When the panels are tainted by real life evil
February 8, 2018
by Avi Green
This past November, Hollywood
experienced a considerable discovery of sexual abuse scandals
as it turned out movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was guilty of quite
possible more than 100 cases of sexual harassment and assault. It
all led to a cascade of more revelations and accusations, and has
ended the careers of several more once notable actors and
filmmakers, including Kevin Spacey, Bryan Singer, Brett Ratner, and
many more. Clearly, the Stephen Collins and Bill Cosby scandals were
just the beginning.
But even in the world of comicdom, there've been at least a few
nasty sex scandal revelations turning up, which I'm going to list
here.
Josue “Justiniano” Rivera
An artist who was working mainly for DC (and signed a lot of his
work under the pseudonym “Justiniano”), he was arrested in 2011 for
possession of child p*** and convicted a
year later, serving at least 5 years. Looking at his past
record, I can't say I feel sorry he went down, because one of the
books he drew was Day of Vengeance, which followed up on Identity
Crisis and depicted Jean Loring being transformed into a female
Eclipso, and a most one-dimensional type too at that. If that's the
kind of book he was willing to illustrate (with Bill Willingham as
the writer), it could explain his mentality involving the child p***
found on his computer equipment.
One of the last projects Justiniano was going to work on was a
miniseries for Wonder Woman written by 2 ladies, and it was almost
completed when he got arrested, resulting in a situation where it
was reportedly too expensive to have it redrawn by a different
artist, so they had to cancel it altogether. Needless to say, it's
utterly offensive that not only did DC's staff go to such lengths to
publish a miniseries offensive to victims of rape and child abuse in
the form of IC, they even gave a pervert the assignment to write one
of comicdom's most famous ladies.
Gerard Jones
He may have once been given high regard as the writer of Green
Lantern, Wonder Man and at least 2 Justice League titles from the
early 1990s. Or was he? Whatever, the former comics scribe who later
became a novelist was
arrested on December 29, 2016 for possession of child p*** and
uploading it to the internet, and was also suspected by police of
traveling to London and committing statutory rape. It was
absolutely disgusting news, and today I feel embarrassed if I ever
considered his past work a masterpiece. I later did some deeper
research and concluded it wasn't. The Emerald Dawn miniseries, which
he wrote the majority of with Keith Giffen (Christopher Priest wrote
the first issue but was replaced; it's not clear whether it was
because he turned in the scripts late), was a very forced, sloppy
attempt to retell Hal Jordan's origins for a modern age, where he
gets arrested for drunk driving and spends some time in the pen. And
around this time, having acquired the magic ring and lantern from
Abin Sur, he's subsequently given training by...Sinestro! It was
decidedly stilted, the product of a mindset that thought modern
audiences couldn't connect if the hero supposedly didn't have flaws,
and was laced with utmost character economy to boot (Guy Gardner
turns up as a “case worker”. I'm not sure if that's similar to a
lawyer or a social worker). Some of these elements kept on into the
3rd Green Lantern volume that followed. Jones' work in the Justice
League titles was more disturbing, with a scene where it looks like
at least one villain is trying to grope Power Girl's breasts in one
scene. Even Wonder Man had a questionable story involving a crook
who was written to resemble an evil capitalist for the sake of it.
I've got a feeling the writings of Jones, if anything, won't age
well, if at all. Certainly not the stories he wrote for Malibu
Comics in the 90s.
Indeed, the Malibu products could be hit the hardest by Jones'
arrest: who'll want to buy them nowadays? I checked a list of his
writings, and he created or co-created 4-5 different series in their
Ultraverse line, and guest wrote a number of issues on several other
series. If my estimates are correct, that could amount to nearly
half their inventory, and as a result, could easily taint much of
it. Don't be surprised if Marvel, who, last time I looked, still
owned their products, won't be able to sell them off at ease. As for
his work at DC and Marvel, some planned Green Lantern and Justice
League reprints were cancelled (and the Wonder Man and Hulk 2099
series will surely gather dust too), and there's no telling if and
when they'll ever be, but at this point, it's just too hard to care.
Like I said, I reevaluated his work, and concluded it was
pretentious, including the first storyline in GL volume 3, where a
character created by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams (the Guardian named
Appa Ali Apsa), was turned into a crazy, lethal villain for the sake
of getting from point A to point B.
Nobuhiro Watsuki
This case of a comic creator implicating himself in a child p***
scandal is one that took place across the ocean in Japan. Watsuki
(whose real last name may actually be Nishiwaki), once famous for
creating the manga series Rurouni Kenshin in the 1990s, was arrested by Tokyo police in
November 2017 on charges of child p*** possession, as at least
100 files of live action videos were discovered in his office and
house. Some of the commentaries I found about the news suggested he
may have even preyed on girls in school, and during police
interrogations, he blatantly admitted he had a liking for underaged
girls. Sick man indeed. As far as I know, Japan passed laws against
possession of child p****graphy in 2014, and the news items
indicated he bought his stash a year after, meaning he broke the law
from a legal perspective. In any event, what he did would be obscene
from a moral perspective any time.
His crime has since cost him his fame and fortunes, as the manga
anthology publishing a sequel to Kenshin suspended it from
publication, a Japanese cable channel canceled a planned marathon
for 3 live action film adaptations, and reprints of his work are
bound to cease for at least a while. I once watched the anime
adaptations of Kenshin a number of years ago, and there was one
scene in the latter half of the run that was disturbing: a variation
on Mark Twain's Prince and the Pauper, where Yahiko was supposed to
dress up as royalty at the behest of a prince and his elderly aide,
which involved yanking off his clothes to redress him. And what was
alarming was that the way the scene – which may have come before the
commercial break – was set up, made it look like the old guy was
going to rape him. The worst part is that this was apparently
supposed to be funny. If Watsuki had no qualms about that disgusting
moment, then in light of the new discoveries, it only compounds the
negative image he's achieved even more. Even the adaptation of Busou
Renkin had a few moments that were annoying, though still nothing
compared to what Kenshin's animators thought would be entertaining.
That scene in Rurouni Kenshin was practically offensive to victims
of sexual assault. As of today, I can't feel sorry Watsuki is now
facing consequences for his felonies.
Eddie Berganza
While the above 3 are examples of freelancers, Berganza
is one example of a top editor at DC who committed sexual
harassment and assault, and only recently did he finally pay a
price, and that was only after Buzzfeed wrote up an article about
his offensive acts, and DC's failure to get rid of him. His acts
took place as far back as the early 2000s, yet nothing was done to
get rid of him, he even got promoted at one point, and after being
demoted following an obnoxious assault he performed on a lady at a
bar while drunk, not only did they still not fire him, what they did
instead was create a “women-free” zone in which he'd work. Which
solves virtually nothing, and does nada to restore any confidence.
And recalling that this began at the time Identity Crisis went to
press, you could easily ask: if DC could publish a book that was
offensive to victims of rape and child abuse, should we be shocked
they'd tolerate such a vile man working on their staff?
Scott Allie
This former senior editor-in-chief at Dark Horse was also
unmasked as a serial abuser who was never disciplined for his
own violence, and when he left the company, it was rather quiet,
on-own-terms. Following the Weinstein scandal, that's when Image,
who'd originally hired him as a special editor on one of their
projects, decided to fire him, and Dark Horse, presumably, did the
same, but much too late. And the head of Dark Horse never sounded
convincing in his own response to the reports of Allie's deviations
from sane society.
The really sad part is that sexual abuse in comicdom is unlikely to
end even after these revelations, and we could soon be hearing of
more. So long as some of the worst executives continue to reign at
the Big Two, along with smaller pubishers, nothing proper will be
done to put a stop to these awful cases.
Copyright 2018 Avi Green. All rights reserved.
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