We construct families of smoothly irreducible embeddings of surfaces in the 4-sphere, corresponding to a range of normal Euler numbers. We also describe a procedure to produce equivariant symplectic sums of real symplectic 4-manifolds. For explicit real symplectic involutions on pairs of symplectic 4-manifolds the conditions for the existence of equivariant symplectic sums can be detected combinatorially. Such sums are sought for potential new constructions of families of irreducible knotted surfaces in fixed four manifolds.