Superman 3 and 4 sucked. Also Watchmen and Johna Hex....weren't good either.
I (understandably) forgot about Jonah Hex but by all means add that to their list of fail.
Supes 3 & 4 were more the Salkind's failures that anything that could be laid at WB's feet.
And Watchmen?
Zack's a hack, baby.
Zack's a hack.
Nuff said.
What original formula?
Original in the sense of humanizing their characters to a degree not seen before. You know: the angst and daily struggles of a person who happens to don a costume and become a hero, rather than the other way around.
Also the careful attention to world-building a shared universe, rather than guest-star crossovers to sell a few more books that month.
Go read up on the Silver Age of comics -- in the 60's Marvel was breaking ground with this:
While DC was grinding out issue after issue of this:
The O'Neill and Adams Green Lantern/Green Arrow series finally got gritty and topical around 1970, but Marvel had already begun paving that road nearly a decade earlier. The same holds true today with the MCU.
___