Has a writer for neo-Valiant been un-cancelled?

About a year ago, an Argentinian writer working on Valiant's Bloodshot appeared to be blacklisted over alleged negativity to LGBT ideology. Now, according to Comic Book Club Live, he's been reinstated:

Nearly a year after Valiant — and publisher Alien Books — were hit with serious blowback online thanks to what was seen as anti-trans text in Bloodshot #1, writer Mauro Mantella is back on the book with the June release of Bloodshot #4 – Man Made Hell #1, a “new” three issue series with art by Kristian Rossi.

To briefly review what went down in August of 2025, the rebooted Bloodshot featured a storyline about vampires fighting the nano-tech powered warrior using his own nanites. While a lot of it skirted cultural commentary/satire, one bit in particular stuck in reader’s craws. Specifically, this line of text: “There are kids who want to be bitten to become vampires because their favorite influencer says they are one. And parents who force their children into that irreversible change… just to feel modern… and believing that they’ll be thankful for it when they grow up.”

As many readers pointed out, this bit seemed to be specifically mapping onto anti-trans messaging, and Argentinian writer Mantella came under fire for including it. For their part, Alien Books immediately offered a statement on the dialogue, and laid out several steps for addressing the issue including updating dialogue for the trade and undergoing “a more intense review by our proof readers as part of our editorial process.”

Unfortunately, immediately following that in came to light that Mantella had repeatedly retweeted anti-trans and anti-vaccine memes, multiple times in the past. And in response, Mantella deleted his Twitter account and posted a lengthy response/explanation about his reposts, as well as the offending line of dialogue in Bloodshot. [...]

Well, after that absence, Bloodshot is back — and so is Mantella, with the new issue hitting stores on June 24, 2026. While this is pure speculation, it seems likely this fourth issue is the first completely crafted since the fallout from everything detailed above. Whether it will be addressed in the issue, or referenced in any way? TBD.

Does this mean they came to realize how bad it looks when they cancel a writer over petty issues and politics, so they reversed their previous approach and reinstated Mantella at the helm? We can only hope so. But if Mantella and company actually address anything related to this, that's something they decidedly shouldn't do, unless they're willing to prove they can defend the dialogue as originally written last time. Something they probably won't do, unfortunately.