They're more interested in the storytelling. They'd rather analyze the characters than the medium.
X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.
There have always been titles that buck the general trend like that. People always try to simplify the changes made in superhero comics but it really isn't they tend to forget that there have always been exceptions and also that certain things have risen and fallen in popularity dozens of times rather than just having one peak.
@As for the OP: I think your being a lot more vague than you think you are being. Crossovers and deconstructions and reinterpratations are not connected with each other. Some of these things will become less common and sone will not, but rejecting one has no impact on the other two.
Depending on what you define as Silver Age Marvel had more of a certain type of crossover then than it does now. Denny O'Neil was harking back to the (early) Golden Age when he made Batman darker and more realistic. But that isn't what you mean.
Am I a good man or a bad man?There is a comic strip launched in August 2009 titled The Incredible Conduit. The Conduit's name is Raymond Cole, a university student who developed the ability to absorb then project all forms of energy. He basically talks like Spider Man as he fights villains.
In fact, the writer Tony Gray stated quite clearly that TIC will be relatively light-hearted, like in the Silver Age. It's a relief, to be honest. A lot of comics out there are so dark, grim, and mature that I could just cry!
No, my OP points out that they are both prevalent, to the possible expense of the genre being played straight. I never at any point imply that they coincide. In fact, I indirectly state that they tend to be caused by two very different groups of people.
Two things that exist at the same point do not necessarily have to be connected, even if they have similar effects on the same things.
edited 18th Aug '12 10:30:47 AM by KnownUnknown

This is somethings that's been nagging at my mind for a while, as one of the things we might need a bit more of.
Most of comic writing these days dislikes the simple story - in fact, every new character or franchise made these days seems to revolve some kind of subversion, lampshading, cynical deconstruction, hopeful reconstruction, or downright mockery of the concept in some way or another - it seems like it's the new Darker and Edgier, trying to garner popularity for things by "reimagining" things, often in interesting ways but more and more ignoring the beauty of sometimes making just a simple story.
Meanwhile, the mainstream who would play it straight seem to be under the impression that the regular stories and adventures aren't enough. Mainstream hero comics these days tend to focus on being grander than they already are - enormous crossovers that supposedly change everything, until the next epic crossover which happens immediately after and changes everything again, and so on and so forth. They tend to reimagine things almost annually, in fact. Even in single mythos' this is always happening.
The constant "epic storylines" in comics, without a break, is one of my least favorite things about comics these days, and a big reason why I stick to only a few titles these days.
I can't help but thing we might need something that has the traditional heroic portrayal but with modern writing, rather than superhero writing that feels like it needs to be amped up to another level for it to work. This is an odd comparsion, but it's a similar problem to the one I feel makes most video game adaptations poor - writers/directors seem to think that the stories as they are can't work on their own, so they go out of the story's way to twist them or put their own spins on them to amp them up somehow, resulting in something flashy or lacking in substance that certainly doesn't have what made what's being adapted great. It's not that bad in comics today, but it's a similar issue to what I'm talking about.
I'm not exactly asking for a Silver or Golden-Age return. In fact, that's not what I'm asking at all. More that I'm thinking we should be thinking about a revival of superhero comics played straight without needing enormous epic events every two minutes or to have to have all of it's conventions turned on it's head.
I do like crossovers or big events, and I do really like Lampshade heavy stories like Deadpool, or titles that flip the genre over it's head like Morrison's Doom Patrol, but some of my favorite comics are when you pick up a random issue of JLA or something and you get them in a single adventure that lasts a few issues but is still self contained, and still a great storyline despite or perhaps because of it.
My big problem isn't that these other spins on the genre exist, it's that they're beginning to become the mainstay of the industry to the extent of possibly phasing the straight portrayal out. I guess what I'm saying is that I think what we need, at least partially, is a wave of reconstruction that doesn't act like it's a reconstruction in the first place.
edited 17th Aug '12 4:28:31 PM by KnownUnknown