Lots to talk about here and not much time right now, but first, I think all Nabokov is saying is that there are structural things about a novel that you can't appreciate on a first read, simply because you can't take in the overall shape of the thing. (The same is true of film, or theater, or any temporal work). That's 100% true of Lolita, because the single most important event happens in the foreward, in a way that won't make sense on first reading, and casts a pall over the rest of the book on the second read. Martin Amis makes this point; a bit of his essay about Lolita is excerpted here. Anyway, for all his talk about the ponderous process of scanning words on the page, I don't think he's against the process of reading, he's just saying you can't see the whole thing on your first go around, and if you want to understand what the writer is doing, and how, you're going to need to look at the opening paragraphs with the last ones in mind.

I would unhesitatingly grant Ridley Scott the title of "enchanter," if he'd never made anything except Blade Runner and Alien. Lindelhof, I'm not so sure, but then I haven't seen any of Lost except the pilot, and, rightly or wrongly, I blame him for what happened to Prometheus.

I think your distinction between "layered" and "obscure" is really useful, but have miles to go before I sleep. So that, and Maus vs. Watchmen will have to wait. And I guess I'll have to read Batman Year One. Because as it happens, I'm a crime-fighting orphan myself.