If a grown man and a young boy going out at night dressed in a pair of tights and sliding down poles into deep, dark caves is wrong, I don't know what right is.
It wasn't until the late nineties, though, that super-heroes began coming out of the closet.
The first such hero is Northstar of Alpha Flight, one of the least popular characters of the least popular mutant super hero teams, and Canadian no less! His coming out was little more than a publicity stunt to gather readers to one of Marvel's most under-whelming titles. Every coming out since then has followed the exact same guidelines. Since it'd be too risque to make a popular hero, or heroine gay, (Wonder Woman for example), both Marvel and DC have tagged on homosexual plotlines to a number of "what's-their-name?" characters, no matter how much evidence to support their hetero lifestyle may have come beforehand.
Case in point: Grace Choi from the Outsiders. Now you may ask, "Who is Grace Choi," and, "Who are the Outsiders?" which are both very good questions that I'm not about to answer, suffice to say that for a period of time, she was quite hetero, often boasting of her sexual encounters with various men like Arsenal, etc, until hooking up with Thunder, a same-sex team"mate." Now, I'm all for two hot chicks going at it, (especially if they're wearing special outfits,) but there was really no foreshadowing up to this event. It was really just a, "We're gay now, deal with it," type of situation.
The coming out of long-forgotten and most forgettable Batwoman, was more natural, especially beside her lover, the Montoya, the new Question. Montoya had been written as a lesbian prior to reintroducing Batwoman and the introduction to the backstory about their previous relationship together, so it didn't come quite as such a shock, but the media went nuts about it anyway. Putting "Bat," in front of "woman" made news organizations think she was a big fucking deal, when even nerds were scrambling through their back-issues trying to figure out just who she was supposed to be. In truth, Batwoman is really just a nobody, ranking below the third Batgirl. Batman has more spin-off characters than anyone else. In fact, there were no less than three Batwomen in a barely remembered Batman: The Animated series straight to video "Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman," none of which were gay and all of which were possible romantic interests for the Batman.
Even DC villains are turning gay, like Scandal from the Secret Six, but none of them can hold a candle to the homosexual relationship between the Midnighter and Apollo from Wildstorm comics. What makes them different is that they're actually big-name characters, even if their series isn't one of the most popular. Midnighter even has his own title.
They're still not as famous as the Beast, or Colossus from the X-Men, except that the Beast only claimed to be gay to get out of dating a former girlfriend, and Colossus is only gay in the Ultimates alternative universe where nothing really matters. Colossus gets all hopped up on drugs and goes looking for his boyfriend, setting an example for gays everywhere. With the Beast, it seemed like they were trying to set him up for a gay plotline, but they thought better of it. He's too much of a "bear" to be gay, I suppose.
As for teen role models, Marvel has Hulkling and Wiccan of the Young Avengers. To their fame, they were featured in an action figure set together before it became apparent they were gay. Also: Wiccan's name used to be "Asgardian." C'mon, "Ass-guardian?" Who saw that coming? The Hulkling, that's who!
So what's the obsession with gay super heroes? Well society is obsessed with gays in general, and when those gays are all half-naked wrestling muscle men, then that interest meter goes up a notch. Like I said, people have often thought peculiar things about any super man/boy sidekick relationship. Just look at any fan-fic site, and you'll see what I'm talking about. They give the "Batpole" a whole new meaning. Most sidekicks are killed off just to avoid the comparison. Look at Captain America's Golden-Age Bucky, or Jason Todd as Robin. These older sidekicks often come back as older, meaner versions of themselves because they were blown up (or because someone touched them under the Batbelt). Plus, they date the female version of the heroes they're side kicking for. Robin grows up to date Batgirl, which is as close as you can come to fucking Batman without going into the Batcave. If you remember the live-action The Tick series, (and you don't), it was basically cancelled for going overboard with the gay jokes. It was seriously almost every second sentence. There were entire episodes (and there were only nine episodes total) based on that premise.
Even gays are obsessed with super heroes. Go to the next pride parade and count the number of Wonder Womans. This is a trend that just going to keep skyrocketing until every hero everywhere is gay, or getting gay.
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