Stan Lee recently announced that he just created the first gay superhero. The character’s name is Thom Creed, a high school basketball player who hides his sexuality and superpowers. Kind of like a superhuman Zac Efron in High School Musical.

Stan Lee is awesome but the guy cannot have that bad a memory. Of course, there have been many gay superheroes over the past 30 years or so, but he’s probably saying that his is the first because the others aren’t super-well known. Well, here are just a few gay and lesbian heroes to geek out over:

Northstar (X-Men) – Considered to be among the first gay superheroes to come out of the telephone booth, Northstar is a super-fast mutant in the X-Men universe, and has been a member of both the X-Men and Alpha Flight, a Canadian superhero team. In the late 80′s, Northstar contracted a ‘mysterious illness’ — it was going to be revealed as AIDS, but Marvel was really homophobic at the time. So the illness was explained as the result of him being away from his homeland too long because, I’m not making this up folks, Northstar was actually a magical fairy. Thankfully they retconned all of that, so now he’s just a gay mutant, no Tinkerbell wings required.

Who are the other 4? Find out at MadAtoms.com.