It’s connoted. It’s trying to mix elements of childhood with elements of adulthood. I tend to agree with Moore there: the comics and the movies are for people who read super-heroes comics in their childhood and want them in their adulthood. It’s not very refreshing and as an author, it’s not satisfying.
Morrison’s X-men run removed some of a super-hero comic mythology, much less shiny costumes, it was something different… You must do something new, but you don’t recapture the old magic. That one definitively belongs to childhood.