Scans_Daily

I think for you this may be a case of what TV Tropes calls "Seinfeld Is Unfunny," which they define as "A once-innovative work seems derivative after its original tropes become commonplace."

Not that Morrison's Animal Man was the first metafictional comic ever, of course. But it was one of the earliest sustained metafictional stories in a mainstream superhero comic. As such, in its time it was most definitely considered groundbreaking. By now, of course, not only Morrison himself (e.g. The Invisibles, Multiversity) but other comic writers (on mainstream titles and otherwise) have made metafiction so commonplace that his Animal Man run--including "The Coyote Gospel" which is the epitome of it--may seem like not such a big deal.