What Orson Scott Card's Superman comic will be like

Ryan Sohmner and Ben Bates imagine the first page of Orson Scott Card's upcoming Superman comic. (Thanks, Neowolf!)

Previously: DC Comics hires anti-gay author Orson Scott Card to write Superman

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Oh cool, now we’re just gonna imagine how awful the people we don’t like are.
- jetfx
  
  Card did actually say that gay marriage would cause the collapse of civilization, so there is absolutely no imagination on our part about how awful he is.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=26109648 Jim Davison
  
  Satire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire
- C W
  
  I don’t need to imagine, I’ve got his words and threats of violent governmental overthrow if gays were given human rights.
- Gerald Mander
  
  Luckily we don’t have to imagine it, we can simply depict it.
- Gilbert Wham
  
  I tend not to spend much time thinking about how awful the people I like are, it tends to be counter-productive.
http://www.legrandbazart.com sigismund

Once again, it’s all froggies fault.
xzzy

The offhand dismissal of global warming was the best part, really.
- Boundegar
  
  Kind of puts a nuance on the whole “science” fiction thing, I guess. At least he’s not a young-Earth creationist yet.
  
  I was a fan back in the 80s when I read the Ender books, but he finally lost me when he wrote the one where a thinly-veiled George Soros unleashes the killbots to wreak liberal havoc.
  - http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
    
    The hilarious thing was that the book was supposed to tie into a videogame which was very a-political.
    
    /edit: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/ShadowComplex
http://www.legrandbazart.com sigismund

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/12/french-gay-marriage-bill
Chuck

I misread Doomsday’s name in the last panel above. (Thus begins a rewrite of an alternate Doomsday character in my head.)
Rider

If people knew the political views and crazy conspiracy that most comic book writers had they would never pick up a comic.

Ditko, Miller, Adams…

The list of whacked out of there mind people in the comics industry is endless.
- euansmith
  
  Ditko… There is no grey… there is only black and white…
  - Bearpaw01
    
    Even people who only see things in black and white are one step ahead of people who only see things in one shade of grey.
    - Quiche de Resistance
      
      There are two kinds of people in the world, people who think the world can be separated into two kinds of people and people who don’t.
- eldritch
  
  I do know the political views and crazy conspiracy theories that most comic book writers hold, and I haven’t ever picked up a comic – at least not any by those sorts of authors.
  
  Why would I pay good money to read mediocre work by authors and artists whom I dislike when I can much more easily read free webcomics with visual and story potential unconstrained by bloated franchises and corporate interests, from authors and artists whom I both like and respect, both for their political views and for who they are as people?
  
  Fuck Ditko. Fuck Miller. Fuck Adams.
  
  Give me Garrity, give me Diaz, give me Cooper, give me Beaton, give me Helmer, give me Maihack, give me Dutton, give me Gorman, give me any of the dozens of other authors I adore for being pleasant, creative, likeable people who put out wonderful, beautiful, amazing work.
  - Rider
    
    Whatever you say.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Fuck Ditko. Fuck Miller. Fuck Adams.
    
    With a little work, you could reformat that comment as a parody of The Night Before Christmas.
    - eldritch
      
      Twas the twilight of comics/
      Of the kind sold in books/
      Filled with heroes dubbed super/
      And counterpart crooks/
      Their stories were hackneyed/
      And cliché – oh, bore! -/
      Full of musclebound brutes/
      Ill-clad women, and gore/
      The readers were pining/
      For comics more sound/
      Fervently wishing/
      For such works to be found/
      Et cetera.
      
      ?
      - ocker3
        
        yes, Yes, YES
        
        Wait, why did you stop???
  - C W
    
    Those persons don’t have actual political power, thankfully. Card does.
  - Thad Boyd
    
    Oh goodie, another “I am going to announce my ignorance about these people and then go right ahead and disrespect them as if I know what I’m talking about” post. Never seen one of THOSE in a comics thread before.
    
    I love Kate Beaton too. But I’m not going to piss all over Neal Adams’s art because he believes the world is expanding. That would be downright silly.
- toyg
  
  One thing is being “out there” (conspiracy theories etc), another is to actively hate on (and discriminate against) large segments of the population.
  
  Besides, this isn’t new: when Miller first came out with his Dark Knight, there was a wide debate on whether his view of a fundamentally-fascist Batman was critical or glorifying. Miller spent years being ambiguous about it, until his later work (including the Robocop sequels) was so unashamedly wingnut that he had to come out as the batshit lunatic fascist he is, which resulted in his sales plummeting.
  
  Obviously, like it was widely explained in the ’80s, traditional superheroes are inherently right-wing, so they attract a certain type of authors; however, until they limit themselves at drawing norse gods fighting aliens, nobody really cares. Like many readers, I don’t give a s*it if Alan Moore wants to be a wizard or a lizard, but I draw the line at being a fascist asshole in public.
- Thad Boyd
  
  Adams’s views are, so far as I know, harmless, and his actual political advocacy in the past has been downright noble (he was a leading figure in getting Siegel and Shuster compensation and credit when the Superman movie came out).
  
  And Miller’s politics aren’t exactly a secret given how prominent they’ve been in his recent work. (Though dismissing him as right-wing, as some people have tried to do based on his anti-Muslim ravings, is an oversimplification, seeing as how he’s depicted Reagan as a fascist and W as a hologram controlled by Luthor and Brainiac.)
  
  Ditko…hell, I’m not going to lie, his stuff’s so damn beautiful that I love it no matter how far he crawls up Ayn Rand’s ass.
  
  Other nuts of note include Alan Moore and Dave Sim.
http://www.disoriented.net/ angusm

Some of Card’s beliefs seem to be a little more nuanced than you might expect. I read “Speaker for the Dead” and came away wondering if he’d undergone a late-life conversion to liberal humanism.
- nowimnothing
  
  There seems to be some kind of special ability to hold fundamentally conflicting views or at least write plausibly about them in the Mormon sci-fi arena. See also Brandon Sanderson.
  - BillStewart2012
    
    Almost anybody who writes SF has to be able to do that, if nothing else about the laws of physics or the practical rate of engineering development (e.g. I still don’t have my flying car, even though they’ve been promising it for more than 50 years!)
    - http://profiles.google.com/spockosemail Mr. Spocko
      
      Oh, but you DO have your flying car, we just call it a helicopter.
    - http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
      
      You’ll just crash it while playing angry birds on your phone.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Some of Card’s beliefs seem to be a little more nuanced than you might expect.
  
  Not sure if ‘nuance’ is the right word. More like conflicted, cognitive dissonance, projection/ identification, DEMONIC RAISINS I REBUKE YOU!
  - C W
    
    That, or the Stopped Clock principle.
  - http://devojane.blogspot.com devophill
    
    When I saw this post I was in the middle of listening to this, a recording from 1985 of Card giving his “Secular Humanist Revival Meeting” sermon at a scifi con. I wouldn’t have heard it at all, if it wasn’t on a favorite podcast of mine, “Bob’s” Slacktime Funhouse. I almost can’t believe it’s the same guy. He seems to have… calcified, maybe in the last 20-some years. Or maybe nobody was asking him about teh gays back then.
    - $19428857
      
      The Mormon Church leaned on Card to stop giving his revival meeting, or so I am told.
      - C W
        
        Hah, shutting down a SHRM without a peep at the behest of the Mormon Church. That he doesn’t really understand what secularity consists of does not surprise me.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Even the Mormons are starting to ease up on their homophobia. OSC really is turning into Mel Gibson, for whom the Roman Catholic Church is just too darn liberal.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

The best part of this is that when Card writes his Superman comic Bates will be able to sue him for plagiarism.
Svenn Diagram

I can’t believe that Tor Publishing still acts as an outlet for this vile homophobic bigot. What does it say about Tor and Patrick Nielsen Hayden (Tor’s Manager of Science Fiction) that they are happy to profit from Card’s anti-gay effluvia?
- duncancreamer
  
  Does he use his books to espouse his opinions? I read the Enders’ series and don’t recall any homophobia.
  - http://twitter.com/nellydreadful Nelly Dreadful
    
    He may not have so much in earlier works, but he’s definitely getting worse and more blatant as time goes on. His Hamlet… “adaptation”, reinterpreted Hamlet’s father as a gay pedophile who deserved to die for molesting all Hamlet’s friends as boys and thus turning them gay.
    
    …Yeah.
- toyg
  
  But of course, it’s the perfect cover. For years, Silvio Berlusconi financed comedians who were his harshest critics, giving them ample space on his TV channels… it was proof of him being “liberal”.
  
  Should Tor publicly refuse to publish authors holding certain views, regardless of whether these views are actually expoused in their works, they’d attract the “partisan” label and lose a significant number of customers.
- bardfinn
  
  Happy or unhappy, contracts are contracts, and if the contract has no “moral turpitude” clause (or if such is unenforceable), then the contract’s a contract, happy or unhappy.
  
  Tl;dr: contract law supersedes whether someone holds politically noxious views.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    They don’t have to renew his contracts/ make new ones. His moral turpitude isn’t exactly a recent phenomenon.
    - bardfinn
      
      Very true.
Michael Virks

The author of that Masochistic Pre-Teen Boys’ Boarding School In Space novella is anti-gay? That’s rich. O.S. Card needs less closet-time, clearly…
- gizmomathboy
  
  Battle school wasn’t boys only.
  - Michael Virks
    
    You are of course RIGHT. Been a while since I read it…
  - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness
    
    In the original novella of Ender’s Game it was boys only.
    
    I never read the novel or it’s sequels. I’d recommend the novella to anyone who has never read Card.
    - Thad Boyd
      
      Ah — that would explain the bit where he doesn’t notice that the girl is a girl even though it’s clearly stated that she’s naked. Must be a holdover from an earlier version or draft.
      
      Always wondered about that.
http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki

so why no stink when this came out? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JMli3MopNs
- C W
  
  There’s been plenty of stink about his horrid beliefs, but
  
  1) He wasn’t that outspoken when he was getting established
  
  2) He isn’t an active boardmember of the most influential anti-gay lobbying group.
  - http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki
    
    this was out 2012 and there are many other recent works like All Star Batman.
    - C W
      
      You seem to have ignored my second point.
      
      Besides, Batman isn’t quite assumed to be right, helpful, or sane.
      - http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki
        
        You miss the fact that he is an active homophobic, racist, misogynistic comic book writer who fills plenty of his comics with the kind of drivel as the parody shown in the article above.
        
        Does he really need to be registered before you can give a fuck?
      - C W
        
        I find it dumb and at the same time horrid that you feel we shouldn’t feel uncomfortable with Card because there’s another horrible person in comic fandom (which plenty of fans stopped supporting years ago due to his loathsome beliefs.)
        
        Again FRANK MILLER HAS NO POLITICAL POWER. CARD IS (unless something has changed) A NOM BOARD MEMBER.
        
        There is an objective difference between who is actively hurting the cause of human rights in America and abroad and who is otherwise a fascist who hates “the 99%”.
        
        If you can’t understand the difference you’re hopeless.
    - Thad Boyd
      
      It’s a 2012 adaptation of a 1986 comic. Not quite the same thing.
Rich Bowen

So it’ll be a seed of a good idea, bogged down by a lot of “look how clever I am!” world-building.

Oh, and the gay thing.
http://twitter.com/chrisjimson chris jimson

Superman, a physically fit guy who wears brightly colored tights and a cape . . . I wonder if Orson Scott Card thinks that’s kinda gay.
- Thad Boyd
  
  Dammit. It’s comments like that that made DC to put him in that stupid-ass armor.
Gerald Mander

He forgot the mutilation. There’s a lot of mutilation and amputation in Scott Card’s stuff.
- Rich Keller
  
  The only thing of Card’s that I can recall reading was “Unaccompanied Sonata” in Omni back in 1979. I vaguely remember something about the loss of fingers and maybe voice.
Adam Beatrice

“Heaven forbid someone have different opinions than me! He’s so closed-minded because he doesn’t think the way I think.” – Everyone in this thread.
- AVR
  
  “I am not capable of recognizing hatred or bigotry as more than a benign difference of opinion, and mock people who are.” – You.
  - Adam Beatrice
    
    “I’m going to put words in your mouth without any indication of what your personal beliefs or opinions are.” – You
    - C W
      
      “I’m going to put words in your mouth without any indication of what your personal beliefs or opinions are.”
      
      Ye gods. Have you read the drivel that you crap onto your keyboard? Let me repost it sans-modification.
      
      “Heaven forbid someone have different opinions than me! He’s so closed-minded because he doesn’t think the way I think.” – Everyone in this thread.
      
      You’re a bad person and should feel bad.
    - http://www.gildedgreen.com/ Girard
      
      Wow. You either have a pitch-black sense of irony or a hilariously naive lack of self-awareness saying that. That sentiment is pretty much entirely the premise of your initial post, you hypocritical idiot.
http://twitter.com/zizban Christopher Turkel

Oh lordy, who are they hire next, Glenn Beck?
http://twitter.com/raven185 Negatron

Oh no, time honored institution of super-hero comics are tarnished by this person who has his own opinions about something.
- wysinwyg
  
  “His own opinions”. That he just happens to share with a few hundred million Christian fundamentalist bigots.
  
  Queer bashing is not some brave and noble stand. Tolerating difference isn’t commie group think.
- http://www.genreville.com/ Josh Jasper
  
  I know, Next you’ll be telling us they ought to keep out people who espouse genocide! Standards are for punks, amirite?
- C W
  
  Someone already trotted the “opinions” canard, sorry. You need to come up with a fresh idiocy for the day.
http://twitter.com/muddi900 muddi900

Orson Scott Card hasn’t written any fiction half as offensive as this:
https://lh3.ggpht.com/-8iCsuAjiyp0/TnztcRrnXWI/AAAAAAAAAB8/fyJxmYW_Ry0/s1600/starfire+1.jpg

From the guy who’s writing Superman comics right NOW!
http://www.genreville.com/ Josh Jasper

Does no one actually remember that Card is on record as defending sodomy laws? He claims he was somehow doing so to promote tolerance, but his words are clear.

Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society’s regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.

The goal of the polity is not to put homosexuals in jail. The goal is to discourage people from engaging in homosexual practices in the first place, and, when they nevertheless proceed in their homosexual behavior, to encourage them to do so discreetly, so as not to shake the confidence of the community in the polity’s ability to provide rules for safe, stable, dependable marriage and family relationships.

Every time Card pops up in the news, it’s forgotten that he said that. In public, in order to convince people that toleration for queers is bad.
http://spellgage.tumblr.com/ Caleb Adkisson

Maybe I haven’t read enough of Card’s recent work, but in the Ender series Card seemed entirely capable of working intelligently through complex ethical dilemmas. The satire piece up top bears no similarity to Card’s writing. Maybe it reflects his views (though oversimplified), but it falls flat as satire. I doubt that the Superman universe is suddenly going to implode into an illustrated version of the Westboro Baptist Church.
Otakumom

There is an enormous “I didn’t know he had such horrible views” discussion about Card on Amazon that blows up regularly

http://www.amazon.com/gp/forum/cd/discussion.html/ref=ntt_mus_ep_cd_tft_tp?ie=UTF8&cdForum=Fx9UB9VMB9464V&cdThread=Tx1JFT7913W0Q5L