DrTTD

If ABC is to believed and they're not just making this up:

“One of the major iconic DC characters will reveal that he is gay in a storyline in June,” Courtney Simmons, DC Entertainment’s senior vice president of publicity, confirmed to ABC News.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/2012/05/comics-cliffhanger-as-unnamed-dc-superhero-to-come-out-of-closet/

So that would mean that it's definitely a man, and it's also an "iconic" character, who is apparently so iconic he managed to not be included in the New 52. Although I have to wonder if the interpretation we got from Bleeding Cool was a bit off, and that it might not be that a character who hasn't appeared yet in the New 52 will come back as gay, but just that a character who has appeared already in the New 52 without a specified orientation will be revealed to be gay.

If it's the former, I can't think of any iconic characters, although it would be interesting if it were the Question (Vic Sage, not Montoya), just because it would mean having him back, and I really like him. Although seeing how he was done in the Free Comic Book Day comic makes me not so sure how I'd feel about that.

If it had to be a character we've seen, I'd totally pull for Damian, although he's a bit young right now, and he has no established sexual orientation as far as I know. I'd hate for it to be Martian Manhunter, since while I love him, the fact that two gay characters couldn't get me to read Stormwatch means I doubt a third will. It could be a Green Lantern other than Hal; that would be a way to skirt around the "iconic" issue.

Also, no one ever said it was a hero, just that it was an established character. So for all we know it could be Black Adam, or Vandal Savage, or...um...Alfred. Okay, probably not Vandal Savage, since he has, like, thousands of daughters, but still...Alfred!

I heard it put like this: "You can tell I'm the biggest fan because I hate it the most." 
 
Honestly, fans love complaining. Or criticizing, if complaining suggests their objections are invalid. I'd say that these criticisms actually reflect the state of comics right now, but I don't believe that, since 1) fans of *everything* do this, and 2) fans of everything have been doing this for quite some time.
 
Be glad you're not a pro wrestling fan. Wrestling became exceptionally popular back in the late 90s, and since then everybody has been complaining about the fact that it's not the late 90s. Not that I'm saying every criticism is invalid, but it's also not the Dark Age everyone is making it out to be. 
 
If you want to know why I think this is, I'd say it probably has to do with perspective. Right now, I can look back over the past, say, 30 years, and handpick all of the best comics that were written during that time period, and come up with an enormous stack, and say "look how many great comics were written back 10, 20, or 30 years ago" whereas looking at the present, I have to sift through comics waiting month to month as they come out to find the good ones, which will naturally come along with some bad ones. 
 
Archives, or our memories of what we've read, are bigger, instantly accessible, and the bad parts/mediocre parts, can be forgotten about as needed. New material, on the other hand, comes much more slowly, and the good and bad have to come together in one big bundle. So new material as we experience it will always be worse than old material.

It's an interesting thing, trying to figure out actors for comic book characters, since, although it may seem obvious, the one thing actors can do that comic characters can't is, well...act.  
 
The important thing about actors is that they're artists too, not just vessels. Everything an actor says and does, even when following a script, essentially involves creating the character, making something physical and audible from nothing but words and ideas. And, in the case of those based off comics, a few pictures.
 
So keeping that in mind, I'd say that the best actors aren't those who can behave the way we'd imagine characters to act, but who can show us who a character is by acting in ways that go *beyond* what we can imagine just from reading. 
 
I remember when The Dark Knight came out everyone made a big deal out of Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker. It was a good one. Yet before that movie was made, if we were trying to think of actors who would make good Jokers, Heath Ledger probably wouldn't be at the top of the list. But the reason it ended up being such a good performance had to do with two things: First off, it was a version of Heath Ledger we had never seen before that was completely unique to this movie. And second, it was a version of the Joker who, although consistent with some books, we had never seen before, and was completely unique to this movie.  
 
So while I love hypothetical casting as much as the next person, I think a lot of it isn't so much about how well an actor can emulate a character as it's about how much an actor can add to a character.

Here's the interesting thing about Batman, since you mentioned him. Batman: The Animated Series from the 90s stuck very much to the image of Batman as a lone brooding figure in the shadows striking fear into the hearts of the criminals of Gotham city, with a very specific noir/art deco aesthetic to the show, and overall, an overwhelmingly "street level" tone.  
 
Fast forward 10 years and he's in Justice League/Justice League Unlimited, where he becomes part of a team of aliens and sorcerers getting into epic battles of time and space and saving the world. 
 
The odd thing is, despite the change in tone and story, I still prefer that portrayal Batman to, say, the Nolan movies. Since even if the setting is different, the character is the same, and I can believe that if Batman were on a satellite with a team of metahumans fighting off an alien invasion, that's he'd act just as he does on that show. 
 
So I can be picky with what characters do an how they do it. I insist that everything they do should be in character. Which, with characters that are passed around from writer to writer, can be tricky. The way I see it, anything that features someone in character is probably going to be better than something with them out of character. Assuming it's a character I like, of course.

The word "nerd" was created (or at least popularized) by Dr. Seuss, interestingly enough.
 
See, I think the difficulty is in drawing the distinction between nerdiness and fanboyism. Because the way I see it, the real common thread in what everyone is saying is that nerdiness involves a strong commitment to/interest in a particular form, genre or franchise in the popular culture.  
 
The other criteria don't seem to hold up. We could say nerdiness requires the pop culture form to be unpopular or out of the mainstream, but that's kind of silly, since plenty of supposedly nerdy things are part of the mainstream: Batman and Superman are up there with Bugs Bunny in terms of iconic status, Star Wars, Star Trek, and all that good stuff are massively profitable franchises, and video games can pull in more money than Hollywood movies. Now, there's the fact that attitudes change; I read an article once that argued that the reason so many things that were unpopular several decades ago are becoming a part of the mainstream is that the nerds who were fans are the ones who cared enough to work their way into creative industries, so now they're running the joint. 
 
But certainly genres and franchises slipping in and out of popularity can't determine what's nerdy and what's not--if it did we wouldn't be nerds, we'd be hipsters. Likewise, a person can be a casual fan of something that's not super popular/has a cult following and not be a nerd.   
 
Someone said above me that a nerd is someone who can be himself and doesn't care what other people think of them. In a sense I think this rings true, if we're talking about tastes. Some people may gain and lose interest in media as the zeitgeist changes. Nerds are devoted in such a way that their interest stays consistent, irrespective of popular opinion. 
 
Also, one other thing: Nerds seem to generally form communities. There's this idea that nerds are less social than others, but I find that kind of untrue. If it were true, then things like comic conventions (which are essentially just enormous social gatherings) wouldn't exist.

I'm getting a serious Rocky Horror Picture Show vibe from this.  
 
(also, in all fairness, putting them in Wonder Woman's costume-style as well is kinda cheating. funny, though)

The thing about Batman is that even if he isn't the most powerful hero in terms of supernatural abilities, he's the most skilled. So his entire method of fighting crime is built around his particular set of skills, such as his detective work, his stealth, martial arts and ninja-skills, and all that stuff. This is what he does well. So even if he could make himself a power suit or something, that's something he would be less skilled at using. So he'd be more powerful, but less effective. 
 
Also, I don't think this has anything specifically to do with Batman at all. It's really more of a question of, if comics take place in a world where people can get superpowers by natural/scientific/reproducible means, why doesn't everyone get these powers? Or, why doesn't everyone with the resources get these powers? Why is there so much extraordinary technology, yet so few people who have access to it? To be honest, it's just the kind of thing you have to go with; if they had to make perfect sense these universes wouldn't be able to exist at all. 

There are only two I'm sure about right now. First off, Vincent Price, early 50s, as Sinestro. Because I can never really look at Sinestro without thinking of Vincent Price anyway. 
 
The next one is actually an interesting story: I suspected Bela Lugosi might make a good Ra's al Ghul, so I decided to look a bit further into him to see if I was right. As it turns out, in 1932 Lugosi did a horror movie called White Zombie (which apparently was also the first feature length zombie movie) in which he plays an evil voodoo master. I look further, and what should I discover but this: 
 

I'd like to see Captain Marvel sue The Flash over the use of his logo, since Captain Marvel wears yellow lightning bolt on a red shirt, and the Golden Age Flash pretty much wore a yellow lightning bolt on a red shirt. 
 
Although it is interesting to wonder how much people in-universe try to capitalize on the images of super heroes/villains. For example, in the DC universe there's a nightclub/gentleman's club called "Superior's" with dancers who dress in sexy versions of the outfits of costumed characters. Or, what about characters capitalizing off their own likenesses? I know there was an episode of the Justice League animated series where Flash got into trouble for being the mascot of some energy bar thing. And I'm pretty sure I've read something (I'm not sure what) where I've seen a billboard in the background with Booster Gold on it. 
 
Also, another interesting thing: There's a Batman comic originally from the early 40s I read in which Batman and Robin go into a movie theater that Two-Face is robbing, and the movie that's being shown is a Superman movie. So, this raises the question 1) do people in this universe make fictional movies about the exploits of heroes, 2) did Superman himself appear in a movie, or 3) were Superman and Batman not presumed to exist as real people in the same universe at this point in DC Comics history? If anyone could help me out with this, that'd be great, since I have no idea.

I think not having our heroes react to trauma in the same way as some real people might is an acceptable break from reality. Beyond some of them having magical powers, comic heroes are also defined by their superhuman bravery, courage, resolve, and various other character traits that most people only have in much smaller quantities. Characters like Batman have enough emotional baggage, which adds to the depth and complexity to stories, but I think giving characters psychological baggage as well, and limiting their ability to function, would just detract from stories rather than adding to them, even if it is realistic. 
 
Not that I'm saying it's something that should never be explored. It would be interesting to see, if handled well. But I think that for a good majority of heroes, it would be a bad idea.