Billy Tucci experienced horrifying news
11 Comments Published by Avi Green on Saturday, December 29, 2018 at 1:12 PM.
Artist Billy Tucci, the creator of Shi in 1993, says the FBI's informed him that death threats were made against him on Twitter:
This is utterly offensive, and I hope all is being done to track down the perpetrators of this crime on the internet. So now, besides the death threats made against the chairman of Alterna and the Breitweisers, it seems another artist/writer of a conservative leaning is being threatened, and so far, no telling if anybody in the industry proper is willing to speak out on their behalf. If they don't, they've compounded an eroding image for the medium.
I hope Tucci and family are alright, and that whoever committed those obscene acts on Twitter is arrested and prosecuted for the illegal acts they performed online.
Update: here's another note from Tucci, thanking all concerned:
I'll try to keep track of any more news about this case.
Update 2: it's good to see CBR and Bleeding Cool are reporting the incident. An Italian site called Nerd Planet is too.
Update 3: some screencaps of the obscene messages can be found here. It appears the criminal is a creep who pretended to be in favor of Comicsgate, then later turned against it and said he was "working undercover", apparently so he could make the movement look bad. What he did fills me with so much disgust at how somebody can go out of his mind to sabotage consumer movements, and then he goes completely off his rocker and reveals himself to be much worse than previously thought. I hope the FBI are issuing a warrant for his arrest. What the man in question did is extremely serious.
The FBI visited my home warning that DEATH THREATS have been made towards my wife and I on Twitter. Thank you for your diligence and concern.
— Billy Tucci (@BillyTucci) December 29, 2018
This is utterly offensive, and I hope all is being done to track down the perpetrators of this crime on the internet. So now, besides the death threats made against the chairman of Alterna and the Breitweisers, it seems another artist/writer of a conservative leaning is being threatened, and so far, no telling if anybody in the industry proper is willing to speak out on their behalf. If they don't, they've compounded an eroding image for the medium.
I hope Tucci and family are alright, and that whoever committed those obscene acts on Twitter is arrested and prosecuted for the illegal acts they performed online.
Update: here's another note from Tucci, thanking all concerned:
#ThankYou all for the concern over the death threats made to my family. Sorta just posted it as it's still sinking in. The FBI knows who he is and consider this a serious threat. Again, thank you all! #peacelovecomics #ilovecomics #iamcomics
— Billy Tucci (@BillyTucci) December 29, 2018
I'll try to keep track of any more news about this case.
Update 2: it's good to see CBR and Bleeding Cool are reporting the incident. An Italian site called Nerd Planet is too.
Update 3: some screencaps of the obscene messages can be found here. It appears the criminal is a creep who pretended to be in favor of Comicsgate, then later turned against it and said he was "working undercover", apparently so he could make the movement look bad. What he did fills me with so much disgust at how somebody can go out of his mind to sabotage consumer movements, and then he goes completely off his rocker and reveals himself to be much worse than previously thought. I hope the FBI are issuing a warrant for his arrest. What the man in question did is extremely serious.
Labels: good artists, technology, terrorism, violence
So besides being a conservative, what makes this death threat any different than the thousands of other such cases?
Aren't you and Tucci being a little melodramatic here? I mean famous people receive these types of things all the time right?
So, how many other families receive visits from the FBI over things like this?
When someone like Anna Sarkesian or KM Tran gets "online harassment" it's big news in all the mainstream media and used as a reason to create a narrative to attack comicsgaters, gamergaters and Disney Star Wars fan critics as hate mongers.
When conservatives get death threats - "Hey, what's the big deal?"
Honestly, I thought that with all the short-tempered hotheads being in the majority in many fields of work, I would've thought death threats would become just another facet of day-to-day life. I mean, how many of those death threat senders actually follow through with said threats?
Celebrities probably do get weird fan mail, including death threats, all the time. But, evidently, this particular case was enough of a credible threat for the FBI to investigate it, and to warn the intended target.
Who or what are Anna Sarkesian or KM Tran? Are they supposed to be some big shots in the industry or something?
Anita Sarkesian is a feminist who made a series of poorly researched videos attacking video games for their treatment of female characters. Even when she got something right it was followed up by something wrong or taken to extremes.
Kellie Marie Tran played Rose Tico in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Her character is controversial because some fans thought she was poorly written and the usual suspects defended her just because she was a woman. She was allegedly bullied off of Twitter but from what I hear the only bullying she's complained about was from Hollywood elites, not so called "toxic" Star Wars fans.
In other words, Anita's the Dr. Wertham of the video game world?
The screen caps that have been posted seem like a personal grudge of someone who has had some kind of dealings with Tucci, not anything to do with political or cultural issues. In other words, not a comicalgate thing.
Billy Tucci only got one death threat. Anita Sarkeesian got thousands of them, including a threat of a mass shooting at a speech she was scheduled to give.
Tran's complaints were against cowardly internet swarm types, not against hollwood elites: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jun/11/anti-disney-group-harassment-star-wars-female-actors-daisy-ridley-kelly-marie-tran