I believe it was Tolstoy who said something to the effect of "Happy families are boring, because they're all the same. Unhappy families are interesting because they're all different."

That's the opening line of Anna Karenina.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1399/pg1399-images.html...

Tolkien echoed the same thing in The Hobbit:

“Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.”

And we see it on HN itself, there are many "very good" stories that get posted that get a lot of upvotes but few comments because really all there is to say is 'very good'.

But stories about bad things happening get thousands of comments.

Also what we perceive as "heroic" especially in a fantasy/super-hero context, tends to ultimately be status quo preserving, which frequently means the villains tends to be the "cool" "disruptive" characters, and if the world isn't sufficiently perfect then it's easy for some people to start believing that any disruption is justified.

compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer#Premise