Hey Tom, Where are all the gay men at? Or just LGBT characters in general? I appreciate Marvel's efforts at diversity but as a gay man I feel under represented in all forms of media

I think that’s because you are underrepresented in all forms of media. But hopefully that’s changing as time marches on.

As I’m sure you are aware, there are an assortment of LGBT characters scattered throughout the Marvel Universe. Most of them tend to have grown out of team series, which I think gets to the heart of what you’re asking about. There is at present no Marvel solo series starring a LGBT character.

I think that has to do both with not having found the right character who could potentially hold their own series, combined with the additional pressure that any LGBT-led comic is going to face. Because you are underrepresented, each representation becomes more crucial, and more about the demographic as a whole than about a specific individual. And that’s a tough place to exist as a series. The sort of outcry that might follow if we treated such a character in the same way we treat Thor or Iron Man or Captain America is a daunting proposition—because an iron Man story or a Thor story can simply be about those characters, whereas the same story about a LGBT character is interpreted as a commentary on the LGBT community as a whole, positive or negative.

I think it’s only a matter of time before we get there. but I’d want to do so with a committed creative team who were invested in the material and who were prepared to deal with the sort of harassment that, for example, Rick Remender experienced when some people didn’t like his CAPTAIN AMERICA stories—only more so, and more regularly. And I think that if we foul it up, if the book isn’t as good as you’d want it to be, regardless of its orientation, that would do a whole lot more damage to the movement than the average title launch that doesn’t catch on.

So it’s maybe a bit of a cop-out, but that’s how I see it at the moment. We’ll get there, we just don’t yet have the MS MARVEL situation for a LGBT-led series, and I wouldn’t want to go out with anything we felt less confident in. We’ll continue to feature LGBT characters throughout the Marvel Universe in various titles, and hopefully the right opportunity will present itself sooner rather than later.