What I'm telling you is that comic book plots are themselves bald appropriations of archetypal stories, with superheroes standing in for various pagan gods. Much of "modernist" art (at least in terms of literature and film) stems from such strip-mining activities. Noir is itself a hybrid form, with an underlying destructive energy that it unleashes while attempting to ape the arc of classical tragedy.
I agree with your line of demarcation. These films are a "genre" unto themselves, and best of luck to them...
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