It almost took on a different place in New Yorkers' hearts after that, so to have that image coincidentally be on the cover of the book, I think for a lot of people in New York especially made it a little bit of a totem, which I always found kind of moving. When the World Trade Center went down, the Empire State Building once again became the tallest building in New York. So many people told me they bought the book right after 9/11 and that part of what attracted them to it, made them want to read it and carry it around, was that image of the Empire State Building.

It had the Empire State Building on its cover, a sort of old picture postcard of the Empire State Building lit up, from the 1930s. The book came out at the end of September in 2000 and just a little under a year later, the paperback came out. One of the things I think about now is a moment about a year after the book came out. Is there anything else you want to say about this 20th anniversary moment? It's just slow and by fits and starts, the progress, but I do think it's better than it used to be. And that's still very much present in comic books too. Whatever it might be, there's always this kind of core contingent of increasingly toxic, misogynist, homophobic so-called fan out there. Whether it's representations of women in more empowered roles than they had been in action films, or the role of, and the presentation of, women in hip hop music. There's still obstacles, and there's definitely, always to this day, in some ways I think a more militarized component of fandom that is sort of vehemently opposed to anything like that, not just in comics but in films. But, I think there's still a lot of conflict around it. Increasingly, I think you see more diversity, much more, than you did certainly when I started writing Kavalier & Clay. There has been a lot of great work done by queer creators and creators of color in the past 20 years in the graphic novel field, and in mainstream comics too. There's more representation, unquestionably, and there's more openness, and there's more liberty on the part of creators to tell queer stories, to look at the full spectrum of human sexuality through comics, the way it is also much more possible to do in other popular media than it used to be. I think the situation more closely resembles the situation in other popular media, for better or worse.

How much do you feel like that has changed? Here you have a very affectionate and egalitarian friendship between Sam, who is gay, and his straight best friend, Joe, which I don't recall seeing much before 2000 in mainstream fiction. You'd already written two novels with queer characters, or men questioning their sexuality - The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys.

The adventures of kavalier & clay