>>125369020a strong character (straight, gay, male or female, or a robot, etc) is an ego-ideal which is explored for it's strengths and weaknesses, where the strengths outweigh the detriments.
Superman is mostly about Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane, however, there are stories that explore his 'perfection' as being the strongest person on Earth with fantastic powers. He's not interesting unless you pull back and explore the existential dread of that persona. Does Supes feel guilty for getting a full night sleep or when he's being his Clark Kent alter-ego and perhaps a million people die in a train accident he could have prevented? Some pretty good stories go into this stuff and the morality/ethics of being an icon of pure freedom loving Americana (Captain America goes into this, too).
But Superman was not a popular story until it focused on Lois and became more of a romantic comic. Then the comics code authority forced out all the crime drama/Lois deliberately getting in trouble by investigating murderous gangsters knowing Superman would save her and have to deal with them. It became more about Lois and Jimmy and really silly code safe silver age shenanigans. Point is, early Supes stories were considered boring, it got popular by being more than the perfect ego-ideal of strait white (well, Jewish) men.
Gay protags and ego-ideals haven't been allowed to exist until recently and they're going through the pains of that. Superheroes are cringe by their nature, people in costumes that would only make sense in the 1930s as circus performers who are absurdly powerful and infallible agents of vague 'good'. Let's face it, these voices are not writers much less comic book writers, and US comics are sub par compared to French and Japanese/Korean. Marvel and DC wouldn't even swallow their pride and hire some indie comic writers that are popular now (wolfman, mignola, etc) or ever change their writers-are-slaves policy that chased away all the brits.
