James Gunn began at Troma, writing Tromeo and Juliet, which is a useful key to everything since: the bad taste is deliberate and the sentiment underneath it is sincere.
His Guardians scripts are built on damaged people who form a family without any of them saying so, and the third film pays off an arc about a genetically modified raccoon that has no business being as affecting as it is.
Super, which he wrote and directed before Marvel, is a much bleaker version of the same interest, and worth watching alongside the studio work.