He was standing up to Comicsgate, Jae just got caught in the crossfire. We would be having this conversation, King just wouldn't be in it as long s Jae Lee did the commission for EVS, that's what got everything rolling.
Artists are judged in society, always have always will. This is because their careers rely on being public, not being private. There is no "off" switch artists to click, they participate in the world and the world does in turn. Kanye and Taylor Switch don't get full control over how society reacts to them, they can only control their own actions.
Artists will be judged by their personal politics, what groups they belong to, what companies they work for even what clothes they wear.
And this isn't simple a matter of opinion, nobody is angry at EVS because he likes Green lantern more than Batman. Comicsgate is a movement which harasses professionals and fans by gatekeeping comics. CBR itself was attacked by a prototype of this moment years ago, it got so bad the forums were purged and rebooted, the site is shadow of what it used to be because of the toxicity of these people and what's frustrating is they never truly left.
Markey and the Ambassadors are probably more obscure so people don't know, but Burroughs and Sim have had their stocks plummeting in comic literature circles for a long, long time for those very reasons. When Boris Johnson read a racist poem about colonialism nostalgia written by Rudyard Kipling it caused a scandal in 2017.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...myanmar-temple
This is why being problematic is and for artists, they get tarred with it. It makes them radioactive.
This isn't about "challenging" art, this is about standing up to bigotry, hate and misogyny. Do you know who Tess Fowler is? She's a target of Comicsgate, read her tweets.
https://twitter.com/TessFowler/
This is why it's important for artists not to get involved with hate groups or be seen as promoting bigotry. Comicsgate is poison for creatives in the comic community and not without good reason.