Superheroes That Are Openly LGBTQ+

In October 2019, the premiere of the CW's Batwoman made history. Set in the same Gotham City more well-known for caped crusaders like Batman and Robin, Batwoman is the first superhero TV show whose lead character is an openly gay woman. 

Considering it's taken until 2019 for this kind of landmark — particularly in a pop culture landscape that's increasingly crowded with superhero stuff — you could hardly be blamed if you didn't think superhero comics and other media had that many LGBTQ+ heroes. But the truth is that the writers of superhero adventures have been making strides ever since the '90s to make the world of capes a more diverse one when it comes to sexual and gender identities. Sometimes those strides have been too slow and sometimes the introductions of LGBTQ+ characters aren't handled as well as they could've been. Regardless there's a fair chance — particularly if you're not familiar with the comics — that there are more LGBTQ+ superheroes in popular media than you realize. 

On the small and big screens, as well as in the panels, here are many of the LGBTQ+ superheroes saving the world for all of us.

In 1992, Marvel Comics made history with its first openly gay superhero. In Alpha Flight #106, during a battle with the World War II era superhero Major Mapleleaf, Northstar admits that he's gay. Shortly after the fight, he opens up to the world at large, and his coming out is on the front page of the Canadian newspapers. 

Northstar's visibility in Marvel Comics has had its ups and downs ever since. He eventually left Alpha Flight for the more well-known X-Men. Northstar was a teacher at Xavier's Institute and was famously murdered (and later resurrected by the Hand) by a mind-controlled Wolverine in 2005's Wolverine #25. More recently Northstar and his sister Aurora joined the mutants of Marvel — heroes and villains and everything in between — on the island haven of Krakoa as part of Marvel's Dawn of X revamp of the X-Men. 

Still, while he may not be a Marvel A-lister, his 1992 coming out issue wasn't the last time the character made history. Same-sex marriage became legal in the New York of Marvel and the real world in 2011, and Northstar and his partner Kyle were wed in Marvel's first same-sex superhero nuptials in 2012's Astonishing X-Men #51.

Like Harley Quinn, Renee Montoya made her first appearance not in the comics, but in the '90s cartoon Batman: The Animated Series. But it would be over a decade before the former Gotham detective would become a bona fide superhero. 

Montoya's first appearance in the comics was in 1992's Batman #475, in which she's introduced working with Harvey Bullock in Gotham's Major Crimes Unit. She earned much more of the spotlight in 2002 with Gotham Central — a comic focusing on the Gotham City Police Department and how they operate in city full of supervillains. Fed up with the force's corruption, Montoya quits the GCPD and falls on hard times. She drinks habitually and loses her girlfriend Daria. The vigilante Vic Sage, a.k.a. the Question, recruits Montoya in the series 52 to help him fight the criminal organization Intergang. By the time the series ends, Sage succumbs to cancer. After mourning Sage, Montoya takes up the mantle of the Question herself. 

In spite of a couple of revamps and reboots, Montoya has remained the Question in the comics — in spite of Vic Sage showing up alive and well in the 2019 miniseries Event Leviathan. More recently, Montoya has helped Superman's wife in the espionage thriller miniseries Lois Lane. Outside of the comics, Rosie Perez brought Montoya to life in the 2020 film Birds of Prey, though it's still not known if this version of Montoya will likewise become the Question.

When the DC Universe streaming service revived the animated series Young Justice, its new season introduced Halo, a hero identifying as gender neutral. 

Before gaining their powers, Halo is a girl named Gabrielle in the fictional nation of Qurac. After Gabrielle dies and is fused with the soul of a Motherbox — an advanced living technology from the planet New Genesis — they become an entirely new person, Halo, with a set of mysterious and extraordinary powers including the ability to revive from multiple fatal injuries. 

When they join the Outsiders, Halo takes the name Violet Harper and enters a relationship with the young hero Geo-Force. Soon after, Halo comes out as gender neutral to Geo-Force, saying that while their body is female, they cannot say they can identify as either male or female. Geo-Force accepts this and clearly still wants to be with them, though eventually it's Halo who leaves Geo-Force after the latter publicly executes his own uncle for conspiring against him and his family.

Sara Lance is one of the earliest characters to be introduced in the Arrowverse, though when we first see her and Oliver Queen as lovers aboard the doomed Queen's Gambit in the first season of Arrow, Sara's played by a different actor. 

Presumed drowned after the Gambit's shipwreck, Sara Lance survives and is taken prisoner aboard the ship Amazo – property of the mad scientist Dr. Ivo, who trains Sara to become his assistant. After reuniting with Oliver and being presumed drowned a second time, Sara is rescued by Nyssa al Ghul of the League of Assassins and recruited into the secret organization. Nyssa and Sara become lovers. 

Sara has had both male and female partners since returning to Starling City in Arrow. Sara's since become one of the regular characters on Legends of Tomorrow and took over the Captain's chair of the series' time and space ship, the Waverider. She's also had brief flings with Oliver Queen and John Constantine, and is currently in a long-term relationship with Ava Sharpe — the Legends' Time Bureau contact and a genetically engineered clone from the 23rd century.

America Chavez is a lesbian raised by a gay couple — and she's also one of Marvel's most powerful superheroes. She's super strong, she can fly, she has super speed, and she's nearly invulnerable. America's most unique ability is the power to travel between dimensions, and in certain cases she can travel through time as well. When her series America launched in 2017, she became the first LGBTQ+ person of color to lead her own ongoing title in the history of Marvel Comics.

Originally known as Miss America and first appearing in the 2011 miniseries Vengeance, America would later join the Young Avengers. She gained a lot more attention during the 2015 line-wide event Secret Wars when she was part of the all-female A-Force. Along with her solo series, America joined the Ultimates and eventually became the team's leader. More recently she was part of a new incarnation of the West Coast Avengers, led by the group's founding member Hawkeye. 

The CW's Arrowverse — like the universe of DC's comics — consists of a vast multiverse of various alternate realities. One of those realities is Earth-X, where the Nazis won World War II. The Earth-X alternates of the Arrowverse's heroes tend to be villains serving the Reich on Earth-X: like Overgirl instead of Supergirl, and Dark Arrow rather than Green Arrow. 

In the 2017 CW crossover Crisis on Earth-X, characters from The Flash, Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow, and Supergirl are brought to Earth-X. Most are freed from a concentration camp by the Freedom Fighters — The Ray and Leo Snart, a.k.a. Citizen Cold (though his Earth-1 counterpart is known as Captain Cold). We eventually learn that Ray and Leo are in love, and that their sexuality made them a target of the Nazis. 

In season 4 of The Flash, the heroes ask for Citizen Cold's help in transporting a metahuman to A.R.G.U.S. Upon arriving on Earth-1 and reuniting with his old comrades, Leo is met with cheers and congratulations when he announces that back on Earth-X, he and the Ray were getting married.

Miguel Santos, a.k.a. Living Lightning, boasts one of the most unique coming out scenes in the history of comics. 

Every now and then an obscure parody version of the heroic Avengers — the Great Lakes Avengers — make an appearance in Marvel's comics. First appearing in 1989's West Coast Avengers #46, the team has members with unpromising names like Flatman, Leather Boy, Tippy Toe, and Mister Immortal (whose only power is that he keeps coming back to life after being killed). In 2005, they enjoyed their own miniseries, GLA. In GLA #2, they go on a recruitment drive and what follows is page after page of nothing but more well-known superheroes telling them "No" or less polite variations. Finally, Living Lightning not only says yes to Flatman but says he's been meaning to join the GLA "for some time." When Flatman tells him the Great Lakes Avengers would be honored to have him, Living Lightning responds, "'Great Lakes Avengers'? Oh, sorry. I thought you were the Gay/Lesbian Alliance," and flies away. If nothing else, it manages to be perhaps the funniest coming out superhero scene, without getting the laughs at the LGBTQ+ character's expense.

We don't know a lot about Living Lightning's relationships and haven't seen a lot of the hero over the years. He appeared most recently as part of the large team of Avengers assembled for the 2018 event Avengers: No Surrender. 

The third season of CW's Supergirl made a huge stride in LGBTQ+ representation by introducing TV's first transgender superhero to audiences. Nia Nal, a.k.a. Dreamer, is a trans woman of mixed human and alien heritage who inherits her powers after her mother's death. 

Nia's mother Isabel was from the planet Naltor and used the title of Dreamer before Nia. Naltorian Dreamers are women of extraordinary abilities, including often receiving precognitive visions in their dreams. A Naltorian Dreamer's power passes to her daughters, so when Nia's mother dies, Nia is initially confused about the Dreamer abilities beginning to manifest in her because she wasn't biologically born female. We eventually learn Isabel always knew it would be Nia, and not her sister Maeve, who would inherit the powers. Sadly, while up to this point Nia's family has appeared to be nothing but accepting towards her transgender identification, the revelation that she won't inherit her mother's abilities cause a lot of ugliness to boil out of Maeve. 

Dreamer has been a close friend and ally to Supergirl since obtaining her abilities, and she's enjoyed a somewhat rocky romantic relationship with Supergirl's ally from the future, Brainy (a.k.a. Brainiac from the Legion of Super-Heroes). 

October 2019 saw the premiere of CW's Batwoman. Set in the same narrative as so-called "Arrowverse" shows like Arrow, The Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow, the new series stars Ruby Rose as the titular hero. Behind the mask is Kate Kane, cousin to Bruce Wayne. Kate returns to Gotham, learns her cousin is the Dark Knight (explaining why both have been missing for three years), and takes up his crimefighting cause in his absence. One of the more noteworthy differences between Batwoman and other superhero TV shows and movies is that, in a crowded field, Ruby Rose is playing the first openly lesbian superhero in a leading role. 

The character first shows up in the Arrowverse in the 2018 crossover Elseworlds. In the following year's massive crossover, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Batwoman takes a prominent role in the conflict as the multiverse's Paragon of Courage. 

This version of Batwoman was first introduced in the comics toward the end of the 2005-6 line-wide event Infinite Crisis, though at first fans weren't sure who she was. She soon enjoyed her own solo series and became a prominent part of the Bat Family, though Batwoman and Batman don't often get along. Shortly after DC's 2016 relaunch, Batman invited Batwoman to lead his new group of "Batmen," in Detective Comics, though he gave his cousin her walking papers after she killed the reformed villain Clayface. 

The romantic relationship between the mutant heroes Shatterstar and Rictor is one that was hinted at for years but didn't become explicit until 2009. 

The two heroes met in '90s issues of X-Force. They begin as teammates and close friends, with things slowly reaching beyond the platonic. One of the first big hints came in 1994's X-Force #34, when we learn Shatterstar has learned Spanish just so he can talk to Rictor without anyone else nosing in on the conversation. The following year when Rictor decides to return to Mexico to spend time with his family, the news is crushing to Shatterstar, who says things like "What am I going to do without you?" when he brings his teammate to the airport in Cable #22. 

In spite of all the strong hints, it took until 2009 for an on-panel kiss between the heroes in X-Factor #45. The pair were regularly portrayed as being a couple since, though in more recent issues of Iceman, readers learned the two had broken up. 

In 2019's Avengers #26, Marvel revealed its Earth's very first gay couple included a member of its prehistoric Avengers. 

Ever since Marvel's line-wide Legacy relaunch, Avengers readers have gotten snapshots of a version of the team that existed in prehistoric times. Occasionally, Avengers writer Jason Aaron has strayed from the present to give us the origin story of one of these B.C. Avengers, and Avengers #26 introduces us to that early team's Starbrand. 

Early in the comic we meet a same-sex caveman couple living in a lush area they call the Garden. Through the narration we learn both left their respective tribes because they felt things they knew their tribes would never understand. Sadly, by the end of the issue, one of the cavemen has died at the hands of the villainous Deviants, while the other, Vnn, becomes Earth's second Starbrand — complete with a physical transformation that makes him look like a red-skinned version of the Hulk. Like the greener hero, Starbrand is filled with a seemingly limitless rage — though in Starbrand's case his anger revolves around the death of his beloved. When we later see him with his fellow prehistoric Avengers, we learn he almost never speaks, and mentally appears stuck in the moment he cradled his dead lover's body as their Garden burned all around them.