Given I encountered Superman and Batman both in the 1960s--I'd say they both had the rough with the smooth. Back then Superman moaned a lot more about the tragic loss of his first parents when he was just a toddler than Batman grieved about his parents' killing (we saw the Krypton explosion in flashbacks a lot more than the shooting of the Waynes). And Clark lost his parents all over again when he was a teen. I'd say that their shared sense of grief brought them together as friends. It wasn't a competition who suffered more. But for all they lost, they proved they could still be happy by wearing trunks over their leotards, maintaining cool man-caves, and having statues erected in their honour.
I would guess that it works both ways for readers. Sometimes you want to share in a fictional character's happiness. And sometimes you want to wallow in their sorrows. We enjoy listening to both happy and sad songs.
I don't know why some critics want to polarize people--always advocating for one over the other. Not all criticism has to be negative and divisive. Proper criticism is more about understanding the artform, the statement it makes, and how it's executed by the artists--rather than making value judgements. When you're in grade 5, your book report reads as "This was a good book . . "; but when you're in grade 12, your book report reads as "There are three main themes in THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA . . ."