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It came up partly because of the upcoming The Last Airbender movie, directed by M. Night Shyamalan. I've enjoyed most of his movies, but the tone and pacing are polar opposites to the cartoon.
Then somebody asked me to lend him recent DC or Marvel comics so he could get into them. The most recent thing I could lend him that was good enough was Young Avengers (he'd already read Runaways).
I think we've all noticed that comics follow the vagaries of fashion, same as anything else. The current fashion is ultra-realism; in comic book movies, I think the peak is The Dark Knight.
The thing these trends do is abuse the trope. It could be good once, on one thing, but they shove it on everything, until you're sick of it. Even though the realism one is doing the same, I'm still behind it.
Trying to be grounded in the real world is fine; my problem comes when they take it too far. (No, I do not read comics about flying people who shoot frickin' lasers from their eyes because I want ultra-realism. Odd, that.) It wasn't enough for The Dark Knight to be realistic; everything had to be normal. Gotham was a typical US city, as if the Gothic lyricism of Burton's couldn't exist (ever been to Paris?). The characters couldn't be freaks - so we got a "Joker" who was nothing like the Joker. (A 'natural' clown-face is unrealistic? Then compromise. Ever heard the term 'albino'? Or 'goth'? Or 'John Wayne Gacy, Jr'?)
What I first noticed about the realism trend was the colour palette - all earth tones. (I don't know if anyone thinks they're more realistic, or if they just coincidentally came in with the trend.) I realised I found it claustrophobic and unemotional.
I began to realise the same thing about comics following the current 'realism' trend. They're cool, they're usually pretty good, but they have no emotional resonance. Most of their characters don't have lives outside their superhero world - they're now soldiers, always superheroes, and I just don't care. (Part of this is my own fault; for some reason, I only read team books, which don't have time to explore individuals' lives.)
They're not about people anymore, they're just cyphers.
In fact, Cypher drove it home for me - seeing him being all efficient and military in Uncanny #523 made me realise that just as Golden Age characters were all the same, so are the current ones. It's a different 'the same', but it's that doesn't alter the core problem.
The realism trend, for whatever reason, lacks humour and emotion. Like the new Airbender movie (I suspect), they've got rid of the heart. They seem to forget what I'm reading for in the first place. And that just drives me away.
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