A Message For Danielle Conner

You have crossed the line

Dear Substack followers,

The following may be a little shocking to fans of Orange Cone books - especially if you're not a creator. Comics, like all forms of art, are fueled by passion, and that passion sometimes leads to conflict. What follows is one such conflict that I feel I must address. I've always been open and honest with you about my vulnerabilities and struggles. I've often shared my heart with you, and this time is no different. However, what I'm sharing today deals with a less positive side of the comics world. I promise that next week, we'll be back to our usual ORANGE CONE GOODNESS. But if you're not in the mood for some comics-related drama, I encourage you to skip this one.

Love you guys.

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-Story Time -

So, from time to time, things can get complicated in the comics world. Recently, my DMs and screenshots from Facebook have been very muddy. Several people have brought to my attention that someone has been speaking negatively of me on the regular. However, there is only so much mud that you can take being thrown at you before you need to respond, despite trying hard to remain neutral.

This is a statement I’ve hesitated on making for a long time, one I hoped I wouldn’t need to do. But after continuously being targeted, mischaracterized, and dragged into something I didn’t do, I’m no longer staying silent. I don’t like putting people on blast, but today, I guess, it’s necessary.

In March, a former friend of mine - Danielle Conner - publicly accused another creator of s3xu@lly assaulting her while at SDCC, July 2024. She made this accusation in a random Facebook post in defense of her friend, another comic creator, who was accused of stealing thousands of dollars from a non-profit comics community.

In Danielle’s post, which served as her both calling out the creator who allegedly assaulted her and defending her friend who is involved in an embezzlement case, Danielle stated the following of her friend: “I don’t know what’s what and i’m not the law or a judge, or jury.” Further, in a comment within that post, Danielle stated that she would stand by her friend being accused of embezzlement because she believed Danielle’s alleged assault, with Danielle adding “at’s someone that was there, for me, even though I can’t speak to, what may have driven her to do something that no judge or jury has found her guilty of and she’s innocwnr until proven guilty. I’m not a judge. I’m not a jury. If indeed she did embe funds. I don’t know what circumstance she was under. I don’t know what may have driven it whatever happened. I don’t judge people.”

Now, if Danielle’s assault happened or not, I do not know. I wasn’t there. I am not even friends on social media with Danielle’s alleged perpetrator. However, I always start from a place of believing victims, and when Danielle spoke to me, I encouraged her to report the incident to the authorities. Since then, I’ve heard conflicting accounts from other sources. Ultimately, the truth of that event remains between the two individuals involved.

Recently, a book was being crowdfunded by another publishing company, and I was hired months ago to contribute a short backup story for the book. Myself and six other creators were asked to contribute our short stories. I was not initially aware of every other creator hired, only that I was asked to be part of it. It turns out that lots of these other individuals are some of my favorite people in comics. So, I was not ashamed to be in this book and I am proud of it. Incidentally, another creator in the book is the person who Danielle is accusing of her assault.

This is when the DMs started. Danielle contacted me and demanded that I make a public statement condemning this creator and the book. I declined. Why? It is not my book. I wasn’t involved in the hiring decisions for the book we are both in. I wasn’t at the event in question, and I wasn’t willing to punish the other creators in the book who had nothing to do with this controversy. My duty is to my fellow creators, and I stand by that.

Danielle didn’t accept this. She accused me of choosing my “associate” over her, though I remind everyone that I’m not even Facebook friends with the person in question. Danielle claimed I wasn’t Christian enough, wasn’t punk enough, and wasn’t a good parent. She attacked my character, my work, my identity, and my own trauma in deeply personal ways. When I continued to decline to do what she wanted me to do, I was accused of covering up and supporting s3xu@l assault. The messages go on and on in the most unhinged ways imaginable.

In full transparency, in the past, I have hired the individual that Danielle is accusing of assault for a story in Cthulhu Invades Neverland and I do respect his artistic ability. But we are far from associates or even more so friends.

Danielle made claims that I am not a Christian because I was in-between churches when we met, and I continue to be for personal reasons. I have never done anything “Christian enough” for her liking. She continues to state that I use punk rock to make money on Granite State Punk and that I don't support the punk scene locally, outright telling me that I should be out at late night concerts when I stated that I would prefer to be home taking care of my family and working. She claimed that I am not punk rock, implying that I’m a poser, and she harshly judges the fact that I write a book about punk, but don’t live the lifestyle. I’m not sure why creators have to live the lifestyle of the characters in their books - this is a new concept to me. I’m a storyteller, a dreamer - and yes, I do enjoy and respect punk culture, punk music, and the scene, but I am in my 40s and have a family. She mocked me for that and told me to put my kid to bed and go to shows. The days of me being out late in noisy, crowded venues are over for me except on rare occasions, but I honestly don’t need to justify any of that to anyone. There is even a panel in Granite State Punk: Only Posers Fall in Love that shows my character Zeke calling me a poser. Ya got me! But the story within Granite State Punk is very personal to me and is both a love letter to my hometown and expresses a lot of personal trauma that I have had to deal with in life. To have someone continuously harassing me over not going to punk concerts and invalidating me has been exhausting, to say the least.

I informed Danielle that my duty is to be a dad and create as many books as I can with the time I have left being 46 years old, and she shit on me and talked down to me. She attacked every ounce of my character from the way I parent to who I am as a person. We debated other situations where she has gone on rampages against creators who have attacked her, and she stated, “It's gotten major algorithm bumps.” This made me feel extra uncomfortable and she tried to threaten me with every screenshot or DM. she could find. She informed me of how small the comic industry is and people know. I told her to go ahead, I will not play the screenshot game and participate in her war. She informed me of every slight and mistake that I have committed since we have met. She threatened to expose me and use all our chat logs for her drama. I allowed her to do all this because I have nothing to hide. I allowed her to verbally attack me…I only fought back when I had to and I wasn’t afraid to tell her to fuck off, but I mostly let her vent.

With all of this being said, I could see Danielle was broken and hurt. Danielle has shared some of her personal struggles with me, so I know that this is all a lot for her, and she just recently transitioned in the last year or so, which I imagine has to be very difficult. So, I took the abuse. I even explained the situation to my wife. I would not let Heather read Danielle’s cruel attacks on me because my wife would not tolerate someone speaking to me like she did. I tried to protect her but also stay firm on my boundaries. I was hoping Danielle would come to the realization that she had a lot of misplaced anger and hurt - and she would be remorseful about all of the vitriol directed towards me.

Danielle then, quite some time later, decided to make a post about me and my character, again targeting me and how I am not her friend. I decided not to respond and just blocked her. Again, I am allowing her to feel all her emotions, but I am not engaging in this toxicity and fixation on me when I didn’t do anything wrong. I am not going to war against her or for her. I am not going to do it. I care about the community at large rather than winning an argument.

So then Danielle doubled down and went into my wife’s DMs, implying that I am a piece of shit and wouldn't tell my wife what's been going on and hiding everything she attacked me about. She went into great detail on how I am part of some grand cover-up of the alleged abuse and told my wife much of all the same abusive things she said to me. My wife calmly told her that she is sorry that she was assaulted and encouraged her to contact the authorities and obtain professional help to process her trauma. Heather did her best to show her compassion, as she is actively involved in protecting the LGBTQ community, but made it very clear that she felt uncomfortable being put into the middle of all of this, and she wasn’t changing my mind on blocking her and refusing to hurt the other creators that were in this book I am in. This enraged Danielle again and she abused my wife verbally, claiming she is also now responsible for what happened to her, trying to intimidate her, and then accused Heather of also covering up abuse. For several days, like in my case, my wife tried to validate her feelings and continued to show empathy. But it got to the point where it became too much and the attacks and bullying toward my wife were causing physical and emotional stress and anxiety. My wife asked for an apology because of how bad it got, or told her not to contact her again. After gaslighting and fake apologies, Danielle finally properly apologized and we left it at that. We hoped that would be the end of it.

Until this statement, we kept most of this in the DMs and allowed Danielle a place to express her hurt and encouraged her to file charges and seek professional help and victim’s advocacy. Much like Danielle’s statement about her friend accused of embezzlement - we are not a judge, jury, a witness, or associate of the person she is accusing. We are also not going to get involved in anything that potentially interferes with a criminal investigation if she ever chooses to pursue filing charges. Because we are involved in none of it.

Last weekend, I was a guest at a local comic con. My wife and I decided, based on these attacks, to not bring our children to this event because Danielle was going to be there. Heather stayed home with the kids despite having plans to bring both of them. This prevented me from seeing my children most of Father's Day, which was painful, but it's better than the potential drama. However, Danielle perpetuated the drama by speaking negatively about me to one of my comic collaborators while she was at the show.

I spoke to a few people locally about this situation. It turns out quite a few people have their own stories and have blocked Danielle because of similar behavior. This broke my heart because clearly Danielle is not able to see her actions or she wouldn't have a list of people who block her on the regular. I wish I could be the friend that Danielle wanted me to be, but from the beginning of this until this point, my desire to protect the comics community is what is most important to me…even her as she continued to attack me as a person.

That was until Friday night. Danielle finally crossed the line for me to have to make a public response. She made several posts about the situation and most of them included me. Again, this is something that I would ordinarily ignore. She has already attacked me tons of times and I didn’t strike back. I took the abuse to protect her, to protect other creators, to let her grieve and process how she needs to. However, I need to reply to this one because she is now messing with my comics community and attacking the creators in my book. Of her posts, only two offended me. One, where she denounced Cthulhu Invades Neverland and wished she didn't write the Foreword. Well, her wish is my command. I will make sure before the end of the year that her foreword is removed from all digital platforms and it will never be printed with her foreword again.

Danielle went and spoke negatively about my book just because she is fixated on how she thinks I did her wrong. And that doesn't just affect the creators, Heather and myself, but also every creator in the book and those are people I will go to war to defend. Directly or indirectly, her words are attempting to tarnish the book.

However, this went too far. This is the one that finally pissed me off.

This post is implying a lot. It is implying that I have secrets that may be linked to stuff that the creators of Peter Pan and Cthulhu may have been. This is an implication that everyone who worked on it is in some secret cult or cover-up. This cannot stand. I am an open book, too much at times, and have nothing to hide. I will not allow Danielle to damage the reputation of this book and the creators in it. I have taken the hits, but I won’t stay silent when you attack the good, hard-working people in my books. I don’t like to do stuff like this. However, she is using my kindness as a weapon, and I won’t tolerate it any longer.

So, this is my response, Danielle:

LEAVE ME AND MY FAMILY ALONE.

LEAVE THE CREATORS IN MY BOOKS ALONE.

I live by one simple rule:

All are welcome at my table.

If you’re a friend, a fan, a creator, or family - you are welcome. But when you betray me or attack the people sitting at my table, you are no longer welcome.

Danielle, you are no longer welcome at my table. I welcomed you. I broke bread with you. I gave you opportunities. But now, go be toxic somewhere else.

Let me be very clear: If this happened to you, I still encourage you to pursue justice. Please call 800-952-5225 or visit https://oag.ca.gov/sexualassaultresources for information about your rights and victim services. If you want to press charges, please do so. But you are harassing me, my wife, and intentionally trying to hurt Orange Cone Productions.

Danielle, we are not friends. I don't want to be friends with someone who has continuously and intentionally caused me harm. I don't want to ever see you again. You need to stay away from me, and any further attacks public or private will result in legal action. Police, lawyers…all of these will be utilized if you continue.

I will not be a victim because something happened to you. I will no longer take your abuse to help you heal. If you continue to use my books and any unassociated creators from my books as a weapon in your personal matters, I will pursue legal action.

I pray you get the help you need to heal from this and what causes you to respond like this to others.

But I am done.

Travis Gibb
Orange Cone Production.