Hugh Sheridan writes,

Jonathan W. Gray moderated a panel called "Race & Sexuality – a Conversation" with panelists Ta-Nehisi Coates, Tee "Vixen" Franklin and Steve Orlando at New York Comic Con on Thursday night.

Gray started by asking Coates whether he has been surprised by the overwhelmingly positive reaction to his work on Black Panther and to the Midnight Angels characters in particular?

Coates said he "can't always tell" as he is never sure if the reactions online – positive and negative – are just the same 20 people that love or the same 20 people that hate everything he does.

When he got the Black Panther job he went out and bought "a shit load of comics" – and he thought "hey this is great – I'm basically just getting paid to read a shitload of comics".

Coates says that he has important to him to have a traditional approach to continuity – he read comics in the late 80s early 90s when there would be asterisks in the stories that referred to back issues and this was "before Wikipedia" when the only way you could look the stuff up was to find the old issues. He said he "used to love that".

When he was offered the series there was an opportunity to do a reboot and start the character over due to the Secret Wars event, but he was not interested in that – he wants his work to "fit in snugly with past series" and that philosophically he thinks it's important to say "history matters, what happened matters"

Regarding the Midnight Angels, when he started researching the character he found that most of the male characters in Black Panther's world had been killed off, so it was natural for him to focus on the remaining women –such as his mother-in-law and the Dora Milaje

Past series had largely presented the Dora Milaje "through the eyes of T'Challa". But Coates is "interested in their perspective" as people who have "basically given up their lives" to act as "bodyguards for one man". He was fascinated by them calling T'Challa "beloved" – but what about "their love for themselves or each other?".

This led him to the idea of two Dora that fall in love, but try to suppress their feelings.

He says that he didn't approach the idea with the intention of increasing the book's diversity – it just happened naturally. That in dealing with such characters he needs to constantly "check himself" for "certain writing tendencies" that he has and that he tries to make the relationship as grounded, real and non-sensationalistic as possible.

Gray asked Steve Orlando about how it was that he manages to do "audacious queer comics at such a mainstream publisher"

Orlando replied that he expected some discomfort when he began to work for DC but that he has been "surprised" how easy it has been –his editor is also gay, which helps. He tries to take an approach with his series that "no one can argue with" and that he doesn't have any of his character do "anything you wouldn't see Dick Grayson or Green Arrow do in their comics". In fact he remembers reading Kevin Smith's run on Green Arrow when he was young, and the writer had "Black Canary going down on Green Arrow" so there is quite a scope for what is acceptable and "people forget that".

Tee Franklin talked about how she is a queer, disabled black woman and she was sick of waiting to see people like he being depicted by others in comics "If you want something done right, just do it yourself" she said.

She then started to say "what Mr. Coates said earlier…"

"Please don't call me Mr. – I'd rather you just went ahead and mispronounced my name" he interrupted to audience laughter.

"What my homey over here just said …" she continued as she agreed with his thoughts on diversity – saying it shouldn't be forced – that these characters should not be defined by the fact that they are different. She also expressed her frustration with mainstream publishers – that if for instance you pitch a series featuring a "teenage bulimic who cut herself" – most publishers will shrink from that as it just seems too much or too heavy. So self-publishing or small publishers are often the only way to get these series out.

Gray asked Coates about what is next with Black Panther?

Coates says he had 12 scripts written up before the first issue was even published. He sent them out to some friends who were positive but they all said "man that jailbreak scene!" was really the highlight. He said that Aneka and Ayo "really grabbed people". Roxane Gay's World of Wakanda series will "really focus on them" and they will remain prominent in his series because the reaction to them has been so good.

Coates talked about the fact that he had to be "constantly vigilant" about how the gay couple are shown in the comic, that there had been a surprising amount of talk about the "appropriate amount of underboob" and it takes a "shocking amount of work to make sure that the depiction is as you intended" what he is really trying to avoid is any chance he could fall into clichéd straight-male fantasy depiction of a lesbian relationship.

Steve Orlando was asked about his Virgil series, which featured a gay black Jamaican as its protagonist. Orlando is white and American – how did he come to this story?

Orlando explained that idea came from the media whirlwind that surrounded the release of Quentin Tarantino' Django Unchained film. "So many said it was risky" but Orlando was disappointed after watching the movie – "it could have been a lot bolder"

He said that it shouldn't have been controversial – "if you disagree with the idea that racism is bad" then "you are an asshole". The movie would have been truly bold "if Django was looking for his husband" rather than his wife.

This idea of "queer revenge fiction" led to Virgil and has powered his work ever since – "every book I've written, I'm embarrassed to admit, is basically Die Hard". He thinks there is no reason you can't take that kind of story "and be queer".

Orlando also said he does want straight writers to understand the weight and responsibility of writing queer characters. That there are some stories that non-gay writers should not tell – "if you are a straight guy from Iowa don't try and tell a coming out story – that's ours" .

Orlando emphasized that writer's should understand "where they can go and where you can't" when they are dealing with diverse characters. For instance, though Virgil is about a black Jamaican and there are loads of slurs in the book "none of them involve race"

The panel opened up to questions from the audience – what is the panel's view of the state of diversity in comics?

Coates talked about how Roxane Gay is the first black woman to write for Marvel Comics "that's good, but it tells you something"

The moderator asked about some of the backlash to the hiring of Gay for the project.

Franklin expressed her sympathy with the reaction "it felt shady" – "no shade" to Gay but "it felt wrong" that such a high profile job was being given to someone with no previous comics credits when there are plenty of qualified black women in independent comics who have been working hard waiting for such an opportunity (Franklin said she herself was not interested in working for the major publishers at the moment)

Coates disagreed, saying that by that token it could be argued that he should not be writing Black Panther himself as "he came from outside", had no previous comics credits and there are plenty of black established comic writers who should be writing the book.

The moderator interjected that the problem was possibly in the "structural issues of the pipeline" of new projects. That when something is successful, editors want to repeat that success and they ask creator's "hey do you have any friends" who might be able to do similar work.

Another questioner talked about Romany depictions in comics and about they are routinely referred to as "Gypsies – a racist term". The questioner mentioned Doctor Doom, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver – a dictator, a crazy witch and a sociopath – all bad stereotypes and all Romany.

Coates said "I'm just a writer – I just control my little corner of the universe and try and make sure that stuff doesn't happen in my part"

Steve Orlando said that it's up to individual creators to "operate in their own sphere – create characters that don't fit those stereotypes, dispel stereotypes by showing people stories which upend them.

Ta-Nehisi Coates talked about when how he felt when he was growing up that Marvel Comics was the most diverse media he could find. Where on TV could you find something like Luke Cage back then? Or having a black woman leader like in X-Men – "it made him feel at home" and that he felt affirmation that "you exist in the world and you are represented" when he read those stories. However when he hears people argue that increased depictions of diversity will make people more accepting he is not so confidant, as he is "ambivalent" about "arts ability to really change people".

The final questioner asked Tee Franklin about how she got interested in comics?

She said she was "locked in a closet with some issues" by her cousin when he had a girlfriend calling over. But the comic that really got her hooked involved Ms. Marvel -"I'm showing my age when I say it's the original one – Carol Danvers"

The particular comic was the one which revealed that Carol Danvers had been abused and raped (Avengers Annual #11 by Chris Claremont and Michael Golden). Franklin had been through some traumas herself and she "couldn't handle it; but Carol could handle it and just did" and that somehow made things easier for her.

"That book is why I'm here today – like I mean why how I'm still alive; It saved my life."