White Lightning Productions

As has been mentioned before, one of the issues that led to my seeking a new artist for Peter is the Wolf was that Ben's political views and mine had diverged to the point where we were barely speaking to one another. I have not gone into details in public, and I have tried my best to focus on fulfilling obligations on Book 2, getting Book 3 into print, and advancing the PitW project.

Yesterday Charlottesville happened.

The fact that thousands of neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and right-wing militia members took over a town and terrorized its inhabitants, chanting actual World War era Nazi slogans and generally doing what you'd expect of Nazis, was bad enough, but the day was capped when one of the protesters spotted a peaceful counter-protest march, got in his car, and deliberately plowed into a mass of human beings at a speed fast enough to rip the front bumper off his car.

One dead, nineteen seriously injured at the last report I saw.

I have made no secret whatever of my personal opinion- that this whole episode constituted terrorism, and that the car attack was a terrorist killing.

Today I found out that Ben's first reaction was to blame the victims and defend the driver, by pointing out that the counter-march wasn't permitted and was blocking traffic. As if, in any way, this justifies a deliberate attempt to injure and kill, as all witnesses agree this was.

That's too much for me to ignore. And it's too much for me to ask you to ignore. So I posted a screencap of his public Twitter post to my Facebook and said there, as I do now, that his opinions are definitely not mine, and I find the opinion he's expressed both evil and sickening. And so I post this, here, now.

I still want to put Book 2 in your hands. I still want there to be a Book 3. I don't believe that Ben's artwork in any way reflects his uglier opinions.

But Ben has dragged his feet about putting the print-quality files needed for printing, or for handing off to a colorist for those pages which aren't yet completed, for months now, and after this I have no idea if they will ever be handed over.

I don't know what else to do at this point; I only know I couldn't stay silent about this anymore.

...Ben defended the driver? It wouldn't matter if he were a neo-nazi plowing through counter-protesters or a counter-protester plowing into neo-nazis. You just don't do that. What the serious fuck, Ben?

I'm sorely tempted to post the above question on his dA and/or other accounts, but shit-stirring rarely helps in matters like this, so I won't.

i'm a little late to say anything about this I suppose, but i have to say i'm not totally surprised. About a year ago while looking for Bar1's personal site I stumbled on his Twitter, which was filled with almost entirely links to various election-related conspiracy theories. So this is maybe not all that shocking to me.

All that said, I'm glad you made a post about this, these days its really difficult to tell where some people stand on political insanity and its especially hard if they don't talk politics very often. So, thanks for making your opinion known, even if it took something pretty horrible to push you to that.

Good luck with Book 2. The readership may be down and the previous artist may have gone insane, but you've still got an audience. Hang in there, just because some poeople don't post on the forum doesn't mean we aren't still reading!

PS, good luck sticking out the aftermath of Harvey, too