Letterer Taylor Esposito has taken to Twitter to address the personal attacks and insults discovered in Dynamite Comics and Atari’s Centipede #4. The comic included a personal attack against writer Jon Del Arroz as well as Vox Day’s [easyazon_link identifier=”9527303001″ locale=”US” tag=”boundingintocomics-20″]Alt-Hero[/easyazon_link] comic book series.
Esposito claims the alien script in the book was included by an intern.
When I letter, I typically copy and paste text from a script. When I have an intern, I have them place the text for me to save time. Apparently at the end of 2017, an intern took it upon themselves to insert a message in an alien language we used. 1/
— Taylor Esposito ?? (@TaylorEspo) August 2, 2018
Unfortunately, it was realized after the issue went to print and it was corrected immediately for the collected edition because that needed to be taken care of. After it was found out, that intern was dealt with and had the incident noted to their school. 2/
— Taylor Esposito ?? (@TaylorEspo) August 2, 2018
I now keep an eye on whatever is in a cypher font to make sure it doesn’t happen again. If anyone knows me, I usually just put in song lyrics to amuse myself. I’m sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. 3/
— Taylor Esposito ?? (@TaylorEspo) August 2, 2018
They were a young kid, they thought it was being cute.
— Taylor Esposito ?? (@TaylorEspo) August 2, 2018
Who hasn’t done something dumb in college? Honestly, the thing that was snuck in, I don’t even know who it was.
— Taylor Esposito ?? (@TaylorEspo) August 2, 2018
He did not name the intern.
Esposito has a track record of targeting other comic professionals. He previously cheered on B. Clay Moore’s threat against Diversity & Comics. Moore threatened to follow Diversity & Comics around a convention floor in the hopes of goading him into violence.
Esposito would cheer him on, “I’d love to yell ‘one punch’ after you level him.”
Dynamite previously released a statement: “Dynamite was made aware of an issue, and resolved with the creator in question. No further comment.”
However in an email correspondence with Jon Del Arroz Dynamite’s Joseph Ryblandt responded:
“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.”
Do you believe that this was done by an intern? Or do you think Esposito and Dynamite Comics could be covering their tracks?