The Four Color Media Monitor

Now this is downright horrific: Josue Rivera, the comics artist known as Justiniano, was arrested and now convicted for possession of child pornography. However, the article does something really stupid:

BRIDGEPORT -- The artist who created DC Comics' "The Creeper" was the biggest creep of all when it came to child porn, a state prosecutor said Friday.

Police said Josue Rivera -- who illustrates comic books under the name "Justiniano" -- photo-manipulated images of a 10-year-old female relative, combining them with pornographic images, and possessed nearly 100 other photos in his child porn collection.

Now his offenses are abominable indeed, and he deserves more than just the 10 years he's officially sentenced to receive for prison. He should serve one hundred-plus years and get hard labor to boot.

But let's get something straight here: Rivera did NOT create the Creeper. The character - whose real name is Jack Ryder - was created long before Rivera was born, in 1968 by Steve Ditko. Justiniano did nothing more than to draw some of the more recent iterations of the oddball hero like this one from 2006. What possessed the jerks who put that report together to say he "created" the character rather than illustrated at least one of his stories? Are they trying to embarrass everybody away from the Creeper by making it sound as though he was literally conceived by such an awful man as Justiniano instead of a much more decent man like Ditko? For shame. Message to the Connecticut Post: do your homework.

I've done some research and discovered that Justiniano was the artist on another miniseries for DC, this a most notorious one: Day of Vengeance, which was a followup to Identity Crisis, and which opened with a scene that made it sound like Jean Loring was being sexually harrassed by the Eclipso crystal. And the CT Post article says his portfolio also boasts the following:

Rivera is a nationally known artist whose demented, corpse-like Creeper has faced off against Batman on DC Comics' covers. Rivera excels at twisted and bizzare characters, and has worked on issues of Superman, The Incredible Hulk, Beast Boy and Doctor Fate.

He's also basically collaborated in producing twisted stories, as his art contribution to Day of Vengeance can attest. And any particular story he drew, he's now cast a dark cloud over with his offensive antics behind the scenes. It's definitely eerie that an artist who drew comics with horrific story elements involved would also turn out to be quite a diablo himself, which could possibly explain his willingness to take part in drawing bottom of the barrel publications like Day of Vengeance. I hope Justiniano remains in a cell block for a long time, and his career as an artist will be over indefinitely.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful artists, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, msm propaganda, politics