Superhero creators who engage in deconstruction fall into two categories: There are the guys who do it because it's easy, because it gets an audience reaction if you point out that superheroes must be a bunch of psychotic nuts. And there are the guys who do it because they're actually interested, and they're trying to get at what's going on underneath. They're interested in the process and the results.
Kurt BusiekWhat really matters is not how well a character fits a definition, but how strongly he or she resonates. Characters with strong, resonant ideas at their core will have more of an impact on the cultural consciousness than a character who's just an empty collection of attributes.
Kurt BusiekIt strikes me that the only reason to take apart a pocket watch, or a car engine, aside from the simple delight of disassembly, is to find out how it works. To understand it, so you can put it back together again better than before, or build a new one that goes beyond what the old one could do. We've been taking apart the superhero for ten years or more; it's time to put it back together and wind it up, time to take it out on the road and floor it, see what it'll do.
Kurt Busiek