Good points, but could you elaborate on your last sentence please?
I don't see how hard it is to have heartwarming/emotional moments in comics, but maybe it's just me.
Oh, it's not hard to get them into the industry, but that's in pre-established characters (i.e. Superman talking down a suicide jumper, the Fantastic Family moments, etc) that have already been seen doing fighting and beating up badguys. That's REALLY what the industry flows on, the superhero concept is inherently ridiculous already.
Ennis makes his own characters, so he's got to write for the comicbook readership. Which is, let's just be honest, mostly young guys and mostly pretty immature ones at that. So they HAVE to be shown asskicking to get "cred" with the comicbook audiences to gain a regular audience.
Do you think the average comicbook fan would've been remotely interested in Hitman, Preacher, or The Boys if it didn't have brutal killing and gross violence interspaced with moments of emotional bonding?
You know as well as I do that comicbook fans would be screaming "ALL THIS RELATIONSHIP TALK IS GAY AND BORING" and drop it after 3 issues. They screamed that in half the reviews of The Boys whenever it stepped away from decapitations and had talking instead. It's a tough tightrope to walk in the comicbook world.
As an aside, Kevin Smith, who coincidentally also has weird Catholic issues, often lamented the same thing, that there's just some things you HAVE to include (boobs, violence) in every story regardless of whatever message you want to impart.