Lulz, guess I've punched a lot of kittens. I suspect the powerful attachment to slabs is from a newer generation of collectors, ones too young to have bought books off the rack that turned out to be valuable after many decades, and who haven't bought back issues in the unslabbed or cracked out state so they could build runs to be read and re-read. Even putting aside the chance to access the entire comic rather than just the covers, to me comics are much more beautiful in mylars rather than slabs, and most beautiful of all in hand.
For me, comics are for collecting, slabs are for selling.
Well said sir!