What is it about these particular characters that made them the right candidates for True Believers? Are your fans an inspiration for creating new characters, or is it vice versa, where fans are becoming more vocally thirsty for quality female characters as places like Marvel show them more and more of the possibilities?



SA: I think it kind of goes hand-to-hand; I don't think one is more powerful than the other. Fundamentally, though, as storytellers, we do have to start with the character, and we do have to start with the story — if there's an interesting perspective there, or an interesting story to tell, that's sort of step one for us. With Captain Marvel, for example, when Kelly Sue wanted to do a Chuck Yeager version of Carol Danvers, that was really fascinating for us. And then the next step is evaluating what that means — what that means for a new generation of comics readers, and how she needs to be perceived, foremost physically, which is where the costume change came up.

So each of these characters, particularly in [True Believers], has this unique identity and checks in to a very different kind of mission. I think that's something that every kind of reader can champion in their own way, because of the fact that they have these distinct stories and drives and motivations for themselves. You guys can go in and like Captain Marvel, or Thor — or you can like both, you could like every single comic that's in here. I think that reflects the content diversity that Marvel has, and that's sort of what is working for us.

As people started becoming a lot more vocal — and you can thank social media — what's really cool about the comics industry is that as big as it gets it's still a small community in some senses. We're hearing what people are excited about, and we are definitely responding to it. At the same time, we need people to be buying those books. I remember one of the first Women Of Marvel panels that I had; the questions that were posed to us were 'Why aren't there more female-led titles, what's going on?' And my response to them was 'Look, that's what we want, we want more female-led titles, but unfortunately [at that time] no one was going into the stores and buying them. People want things for free, and we can't fundamentally run a business like that. We need you guys to be vocal, but we also need you to vote with your dollars.' And that's really what's happened in the past few years, aside from the dialogue about it: People are buying and reading our content, so we can make more of it.