It seems the internet’s collective fury has made its point. Chris Sprouse, the artist tapped to draw the inaugural storyline of the upcoming Adventures of Superman digital comic penned by irrational homophobe and enemy of all comic books Orson Scott Card, has withdrawn from drawing the comic citing the controversy surrounding the writer and the issue.
“It took a lot of thought to come to this conclusion, but I’ve decided to step back as the artist on this story… The media surrounding this story reached the point where it took away from the actual work, and that’s something I wasn’t comfortable with. My relationship with DC Comics remains as strong as ever and I look forward to my next project with them.”
As do we. We’ve opined several times on this issue, both here on BSR and including this writeup by Swankmotron in City Weekly, and this is, in my opinion, a good resolution to this situation.
Because of Sprouse’s exit, OSC’s story will be pushed back many issues (or perhaps shelved “indefinitely,” allowing DC to save some face without having to come out and say, “Yeah, we fired him.”) and allow the launch of the digital-first series without the tinge of possible bigotry that otherwise would have accompanied it. This was partially my point when I originally wrote about this– why, among the galaxy of legitimate stars DC could have pen the initial story, would you choose a second-rate hack like Card? He hasn’t had a good idea in 20 years and has a long and ignominious career in the meantime of ruining otherwise great comics titles (Ultimate Iron Man is my favorite of these bugaboos– a story so bad it made me give up reading both Iron Man and Ultimate universe comics for a while, and was ultimately retconned out of existence in the Ultimate Universe built on ultra-continuity)
DC is being equally suave in their response: “We fully support, understand and respect Chris’s decision to step back from his Adventures of Superman assignment. Chris is a hugely talented artist, and we’re excited to work with him on his next DC Comics project. In the meantime, we will re-solicit the story at a later date when a new artist is hired.”
Also, a big win for internet activism, whose petitions to DC and threats of boycotts by local stores who were going to refuse to carry the print edition obviously got through to someone, even if that someone was just Chris Sprouse.
But really, this is a good day for all of us. For humanity, for Superman fans, for comics fans.
big h/t to USA Today for this story.