I think you can still have fantasy escapism and still have good writing.
Look at issue 1 of The Losers. They steal a bloody big helicopter. How do they do it? Trank some soldiers on patrol, pretend to be them and call for a rescue helicopter, trank the helicopter guys. Standard stuff so far... but then they lay the soldiers in recovery psosition so they don't choke in their own vomit, send the radio transponder out of the copter and off by a rocket to start a wild goose chase away from them, and paint the helicopter in NYPD insignia so it won't get shot at by cops in thier next gig. A lot of thought has gone into that scripting.
Compare this to Black Reign in JSA/Hawkman. How much thought went into that comic? Atom-smasher goes rogue with some other characters, and punches out thier jet, somehow conveniently knocking all of the JSA unconscious. Dr Fate's amulet inexplicably holds another bunch of old Infinity Inc characters. It was pure crap. Where is the clever writing in that?
I mentioned Black Panther as a book which had some very decent writing. It was eventually cancelled because ultimately it was a book about a minor black character in the Marvel line-up. I'm told Ennis' The Punisher is of equally skilful writing (I need to check this out) If some decent quality thought went into a comic like JSA, I'd probably buy it.
As for Byrne's novels....the fact that they were commercially non-viable despite Byrne having a pre-existing public profile probably says volumes about their quality.
