This story is pretty significant. One of the two artists is John Workman, who was the art director of Heavy Metal for a very long time. Importantly, he hasn’t been working for or at Heavy Metal since 1984. It raises the question of whether the hatchets had been completely buried, or if the editorial board at the time even knew there was a problem to begin with.

(Heavy Metal issue #202, November 2002 – Page 98 My Secret Savior by Ryan and Workman)

Addendum: Workman also wrote the introduction and contributed to the official 25th Anniversary covers book, so he clearly had a good relationship with the magazine's owners at the time.