Gioia's point about the worship of tragic, and sometimes even pathetic figures in modern fiction is right on the mark. He brings up Walter White as one example, but what I immediately had to think of when he talked about Marvel characters was Watchmen, Alan Moore's satire of that culture. What was so striking about the movie version in particular was how many people thought Rorschach was some kind of badass anti-hero, rather than the mentally ill Randian megalomaniac that he intended him to be. People didn't even get it any more, quoting an interview he gave on the topic: (https://www.stevensurman.com/rorschach-from-alan-moores-watc...)

"So, I thought, ‘Alright, if there was a Batman in the real world, he probably would be a bit mental.’ He wouldn’t have time for a girlfriend, friends, a social life, because he’d just be driven by getting revenge against criminals… dressed up as a bat for some reason. He probably wouldn’t be very careful about his personal hygiene. He’d probably smell. He’d probably eat baked beans out of a tin. He probably wouldn’t talk to many people. His voice probably would have become weird with misuse, his phraseology would be strange. “I wanted to kind of make this like, ‘Yeah, this is what Batman would be in the real world.’ But I had forgotten that actually to a lot of comic fans that smelling, not having a girlfriend—these are actually kind of heroic. So actually, sort of, Rorschach became the most popular character in Watchmen. I meant him to be a bad example, but I have people come up to me in the street saying, ‘I am Rorschach! That is my story!’ And I’ll be thinking, ‘Yeah, great, can you just keep away from me and never come anywhere near me again for as long as I live?’”"

when I read this I noticed how much this actually sounds like WW and how unironically celebrated the character was, in contrast to his family in particular online.