Homophobic sci-fi writer Orson Scott Card has signed on to pen a new Superman book for DC Comics, leading to calls for a boycott by LGBT comic-book fans.
Card, the Mormon author of the wildy popular Ender’s Game (which is on track to get a big-screen adaptation), isn’t just against gay marriage: A board member of the National Organization for Marriage, Card has advocated “destroying the government” if it tries to redefine marriage as anything but between one man and one woman.
He also suggested gays could change if they wanted to in an op-ed:
“Same-sex attraction is not a strait jacket; people’s desires change over time; gay people still have choices; a reproductive dysfunction like same-sex attraction is not a death sentence for your DNA or for your desire to have a family in which children grow up with male and female parents to model appropriate gender roles.”
Perhaps most bizarrely, Card wrote a revamp of Hamlet in which the melancholy Dane’s gay dad molests all of Hamlet’s friends and turns them all gay. (One reviewer called Hamlet’s Father “a nightmare of vitriolic homophobia.”)
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
LGBT readers and allies are disappointed DC tapped card to write the first two installments of the new digital-first comic, Adventures of Superman, and are calling on the comics publisher to take action. “We need to let DC Comics know they can’t support Orson Scott Card or his work to keep LGBT people as second-class citizens,” reads a petition on AllOut called for DC to drop the Mormon writer. “They know they’re accountable to their fans, so if enough of us speak out now, they’ll hear us loud and clear.”
Y’know it’s not even that Card is anti-gay that should make DC want to keep him at arm’s length—it’s his bizarre obsession with prepubescent boys and molestation. In a 2004 essay, Card wrote “the dark secret of homosexual society—the one that dares not speak its name—is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse.”
And his Ender’s series is all about a sensitive but brilliant boy who saves humanity from alien insects nicknamed “buggers.”
We’re just saying.
2eo
When I was a bored teenager at college back in 2003 I used to have a hobby of tormenting OSC to the point where he on 2 occasions deleted his own website, the third time it was a friend of mine who just happened to have access to the FTP he used.
Always found Ender’s Game to be a completely trite work of anti sci-fi written by someone not clever enough to work the genre properly.
RSun
As a longtime comic book collector, I am horrified by this. I am writing DC Comics immediately.
Eradik
@RSun: I just did the same. Everyone needs to email, write, call, or whatever they can in addition to the petition.
BChad
This irritates me to no end as an avid DC reader, but I am kind of shocked at the lack of mention that he wrote Ultimate Iron Man for 3 years at Marvel not to mention had comics published there as late as June 2012.
Patrick
If you’re interested in learning more about how awful Orson Scott Card is, I encourage you to check out this article: http://geeksout.org/blogs/jono/dont-see-enders-game
Chad Hunt
My partner is obsessed with comics. I’m sure I will be hearing about this for a week, (he tends to ramble). Thanks a lot DC.
bmwblonde
Card is (sigh, here we go again) first of all a “Moron” — oops MORMON. Secondly, he’s just signed on to write about a rippling-muscled, tough-gentle man wearing tights. Duh. I wonder what his subconscious (or more likely, UN-conscious) motivations are? And look at his photo. Obese, sad and self-satisfied. Same-old, same-old. No big story here. Poor thing.
coreyscorey
I would watch “Hamlet’s Father in a heartbeat. Sounds pretty hot. lol
Orson Scott Card…the GLBT community’s new favorite smut writer. haha. What a joke.
jacomo
sign this https://www.allout.org/en/actions/dccomics-osc