Michelle Perez is a writer and creator for the Island series published by Image Comics. Perez has been harassing a comic critic named Richard C. Meyer. Meyer runs a comic book review channel on YouTube called Diversity & Comics. Many of the millennial comic book writers and artists at Marvel, DC and IDW dislike Meyer because he’s anti-SJW and points out many of the flaws of SJW comic books on his channel. Hence, various industry professionals have harassed Meyer and conspired to get him ejected from comic book conventions, as well as colluded with other Left-leaning professionals to get Meyer’s Patreon account shut down.
The latest spat involved Perez wishing for Meyer’s death via IED, and then making libelous statements about Meyer’s personal life in hopes of defaming his character. A capture of the comments can be viewed on imgur, which were originally published on March 23rd, 2018.
On March 24th, 2018 Perez tweeted out corrections by adding “allegedly” to the defamatory comments, which consisted of accusing Meyer of domestic abuse and being dishonorably discharged from his military service.
In an exchange with Meyer on Twitter, Perez was requested to delete the libelous and defamatory tweets under threat of being sued. An archive of the tweets were also captured on imgur.
Meyer chronicled the drama in a 33 minute video on his Diversity & Comics YouTube channel.
Kotaku in Action put together a timeline of the events and some of the more scandalous comments made by Perez. After multiple reports and plenty of goading, Twitter eventually suspended Michelle Perez from Twitter.
For some people that wasn’t enough.
Various comic book fans contacted Image Comics founder, Erik Larsen. They tweeted out that Image Comics should take action against Perez, with various people calling for the writer to get fired. Larson, however, declined the request and hand-waved the situation away.
You know Michelle Perez…it would be a shame if @ImageComics were to take action against your vile tweets you’ve made about a certain military veteran…
Defamation of character is ILLEGAL last I checked. If @DiversityAndCmx really was a shitty person, his fanbase would know. pic.twitter.com/GvCE1RA65w
— Aspi3Gam3r (@Aspi3Gam3r) March 24, 2018
It’a all about false equivalencies–it’s not about common sense.
“Image should apologize because somebody that does a book there said something I don’t like to somebody in some forum somewhere.”
Pointless and stupid.
— Erik Larsen (@ErikJLarsen) March 25, 2018
This isn’t the first time that Larsen was encouraged to have Perez fired. Back in late February of 2018, Bounding Into Comics reported that Larsen was originally made aware of the comments that Perez published on Twitter about wishing Meyer had died in an IED during his tour overseas. Larsen explained that a lot of people say a lot of stupid things but that was what the First Amendment was for…
“If you don’t like what somebody said–don’t buy their book. If I don’t agree with Bill Clinton I don’t yell at the CFO at Knopf Publishing Group–I just don’t buy his book
“[…] Pretty much any company that takes a public stance will have people on both sides making decisions. Supporters will support and opponents will oppose […]
“[…] There are many creators whose politics I strongly disagree with whose work I support. I can’t think of a creator whose work I stopped buying because of their views.”
A lot of people claimed that Larsen employed whataboutisms in order to avoid employing disciplinary actions against Perez. While some are satisfied that Twitter suspended the account of Perez, others feel that Image Comics should take the next step and stop doing business with the writer.
