As for 'misanthropic' - really Set, that's narrow. Surely you see that there are a wide range of characters, personality types and motivations in everyone you know, and not all are always positive and lovely so what's wrong with the comic charactes echoing that?
By misanthropic, I mean the writers who are keen to deconstruct the notion of super-heroes, and end up writing stuff like the Change or Die Stormwatch / Authority arc, because, in their own words, they don't believe that human beings could possibly ever be idealistic enough to be heroes, without actually becoming worse tyrants than any they've opposed. (Which, IMO, was a story well-told in the Squadron Supreme mini-series (or, in a different direction, in the Watchmen) and has just been repeated over and over with the Authority, and the Justice Lords, and the Ultimates, etc.)
I *do* believe that people can be brave, or noble, or self-sacrificing, or heroic, can be idealistic, and that sets me and my comic book preferences very far apart from the kind of writer that writes an Ultimates story that *literally* portrays Captain America as a jack-booted thug, because he hates the very idea that somebody could have noble and honest intentions, that somebody (and, of all the gall, a filthy American!) could be considered a hero.
Sure, there's room for all sorts, and not every super-hero needs to be bold or idealistic or noble, and the comics have *always* had some examples of less-than-awesome 'heroes' with feet of clay, ranging from Iron Man to Thor (kicked out of 'heaven' for being an impulsive bully) to the Human Torch to Spider-Man (who had to learn his lesson the hard way), to darker characters like the Punisher and Wolverine and more mercenary heroes like the Paladin (and it's interesting to me how more mercenary or corporate heroes, whether it be the Power Company or this latest X-Factor run, fail whenever they are attempted, making me wonder if the majority of the audience that responds to morally gray heroes are more interested in seeing heroes being torn down, than 'realistic people doing realistic things').
Deconstruction can be an important part of growth, reforging a character into something new. (Screaming Mimi, for instance, got torn down by the death of her boyfriend, and came back swinging as Songbird, a character that, IMO, is 500% better.)
But that doesn't seem to be the goal of the Ultimates writers. They just wanted to make Hulk a cannibalistic rapist, Pym even *more* to be associated with wife-beating, Stark even *more* shifty, etc. And they did. And, unfortunately, they've moved past the Ultimates grimdark universe full of 'realistic' people who fling their fingernails down other people's throats (Funny definition of 'realistic,' that...), to the 'mainstream' Marvel Universe, where they can make Thor no longer worthy of Mjolnir, Iron Man an architect of a Civil War between heroes, etc.
I don't read superhero comics because I *hate* these characters and want them to be dragged through the mud and made un-heroic. I want them to struggle, yes, perhaps even to lose, every now and then, but, ultimately, to be the good guys, and offer a little entertainment in a real world that sometimes seems to lack as many inspiring people to admire and look up to.
Just to pick my last fanfic, in The Last Sun Boy Story, I didn't sugar-coat Dirk. He's still a bit of a cad. He didn't join the Legion because he's Mother Theresa or wants to dedicate his life to selfless service. He's a much more complicated (and perhaps much more simple?) person than that. And yet, when it's time to make some heroic choices, he delivers, out of pride and stubbornness and a refusal to give up, if nothing else.
IMO, a hero can be 'realistic' and have three-dimensional motivations without being a wife-beater or a cannibal rapist or a jack-booted thug or a tin-plated despot out to make everyone's choices for them because he's smarter and knows best.
And so I use the word 'misanthropic,' IMO, accurately, to describe some writers who seem to think 'realistic' is all of the above things, which makes me wonder how horrible it must be in 'real' Britain, with all the ultra-violent cannibals and tyrants running around.