Looking at the Card

Ninth Art contributor Paul O'Brien asks the questions: Should incoming Ultimate Iron Man writer Orson Scott Card's homophobic views affect his readership?

ULTIMATE IRON MAN is written by novelist Orson Scott Card, whom Marvel can legitimately bill as an international bestseller and multi-award winning author. If you'd never previously heard of him, join the club. He's mainly, though not exclusively, a sci-fi and fantasy novelist, and those genres tend to be almost as insular as comics when it comes to creating huge stars with little profile outside the audience. Still, by any conventional standards, he ticks the boxes for being a big name author.

It didn't take long after this announcement for people to start grumbling about some of Card's political views, and announcing that they wouldn't be buying the book. Card has an oddball combination of views. He's a self-described Democrat who supports George W Bush, and you don't find many of them. A lot of people linked to this article, first published last February. Basically, it's a lengthy attack on the decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court that the state constitution required gay marriage.

Click on the headline for the full text and a few more links.