Moving Away from Reality

Something's been bugging me about the DC/Marvel comics landscape lately and I've just put my finger on it. Both universes have gotten too far away from reality.

Now, this may seem like an odd thing to say about comic book lines that specialize in spandex power fantasies, but these have still usually held the pretense that they were occurring on "our" Earth, in whatever year it really was. The only difference (as silly as that might seem when you examine it too closely) was that there were superheroes flying around. These days, I'm not so sure that's true.

Take Marvel to start with, because unlike DC, the company's always claimed it WAS the real world. Once they put up that godawful Avengers Tower in the middle of New York, they pretty much had to say goodbye to THAT premise. The Baxter Building, we can accept. It doesn't disrupt one of the best known skylines in the world. But the Sentry's big, crazy tuning fork? I'm sorry, but Marvel's New York ceased to be our New York. I apologize to anyone who likes Avengers Tower, but the thing is STUPID. It just doesn't look like real architecture, and it strains my suspension of disbelief. I don't think replacing it with an Asgardian arch will change my opinion much.

The DC Universe at least uses fictional cities for most of its series, and we accept Gotham City and Metropolis in the same way we do Batman and Superman. But lately, the latter's books have strayed way too far into science fiction territory. Police work in Metropolis has passed into the hands of the "Science Police" which routinely uses technology way beyond what is usually afforded "mundanes" in comics. And while, I'm perfectly able to accept aliens either among us or on New Krypton, I can't say the same of scenes like this:
This is the extent of our presence on Mars? So says War of the Supermen #2! Superheroes on (or from) Mars is fine in this genre, but if you beat NASA by 50 years, it just doesn't feel like our universe anymore. Suddenly, I'm reading about some alternative universe that doesn't feel enough like my own for me not to feel disconnected from it.

Both universes have American cities that were wiped from the face of the Earth, yet their people still think of 9/11 as a big deal. One has an Asgardian city plopped in the middle of Kansas. The other has a sovereign nation of mad scientists. Both universes have supervillains who got pretty high in the political chain (Luthor/Osborn). Both universes have manned satellites in orbit to keep aliens at bay. Both universes have gotten incredibly high-tech as well. Some of this makes complete senses in the context of a superhero universe. If superheroes did exist, then for sure, their high-tech would bleed into the market place. If malevolent aliens were real, we'd build defenses against them. And so on.

The irony is that in trying to make superhero worlds more realistic, they've made them more fantastic, to a point where it becomes harder to relate to them. It's really bugging me. Am I alone? The line is pretty vague (I'll accept Latveria and Atlantis, SHIELD and Project Cadmus, powers and magic, aliens and prejudice against mutants), but it's definitely been crossed somewhere along the way. A malaise has set in.