Several points to be made here.

1) An interesting article, thank you.

2) I agree that snobbery regarding comics is foolish. Watchmen, which I consider the Citizen Kane of comics, it clearly a masterpiece of the form.

3) Yes, I agree at their best, superhero stories can have great depth.

4) You slightly muddy the waters here by citing Luke Skywalker, as film is a different form again. But I despise snobbery among cineastes too. I see no reason why Star Wars couldn't be included alongside Potemkin, Citizen Kane, Vertigo, and so on as one of the greatest films ever made. I won't bore you with my arguments here, but even if you hate Star Wars, it is changed the film industry forever (I'd argue for better and worse), dividing cinema history into before and after epochs, BC/AD style.

5) Snobbery about genre fiction annoys me too. JK Rowling is a great writer who will, I believe, be remembered the way Dickens and Austen are remembered. Popularity isn't automatically an indication of low literary merit, as some snobby literary elites claim.