For the purposes of this article, I will be taking every statement absolutely at its word unless that becomes untenable. In the interest of fairness, you know.
Dan Frazier is one of the most celebrated artists in all of Magic: The Gathering. There's no denying that. But he sure did stake his reputation in the dumbest way possible very recently.
At MagicCon in Las Vegas, Wizards of the Coast revealed cards for the for-some-reason-necessary The Hobbit set1, including a new version of the card The One Ring. Personally, I think this card should be removed from every format possible, not reprinted, due more to power-level concerns, but my opinions about power creep don't matter much here. It was immediately spotted that this new piece of work, claiming to be illustrated by celebrated artist Dan Frazier, looked... off. I mean, for a start, it looks like absolute shit. The color choices clash unnaturally and in general the background feels like it does not suit the foreground; it'd be like if you're watching some big-budget CGI-fest of a movie (hey, this is a Lord of the Rings tie-in...) and one of the cool creatures was replaced with a pencil sketch. It's the sort of thing that should make an art director who's not being worked down to their last neuron go, "Hey, uh, Daniel, not to be rude or question the artist or anything, but... are you sure you want to submit this? Are you confident that this is finished?"2
No, no, what people noticed was the extremely obvious evidence of slapdash photoshopping. I am not super-familiar with more modern Magic arts, even if I made a thread last year recording my favorite Magic art from every set, and I don't play paper Magic anymore, so I couldn't pick Marta Nael's One Ring out of a lineup of any other random rings. You show me this and I'd sooner guess, like, Rings of Brighthearth, because I don't think about Universes Beyond stuff basically at all. But even if you don't know the piece of art in question, even casual scrutiny of "Dan Frazier's" One Ring would reveal some... issues. Many people noted that the runes on the ring were poorly smudged over. Others, that the ring was out of round. Some pointed out the reflection of Gollum's hand. What I noticed was the extremely obvious evidence that this was trimmed really, really badly. There are still misshapen bits of outline around the ring, and in general the shape does not look correct. If, say, you were going to trace over this (e.g. by selecting all of the transparent space, inverting selection, then blocking over the ring in black to give yourself the correct shape), you would not get the proper shape at all. This would have been the dead giveaway to me that something was up.
You know, aside from the fact that the background doesn't match. But maybe that'd just be evidence that this was an extremely soggy caprid.
People very quickly realized it was Marta Nael's ring, which again, maybe is more of an actual thing in the community. I'm generally on the fringes at best now, so when everyone starts calling this art "iconic," I look over at it and puzzle a little because it's not illustrated by someone like Mark Poole or Anson Maddocks. Nevertheless, it's out on the table, and then there were several hours of waiting before an official statement. In that time... things started to buzz.
Donato Giancola, a frequent Magic artist, responded to the controversy on Facebook, posting his own One Ring from 1997 for the Middle-earth Collectible Card Game. Mark Aronowitz, one of Dan Frazier's agents, responded to the post by noting that several changes were requested - either by the art director or someone at MEE - and that Dan had a "final piece" ready, which he had not seen yet - nor had he seen this version. This immediately got the rumor mill buzzing. Conspiracy theories abounded. I had a few of my own, even!
Eventually, Wizards of the Coast swept in with a statement that made nobody happy. (source)
It reads the following (I stole this transcript from this Bluesky user cause I ain't rewritin all that):
A MESSAGE FROM DAN FRAZIER AND WIZARDS OF THE COAST:
RECENTLY, FANS NOTED THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE ONE RING BY MARTA NAEL, AND THE NEWLY RELEASED IMAGE OF THE ONE RING BY DAN FRAZIER.
THOSE SIMILARITIES ARE NOT COINCIDENTAL. UNFORTUNATELY.
X
FROM DAN,
I MADE A MISTAKE, AND I FEEL AWFUL. I ESPECIALLY FEEL FOR MARTA, WHOSE WORK I ADORE. IN TRYING TO CREATE AN ICONIC VERSION OF THE ONE RING, WHILE LOOKING AT REFERENCES ONLINE, I ENDED UP USING MARTA'S RING AS A REFERENCE AND PAINTED OVER IT TO TRY TO DEPICT THE ITEM FANS HOLD DEAR TO THEIR HEARTS. IN DOING SO. I DIDN'T MAKE IT MY OWN. I'M REACHING OUT TO MARTA PRIVATELY TO APOLOGIZE ARTIST TO ARTIST. I LOVE CREATING ART FOR MAGIC, I'VE LOVED BEING A PART OF THIS
ARTIST COMMUNITY FOR MORE THAN 30 YEARS, AND I'M SORRY I'VE LET MY FANS DOWN.
SINCERELY, DAN FRAZIER
FROM WIZARDS OF THE COAST,
DAN FRAZIER IS A TITAN OF THE ART INDUSTRY AND OF MAGIC: THE GATHERING. HE HAS CREATED SO MANY ICONIC PIECES OF ART FOR THE GAME THAT HE WILL FOREVER BE A PART OF OUR GAME, AND WE VALUE HIS CONTRIBUTIONS TREMENDOUSLY. WITH THAT IN MIND, WE'RE DISAPPOINTED OUR REVIEW PROCESS DIDN'T CATCH THE ISSUE. LIKE DAN, WE HAVE ALREADY REACHED OUT TO APOLOGIZE TO MARTA NAEL FOR NOT CATCHING THE USE OF HER ART IN THIS PIECE.
NONE OF THIS WAS INTENTIONAL, BUT WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT RIGHT AS MUCH AS WE CAN.
ON DIGITAL VERSIONS OF THE CARD. WE WILL CREDIT BOTH DAN FRAZIER AND MARTA NAEL. WE WILL ALSO MAKE SURE MARTA IS COMPENSATED FOR HER WORK HERE.
THIS IS A GOOD MOMENT TO RECOGNIZE THAT WE ARE ALL HUMANS WHO MAKE MISTAKES. DAN MADE A MISTAKE. WE MADE MISTAKES IN OUR PROCESS TO NOT CATCH THE ERROR. WE DON'T CONDONE OR ACCEPT EITHER. BUT WE STILL VALUE DAN AND HIS CONTRIBUTIONS AND ARE GRATEFUL FOR HIS PLACE IN THE GAME.
THANK YOU TO THE EAGLE-EYED FANS WHO NOTICED THIS,
AND FOR ALL OF YOU FOR BEING STRONG ADVOCATES FOR AMAZING ART AND ARTISTS.
SINCERELY.
ALL OF US AT WIZARDS OF THE COAST
It took all of no time whatsoever for fans to start trying to spin conspiracy theories about this, some of which were born out of deliberately reading the words wrong. I get it. It feels bad to have to consider that an iconic artist like Dan screwed up in some way, and Wizards has been so bad sometimes that you just... really want to believe there's something deeper to this. I wanted to believe that WotC used a crappy photoshop either as placeholder art or as a specific budget-cutting technique and specifically pushed Dan onto his sword, but until I have proof otherwise, I denounce that. This is as close to real information as we have, even if none of it is true; spinning your wheels in your head and making shit up is no more reliable. It's also really stupid seeing a bunch of people who have never met Dan Frazier say things like "oh, he would never do this!" - honey, stop being so parasocial. Also, please note that "mistake" does not indicate it was an accident, just that it was the wrong move. (I've also seen some people attempt to claim that there's some sort of element of misogyny involved here, because Bluesky is self-parody.)
This statement is really about the same as any other statement, but also, if the underpaid social media intern didn't want to write actual alt text for this statement, don't even use the feature.
If, again, we take everyone at their words here, Dan is stretching a few terms here (the thing is, Dan, you really, really didn't "paint over" Marta's ring that much; you used some smudge tools, in all likelihood, which I think is at least a little more specific). But it doesn't explain why he did it. Was it some sort of eff-you to Wizards for looping him into this with their... bizarre requirements?3 Were you just being lazy? Did you send the wrong file by mistake?
Wizards' side of things deserves as much condemnation as any of these statements do. They are never apologies, but I also think it is openly offensive to write a whole statement jacking off a guy who just did the most blatant art theft ever seen in Magic while not actually saying anything about the wronged party here (Wait, what am I saying? They clearly perceive themselves as the wronged party.). Granted, I have some opinions on how much it matters that we hear from Marta, but I'll talk about this later.
Okay, they have committed to crediting Dan Frazier and Marta Nael... in digital (paper they're kinda fucked on because they've obviously already sent this to print and any changes will at best come in a second print run). And they said they would compensate Marta for her stolen artwork. You know, I'm kinda reminded of how when the KLF (then known as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu) released their first album, 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?), they were forced to destroy all unsold copies due to a litany of uncleared samples. Totally unjustified, because it's a transformative work, but I feel like this is much more in line with what should happen here. Unfortunately, WotC is a corporation, there's no legal action involved here (frankly, I assume none can happen), and corporations only care about what makes them money. This will get approximately zero people to not buy the product and will turn away approximately zero shareholders.
Which brings me to the next part of things: how do we stop this from happening? It seems like the recent years have brought a lot of plagiarism controversies for WotC.
Well, for a start, I think the sheer number of releases is taking its toll on the game. Many people have already talked about how six to seven sets of standard in a year is bad for the game's health due to the rapidly accelerating card pool growth, but it's become clear that that's true for the actual production of the game too. I stand by the conspiracy that the repeated instances we've seen of UB cards appearing unintentionally in prerelease kits is actually fully intended to try to build hype for the products that objectively make WotC the most money (at least if their statements are to be believed). However, all of the other QA problems? Yeah, no, that's due to the amount of ramp-up there's been in number of releases over the years. Maybe they should dial it back to about... four? Four sets a year sounds good. No Masters sets, no Horizons, no Commander decks, none of these stupid bonus sheets - four sets a year. With four 60-card precon decks made from the set and the most recent core release. Just like we had back in the 90s and early 00s, where the prime controversy was that the grayed-out mana symbols in text boxes looked like trash when they moved to the modern frame and Time Vault didn't work like it claimed it did. If you want to rejuvenate supplies of something in Legacy, or bring something to Modern, it has to go through Standard. Personally, I'm only saying this last part because I think it would be funny as hell, and it could potentially lead to massive ban lists in Standard. Which, to be fair, they probably don't want, because pulling banned cards is a very feel-bad thing (which is why Yu-Gi-Oh hates to do that and YGO players had to suffer through every overpowered Link Monster for freakin' years). Okay, fine. You get one Masters set per year. With recycled artwork only unless an artist goes all Terese Nielsen on you.4
Honestly, that's all I got for solutions. At this point, I want to dunk on some of the response to what happened here. I mean, it would be very easy to dunk on the corporate ass-kissing that I saw on Reddit, but let's put that aside. I'd like to note that I don't really need to hear what Marta has to say about this. Jeez, leave her alone. This probably sucks for her. What could you possibly gain from what Marta Nael has to say about this? I think a lot of these people are looking to see her accept Dan's apology publicly, so they can go back to loving Dan's art guilt-free without having to Hatsune Miku it.5
But moreover, I've heard a lot of people point out that Dan Frazier, 81, is in fact 81 years old, and as an 81-year-old, he is probably either not that technologically knowledgeable nor is he in total control of his mental faculties and ergo he should retire at the age of 81 or so, because we all know an 81-year-old should not be doing art. Yes, I think I saw these comments that often. Seriously, they were only slightly less frequent than new Magic product announcements. Now, I'm not exactly in favor of eighty-year-olds in, say, politics, but Dan Frazier is an artist, and he should be permitted to continue doing as he wishes. While a lot of these people claim that they don't think WotC should hire him anymore, but it does not sound like that a lot of the time. Also, digital art tools aren't really new. Did you know that the first Magic set (okay, technically the second because it was accidentally not printed in Alpha contained a card with a digital illustration - funnily, illustrated by the very art director who had originally come up with the "no digital illustrations" rule Magic operated under in its early years! Elderly folks may not take to technology super well, but let's not pretend this is something that just started to exist in the last three years or something. Even Mark Aronowitz used this as a defense - which, it feels like a weird thing to call a statement tantamount to "my client's brain is cooked" a defense, but that’s obviously the intention. I don't personally know how experienced Dan is or is not with digital art software, butu taht's really not an age thing, folks, and bringing it up at the same time as his age just makes you seem like prejudiced.
So in short: This sucks, dude.
By the way, it was noted elsewhere, quite rightly, that you can just get marbled paper at craft stores. It's very possible Dan did no "real" work on this at all, and he just scanned in an off-the-shelf backdrop and pasted a badly altered ring that he stole from another artist. So that's fun!
1. ↑ I spared you most of my usual spiel about Universes Beyond in the main review, but just to emphasize, as usual: I despise Universes Beyond. This isn't done out of any artistic interest, it is solely as a revenue-enhancement system for the corporation and the shareholders. This becomes especially apparent when one looks over at the various Marvel Comics tie-ins. Marvel superhero stuff is white-hot with the normies. A lot of the other series WotC loves to incorporate through UB are similar - stuff like Ninja Turtles, Lord of the Rings, The Last of Us, Fallout... video games tend to feel a bit more niche, but these are all pretty widely loved inside those domains. WotC isn't going to get real fairweather folks into a trading card game, so while your mom probably doesn't know any Fallout characters, even the most surface-level nerd can recognize Vault-Boy. The Lord of the Rings tie-ins are a special kind of bizarre to me, simply because so much of modern fantasy fiction already owes such an incredible debt to Tolkien that there is practically no reason to do this, and wouldn't the best thing to do with Universes Beyond be to incorporate things that Magic might otherwise lack? For example, one upside of Duskmourn is that they don't have to do most of the obvious horror franchises anymore! OH WAIT
Wizards of the Coast is doing this primarily becasue the Magic IP has no cultural cachet except maybe for its rules and a very surface-level understanding of it. Certainly, people who aren't well enfranchised don't know much about Magic's characters, no matter how... little they try. I also don't think the Dungeons & Dragons supplements have done much to make people more aware of any of the worlds of Magic either. I know it's kind of ridiculous for me to say this as we're hearing stuff about Reality Fracture, a set focused overwhelmingly on story and Magic's extensive cast of characters, but I don't think that's going to get any new fans into Magic
See, the thing is, I think they could get the general public interested. One good way to do that involves, much as I hate to say it, spinoff products. WotC has tried for a small eternity to get a Magic movie off the ground, to no avail. Personally I would suggest going a bit further. Do like... ugh, I can't believe I'm saying this, but do like League of Legends and have an animated series made for Netflix. Just... just don't do anything else like League of Legends. Especially do not replicate Riot Games' workplace culture!
I'm not convinced WotC is all that interested in trying to break out of their perception as being "just a thing for super-nerds," but they also clearly don't want that anymore. But instead of leaning into Magic being a thirty-year-old franchise with a truly massive amount of backstory to draw on, they intead basically want to reduce it to a system for other popular things to be thrown on top of. It's deeply upsetting.
And for people who want to accuse me of telling people to stop having fun and being mad that people are enjoying themselves, if someone you will never meet and whose opinion you are free to ignore gets you to stop having fun with the game entirely, maybe you should do some analysis as to why this is.
2. ↑ The Magic art director(s) take(s) it on the chin in this piece a lot, but let me note that there is also the matter of Middle-earth Enterprises, a company that deals in the film, merchandising, etc. rights of the greater Lord of the Rings franchise for the Tolkien estate. To note, I absolutely believe they screwed up here as well and should be equally if not more embarrassed - doubly so as this piece of plagiarism involved a piece of art from what is effectively the same collaboration, just an extension thereof.
3. ↑ Very specifically, in this case I am referring to Wizards of the Coast requiring Universes Beyond cards use digital art. Why this is, I'm not exactly certain, but I suspect it has something to do with establishing a unifying art style or something like that. Which, all-digital art would still not do, but... Look, I didn't say my reasoning was sound.
4. ↑Speaking of whom, I think a lot of people have focused on WotC being a bit more lenient with Dan Frazier as this being a case of "leaving the door open in case they still need him." Which, uh, I kind of agree. But also, I find WotC has been a bit more lenient on this kind of thing in recent years. Seb McKinnon was once given the boot for his support of that Freedom Convoy or whatever it was called - they're Nazis, I don't respect them enough to find out what their shithead group was calling themselves - in Canada, but WotC has seen fit to reinstate some of his art on newer printings in recent years. I'm assuming this is because they, like all corporations, are political mercenaries who are responding to a perceived rightward swing, but it does make me want to puke (So far, they haven't done this with Terese Nielsen, but I'm expecting any day now.). I suspect that ultimately, very few people really care that much. There is some suggestion of them propping up Dan because of his reputation and his historical importance to the look of Magic, but I again don't think this is the case because no other artist is getting that kind of treatment.
5. ↑ I assume we all know what this means because this is the Internet, but I'm referring to the act of erasing the credit of something you like whose creator has been declared to be problematic so you can go along enjoying it guilt-free and seem like you don't support that problematic creator personally.
I tend to find this framing to be dishonest. A lot of great art has been made by horrible people! I still like some Pantera songs despite Phil Anselmo being a screaming racist. I still listen to Oingo Boingo despite sexual misconduct and harrassment allegations against Danny Elfman. I stiill listen to Rammstein even after... christ, the allegations about the "Row Zero" shit on the recent tour. What I do is, I don't support these groups anymore. Destroying my stuff won't help anyone, and giving them away to others, for money or otherwise, just enables them to get into it and may encourage them to support the group themselves. The Hatsune Miku thing is a means of whitewashing someone with a less-than-clean history. Also, let's be honest here, I don't see a lot of people doing any of these steps for WotC itself. Pinkertons okay, plagiarism bad. Make it make sense.
Then again, we live in a very puritanical age, so people are obsessed with having "clean" media habits. I'll probably get roasted for admitting what I have here, and not just for having bad taste.