An interesting article in Wired about gay characters in comic books. One quote which I find especially interesting is this:
While gay characters are fairly new, alleged gay subtexts aren't. Critics began complaining about gay content in the comics shortly after Batman and Robin started shacking up in a mansion above Gotham City. In the 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent, a Bellevue Hospital psychiatrist claimed he knew how to read between the lines in the Batman comic books.
He pointed out that Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, the alter egos of Batman and Robin, lived together in a "sumptuous" home with a butler and lots of pretty flowers in vases.
Now anyone who's ever read Batman knows that this reading of the subtext is about as far from the truth as one can get. The relationship which was portrayed between Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson was more of a father and son. I don't know a lot about Dr. Wertham, the man who wrote Seduction of the Innocent, but I would consider his opinion to be about on the same level as Jerry Falwell's nonsense about the gay subtext of the Teletubbies.
I would love to know if any authoritive psychiatrist has ever done a study of the psychological subtext of the "boy sidekick" genre in superhero fiction. I believe that Batman and Robin were the first superhero/boy sidekick team in comics but they certainly were not the last. It's a popular theme.
As far as acceptance of openly gay characters in mainstream comics, I think this thread of conversation from the usenet should give one an idea of how contentious this notion still is.
11:29:05 AM 
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