Well, we’ll see, as DC Comics has announced a new series to be published (primarily digitally) which will be written, at least in part, by noted outspoken homophobe (and terrible comics writer) Orson Scott Card. The outrage has reached such levels that equal rights activists have begun calling for a boycott of all DC properties. (good luck– though my heart, my signature, and my wallet, is with you)
This is all unfortunate, as DC’s digital expansion of Supes’ universe outside of The New 52 continuity is a great idea– and builds on the success they’ve had with Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight. And they’ve lined up considerable talent to write for the series, including legends Bruce Timm and Marv Wolfman (Joey Esposito at IGN has a full list here). So what is so inexplicable is… why launch with Orson Scott Card?
Regardless of OSC’s irrational homophobia (he claims gayness is the result of sexual abuse or rape) and the considerable amount of time he has put into advocacy on behalf of the most narrow-minded of his views (he is on the board of the National Organization for Marriage and was incredibly involved in the Prop 8 campaign in California), let us put those aside for a moment. Frank Miller has recently gone a little cuckoo politically (or he’s only recently started sharing his opinions with everyone else), but we can enjoy his art on its own merits, right? So let’s simply examine OSC on his art, on his craft.
It is hard to read any of Card’s most recent work without getting pummeled by some incredibly heavy-handed social commentary. Specifically, his most recent works in the Ender series of books and attempts to ret-con warnings about the perils of moral turpitude should just come packaged with a pair of heavy hands and a pamphlet about how God doesn’t want you to be gay.
So that begs the question, what is it that Card brings to the Big Blue (totally not gay) Boy Scout? The snarky folks over at The Gutters offered this:
Now that’s a comic we can all enjoy.
But even beyond his recent work and how irrational homophobia has tainted the legacy of a once-great series of novels, let’s also talk about his work in comics. You may remember Card’s work in the Ender’s Game series of comics, which were good enough. But his most recent work, specifically Ultimate Iron Man was so incredibly awful… (How awful was it?) It was so awful it made me give up on all of the Marvel Ultimate titles and on Iron Man in comics. It wasn’t until Matt Fraction took over and the Stark: Disassembled storyline that I could read it again. That’s how badly Orson Scott Card f@#$ed up one of the best characters in comic books. Indeed, it was so bad that later in the Ultimates universe they completely retconned it all out of existence, saying it had only been the plot of a bad anime about Iron Man. It shows how little respect his fellow authors have for his comics work.
And so even if he repents of his irrational homophobia I will probably never forgive him for the way he buggered poor Tony Stark.
Which brings us back to Superman. I don’t see how DC could change their mind at this point, though it would be great if they did. Rather than an all-out boycott, might I recommend that what we simply do is not buy issues 1 and 2 of the series, then start picking it up at issue #3, sending a message to DC that we support Superman, but we do not support homophobes who use their money to oppress people simply because they are different from them.