Heavy event-programming periods, like the one we're in, really do distort the throughline of the genre. Certainly for the last year, and for the next year or two, the individual voice of the creator is (with a few exceptions to make the rule, of course) being lost to the surge of collaborative work and groupthink. Which I think serves the hardcore audience -- I recently read a review of Mike Carey's X-Men, for instance, which congratulated him on not speaking with his own voice and just writing plain old X-Men stories uncoloured by an author's personality.
