Catwoman’s interest in women is only a recent development. Since her narratives had often flirted with same-sex relationships, reading her official “coming-out” kiss with Eiko Hasigawa this year in Catwoman #39 didn’t quite feel like a coming-out at all, but rather an effortless, leather-clad slink into the LGBT world. Elektra had a lesbian relationship in the Punishermax series, but in her movie, Jennifer Garner's Elektra was only given a relatively platonic, highly eroticized same-sex kiss from Typhoid that seemed to serve the straight male gaze more than anything. Just from watching the clip on YouTube (don’t watch the whole movie, just...don’t), any gay person could tell this scene was directed by a straight guy.

Straight guys, of course, have always been catered to when it comes to superhero narratives. In the landscape of contemporary masculinity, it’s easy to look at the superhero films of the last year or so and see what we’re supposed to regard as a “hero.” The superhero film industry has largely failed to represent women, trans and gender-nonconforming people, and people of color. Though we’ve had some small steps like Michael B. Jordan in the latest Fantastic Four flop, and token female characters in ensemble narratives, like Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, these steps are not nearly big and bold enough.

With Batman v. Superman in production, along with another X-Men and another Captain America, we’re continually led to believe that the archetype of a “hero” is a straight, white, cisgender man with a perfect body, little emotional complexity, and a passion for crushing stuff. As the industry is discovering more and more that the money is in the sequels, it's retelling superhero stories that are easy to universalize rather than reinventing the unsung myths of our queer forebears (and god forbid we come up with an original gay hero). The “riskier” storylines have barely been given thought.

“If you don’t have any queer representations, yet you still have all the hetero-panic about gay people, even as a joke in the mildest way possible, then that’s kind of a failure,” Zan Christensen, founder of Northwest Press — a publisher devoted to putting out LGBT comics — told BuzzFeed News. He discussed how gay people in films often function as the butt of a joke, thrown into background scenes to add edginess.

Ultimately, the case for fully realized queer superheroes goes beyond representation for representation’s sake. Including queer characters in modern-day adventure movies would fundamentally influence the way the next generation thinks about queer people — the same way my own view of the world shifted when I learned a Greek god could have a boyfriend.

“Maybe that is elementary for you and me and for anyone else in the queer community, but for people who are largely isolated—they need that,” said Orlando. “They need to see how we can fall into a society when we’re not this weird other group.”

It’s simple. At a young age, if you see yourself reflected in popular narratives, you feel less like an anomaly. When you see someone like you accomplishing something great, you too feel capable of great things.