Superheroes with More Stress on the Hero than on the Super (or Something)

Wow, that was a long post. For something stepping away from politics for a moment, take a look at this Slate slideshow about comics featuring different takes on superheroes. The article uses the surprise NBC hit Heroes, in which "regular people" discover that they have extraordinary powers, as its jumping-off point. Slate cites Heroes Tim Kring's claim to be "presenting character-driven stories in which superpowers merely play a supporting role." This kind of statement always throws me a little bit, because it implies that the powers are peripheral to the story he's trying to tell rather than the hook on which the entire series hangs. Would people really be watching a show that features a few minutes of every episode with subtitled Japanese dialogue if the Japanese character didn't jump around through time and space? But anyway, back to the point at hand. Heroes has been putting regular comics stories up on its Web page featuring characters from the show, so Slate uses that as a segue to survey some printed comics that are more character heavy than plot heavy. The deck on the article asserts that these "reinvent the superhero genre," but that's an awfully big claim. I don't read all of the comics they look at, but the ones I do are intriguing and worth a look (and by extension, maybe the ones I don't are, too). See if you can find anything that interests you, and if so, report back.