Nasty Personal Attack Against Jon Del Arroz Appears in Dynamite Comics and Atari’s ‘Centipede’ Comic
Comic book writer and the lead singer of Say Anything Max Bemis, artist Eoin Marron, and letterer Taylor Esposito decided to use Atari’s Centipede intellectual property in a Dynamite Comics published book to attack fellow comic book writer Jon Del Arroz.
In Centipede #4, which was published on October 25, 2017, Bemis writes, “Jon Del Arroz is a never was fat piece of sh**who blames everyone but himself for his ineptness.”
As you can tell Bemis and letterer Taylor Esposito tried to disguise the personal attack through an alien language. Not only did they disguise it as an alien language they also inverted it.
We’ve inverted the image so you can read it better.
But this wouldn’t be the only instance Bemis and letterer Taylor Esposito attacked Del Arroz in the comic. They would do it again saying, “JDA (Jon Del Arroz) can’t get it up.”
Here is the inverted image.
They would do it once again in the same issue writing, “JDA can’t get hard unless he complains that SFWA him down.”
Once again here is the inverted image.
For context, SFWA stands for Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. Del Arroz has been highly critical of SFWA. He even released a press release this past April calling out the SFWA President Cat Rambo for “contempt for the independent author community.”
Del Arroz wasn’t the only one that Bemis and Esposito decided to go after. They also targeted Vox Day’s Alt-Hero comic book saying, “Alt-Hero is a joke.”
Here’s the image inverted again.
And in case you thought this might just merely be a coincidence the alien language is translated towards the end of the issue.
We reached out to Jon Del Arroz for a statement. This is what he told us:
” I believe this was done by a rogue individual without knowledge of editorial or the publisher, but the damage has been done and the publisher needs to accept responsibility for their print product nonetheless. This is a terrible bullying attack on a minority creator done with malicious intent to keep ‘people like me’ out of the industry. I’ve got an email into Dynamite asking for a n apology and for their support for my IndieGoGo project Flying Sparks. I hope they’ll handle this with professionalism.”
We reached out to Eoin Marron to get his take on the personal attack.
“Thanks for reaching out. Unfortunately I’m familiar with neither Jon Del Arroz nor the personal attacks you mention, could you please elaborate?”
We then showed him the image of where Jon Del Arroz is called a “piece of s***.” He responded:
“Hmm, that is unusual alright. I’m afraid I had nothing to do with the lettering though (and it certainly wasn’t in the script I was provided, where it was only described as alien gibberish), you’ll have to refer to the series’ letterer Taylor Esposito.
My involvement with the issue was complete once I handed off the B&W inks, so colors and later letters were handled afterward.”
Dynamite Comics’ Joseph Rybandt responded to Jon Del Arroz’s email saying, “I’ll look into this and see who did what here… no matter what, this “attack” was not sanctioned by Dynamite (intentionally).”
In a second correspondence he added,
“Ok, well, we found out what happened and it was not know (Sp?) by the major players working on the issue, nor the editorial staff and, it was apparently adjusted for the trade paperback. So, it’s taken care of in the permanent record and I apologize for the harm it may have caused.
Our marketing director is tweeting out your indigo-go as you requested.”
While Dynamite responded to Jon Del Arroz, they did not respond to us. We also reached out to Max Bemis and Taylor Esposito for comment, but did not hear back at the time of print.
**Update** Dynamite responded:
“Dynamite was made aware of an issue, and resolved with the creator in question. No further comment.”
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