- by
Stephen LeBlanc
- Tuesday, August 18, 2026
Twelve years in the making, the independent graphic novel “The Queen’s Heroes,” about six LGBTQ superheroes, is based in part on San Francisco residents and locations. It is available now as a 678-page digital edition and will arrive as a large-format print version, the “Founder Collector Edition,” in San Francisco in September.
Creator Fernando Velez will be in San Francisco that month to introduce and promote the book alongside a slate of companion tabletop games, and will be at a booth at the Castro Street Fair on October 4 for a public meet and greet and to show and sell his work.
Velez, who has moved several times during the making of the book, is currently living in Mexico City. He wrote, designed, and financed the book largely alone, working with a small, rotating group of Venezuela-based artists over more than a decade.
As with any superhero, Velez has an origin story, which he tells in detail in the prologue to “The Queen’s Heroes” and in the pages of his magazine and other materials on his website. In the phone interview, Velez told the Bay Area Reporter that as a kid growing up in Puerto Rico, superhero comics were not the escape he hoped they would be.
“I never found characters like me” Velez said. “I didn’t feel…secure. You know what I mean? I wanted to be not so invisible.”
Over the past 12 years, he has dedicated his substantial creative energy to correcting that invisibility, building a mythical universe centered on queer heroes as humanity’s only hope.
Complex tale
A review of the digital edition of “The Queen’s Heroes” reveals a complex tale equal to Velez’s ambition. Its artwork is dense and cinematic, rendered in richly saturated color with dramatic, sometimes explosive, linework. It is a beautiful and fitting visual match for the story it illustrates, an extended, generations-spanning struggle between the Queen’s Heroes and the forces working to destroy them, told over 12 different episodes.
The story has been with him, he said, since he was a teenager filling notebooks in Yauco, on Puerto Rico’s southwest coast. At the time of his earlier interview with the B.A.R., this universe was illustrated in “Class6,” a digital episodic graphic series about six queer superheroes drawn from across the community.
The novel’s central question, “Is humanity worth saving?” is put to readers as directly as it is to the heroes. “I don’t think any other superhero universe has dared to ask that question,” he said, “especially from the marginalized heroes who now have to save them.”
Velez traces it back to his own adolescence.
“I was coming out, and people didn’t accept me. They took me to religious camps. They tried to change me. And I was like, if this queer kid has power, would he save our world? I wouldn’t say he would. I’d try to erase him but he’s still with me, for so long.”
Velez has built a short public survey around the same question.
“We’re living in such extraordinary times, when good and bad are rising stronger at the same time,” he said. “I wanted to create a historical record of how we feel at this point in humanity.”
Velez has described his last 12 years as largely solitary, single-minded work fueled by an unwillingness to stop even when he intended to take a break. “I love creating. I love writing,” he said. “I get a new idea almost every week.”
The original series and the new book feature Queen Izaar, an immortal drag superhero created to save humanity. The character was modeled after San Francisco icon Sister Roma, and Episode 6 of “Class6” featured a gathering at the Lookout Bar.
As he explained to the B.A.R. in 2022, “When I first moved to San Francisco, she was always there, supporting the community and using her voice to advocate and fundraise.”
Heroic homage
The rest of Velez’s original six superheroes were created as an homage to various cultures within the LGBTQ community. Neveah, a transgender superhero, is introduced as a homeless teenager cast out by her father. Jaseri, a lesbian hero, survives violence within her own family before discovering she descends from a nearly extinguished human lineage. Kian, Nami, and Eron round out the six as the group’s bear, twink, and leather heroes.
In “The Queen’s Heroes,” Velez incorporated the 252 pages of the earlier episodic stories with 370 new pages to create an expanded, unified graphic novel. He integrated the old stories with the new by keeping the drawings, but editing the text.
“Once a page is drawn, I can’t change an expression or a mood,” he explained. “I can only change what’s written around it.”
Velez says his work on what became “The Queen’s Heroes” universe was made possible by a string of encouraging friends and mentors met across two decades, and by Kraven Magazine, a fashion and queer culture publication he created years before he fully conceived of the heroes.
“The Queen’s Heroes” sits alongside other superhero stories centered on queer characters. British writer Joe Glass’s “The Pride,” which began in 2014 as a crowdfunded digital series before landing at Dark Horse Comics as a print omnibus, follows a team of LGBTQ superheroes. Both projects share an origin in independent, community-centered crowdfunding rather than a publisher’s green light.
Collaborative art
Velez designs the rough illustration layouts himself and writes the text, while drawing and hand lettering are done by professional artists. He stated the finished book required 10 to 13 artists over 12 years, led by a Venezuela-based penciler he has worked with for more than a decade.
“Doris is my main penciler,” he said. “She lives inside my mind. Somehow she always gets exactly what I want.”
The Founder Collector Edition of “The Queen’s Heroes,” a limited print run in a larger collector format with fabric hardcover, dust jacket, and slipcase, is priced at $150. The Digital Collector Edition, listed at $24.99, is available on the website in English, and soon also in Spanish.
“It’s my language, it’s my people,” Velez said of the decision to publish in Spanish. According to Velez, the earlier “Class6” print run of 3,000 copies has sold out through a mix of event appearances and online sales.
‘The Queen’s Heroes’ Founder Collector Edition, $150. Digital Collector Edition, $24.99. Meet the Fernando Velez at the Castro Street Fair, Oct. 4.
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