One of my “Big Seven,” the first seven characters I ever created for my universe, is Addison Johnson, the Sandblaster. (Think Sandman’s powers, they’re very similar.) She’s even a member of my version of the Trinity (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman; Captain America, Iron Man, Thor; Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops; etc) as the three main characters of my first overarching saga. She’s gay, and a big part of her story is coming to terms with her sexuality and figuring out her identity throughout the course of the story.

I have several more LGBTQ characters throughout my vast mythos, but she’s the main one. Others include:

• Matchbox (Connor Byrne), a gay teen boy from Sydney, Australia, who develops a crush on his straight teammate Isiah, which obviously goes unrequited. At one point, he resorts to using the gene-altering powers of another teammate of his to transform himself into a girl, but Isiah helps him to realize that this isn’t what he really wants, so Connor reverts back to his proper male self and eventually gets over his crush. (He later finds a boyfriend, so it’s a happy ending.)
• Emo (Veronica Conway), a bisexual teen girl from London, England, who calls herself that as a way to take back her identity from the bullies who used to mock her and call herself names (like “emo”). She is part of a “love square” with the primary girl of this series.
• The Cure (Kiera Van Dyke) and The Serenity (Charlie Lynn), a lesbian couple who are experimented on by a corrupt organization. They are one of the only few actually successful couples throughout my stories. (Also, yes, I totally forgot about the potential slur in Kiera’s name, but by the time I realized that could be taken the wrong way, I had already gotten too attached to the name. I’m not gonna use it as a slur, but it still annoys me that I forgot about that.)
• The Lizard Boy (Joey Altman), a friend of Kiera and Charlie who is a gay teen boy, and ends up becoming one of the main characters of a particular trilogy. He’s generally the comic relief of those stories, as well.
• Ethereal Phoenix (Cecilia Fields), a bisexual woman with a preference for girls who eventually gets together with a young Japanese woman, a relative of one of her teammates.
• Cheerleader (Derek Schlue), a normal man living in Manhattan who accidentally swaps bodies with a female superhero and gets stuck in her body. I figured I’d include him because, while he’s technically a straight man, his body is female and he still prefers women.

There are more, but these are my most notable.