If you're singling out one particular piece of fanart for mockery (rather than say, a trend in fanart) without knowing if the creator would be cool with it, and immortalizing said mockery in canon, then yeah, that's kind of a dick move.
Of course, turned out he wasn't actually mocking it, and he apologized for the misunderstanding, so we're all good here. S'all good.
...
So, that update. I woulda thought John could just... swoosh around him with his windy powers to avoid any physical blow.