Space Goat’s Shon Bury the Latest Comic Professional Outed for Abuse

Former Space Goat Productions community manager Amelia Thompson has gone to Twitter to reveal the “terrible” treatment of employees by company founder Shon Bury.

Thompson describes an office environment full of verbal abuse and sexist remarks. Below are her Tweets on the subject but other former employees responded to them with their own negative experiences.

Bleeding Cool received the following statement from Thompson:

There are two things I want people to know.

The first, I have the full support of both of my past Space Goat supervisors. They helped me edit every tweet for grammar and clarity. My ex-coworkers have been immensely supportive through all of this, two even resigning after I collected my things on Monday, Nov. 27. They expressed that the way I was treated after my resignation was unacceptable.

The second, I’m taking some time to recover and handle this media explosion while out of a job. If supporters wanted to aid me beyond just retweets, my paypal is on my twitter. I’m worried about making bills the next couple months but I just couldn’t let my friends or myself be hurt any longer.

Others supported Thompson’s experience. The Moonlighters team of Cal Moray and Katie Schenkel also spoke of issues.

The team behind Monster Elementary also tweeted support as well as issues with late payments and just payment issues in general as well as accounting issues.

The Space Goat Publishing Twitter account Tweeted an apology.

This was after a different story in a deleted Tweet.

Bury also released a statement to Bleeding Cool:

I can’t apologize enough for this entire situation. I deeply regret that I fostered an environment where a smart person like Amelia felt uncomfortable working under my direct management–and that she felt even less comfortable bringing up her concerns until she resigned. It has been my design since I opened the doors at Space Goat 12 years ago to create a workplace where smart, talented, young people can come to work and learn the craft of comic books. Amelia is exactly the type of capable young employee publishers should be looking to bring into their organization and to build up. I had thought I had created that environment for my staff, but the daily stress of running a graphic-novel and board-game publishing company at the tempo we have been running became visible to all around me over the last several months. This isn’t on anyone else in my organization but me. This is squarely, 100% on me.

My inability to regulate my frustration during this period poisoned the very environment I had set out to create. I behaved poorly and I failed miserably at one of the core tenets of why I even want to be in business. I will always deeply regret losing Amelia, and am ashamed of how poorly I handled her resignation. I am taking immediate action to resolve this flaw within myself starting today with counseling and anger-management classes. Nothing is more important to me than the culture and community we are trying to create. I won’t let anyone stand in the way of achieving those goals. Not even myself.

(via The Outhouse)


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