Ethan Van Sciver is a New Jersey-born
artist who first decided to go into comics after seeing Richard Donner’s "Superman: The Movie” as a child. He has since gone on to illustrate a wide variety of titles, though he is best-known for his work on DC books such as
Green Lantern,
Flash: Rebirth,
Superman/Batman and
Justice League of America.
Recently Van Sciver has been the target of intense social media assault,
including threats of violence, for, among other things, having depicted the Green Lantern villain Sinestro as a Hitler-like figure in a 2007 sketchbook and for using the '
Pepe the Frog' meme that was designated a ‘hate symbol’ by Hillary Clinton supporters in the 2016 election.
As a result, Van Sciver has been slandered on social media as a racist, a Nazi, and white supremacist, a homophobe,
et cetera, ad nauseam. But as the artist himself notes in a
Facebook post on the controversy, his real crime is merely being a conservative and Donald Trump supporter in an industry dominated by ‘tolerant’ and ‘inclusive’ progressives:
“There are strange people on twitter who are pretending to believe that I am a ‘white supremacist’ or a ‘Nazi’ because I’m a rare thing in comics: a Republican. It’s intolerable. It’s ridiculous to have to even declare that I’m none of these things....
These people who spread these images and claim that I’m a ‘Nazi’ are liars. They are lying. Flat out. They are liars who wish this industry wasn’t tolerant of people who do not share their partisan political views. That may include you. It may not. But I’ll lay out my career and the work that I’ve done against theirs. This is MY industry too.”
Van Sciver claims he was warned recently by critics on social media not to appear at Gotham City Pizza in Ormand Beach, Florida, where he had been scheduled to meet and speak with fans. The artist went ahead with the appearance anyway in spite of the pressure....the next day the pizza parlor was
vandalized.
The website
Dangerous reports:
"Twitter accounts associated with the threats toward Ethan Van Sciver have since been suspended for violating the website’s terms of service, but one of them had warned the artist from going to the Florida restaurant in the days prior to his visit."
Van Sciver has further enraged his critics by providing illustrations for the book "12 Rules for Life" authored by eminent
conservative professor Jordan Peterson, whose televised sparring with a feminist TV anchor in Britain recently
went viral.