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After new cards were revealed for the new Magic: The Gathering | The Hobbit expansion, one of them was found to have copied another card
Posted in: Card Games, Games, Magic: The Gathering, Tabletop, Wizards of the Coast | Tagged: Dan Frazier, MagicCon: Las Vegas, the hobbit
Magic: The Gathering Issues Statement On Copied Hobbit Artwork
After new cards were revealed for the new Magic: The Gathering | The Hobbit expansion, one of them was found to have copied another card
Article Summary
- Magic: The Gathering faces fresh controversy after The Hobbit card reveal sparked plagiarism claims over The One Ring art.
- Artist Dan Frazier admitted his Magic: The Gathering | The Hobbit artwork copied Marta Neal’s earlier design.
- Wizards of the Coast issued a public statement after the disputed Magic: The Gathering card spread across social media.
- The fallout raises questions about Magic: The Gathering art review, artist oversight, and possible scrutiny of past work.
Wizards of the Coast has had to address a new issue today about a card revealed for Magic: The Gathering | The Hobbit, as an artist has had to admit they copied someone else's style. During MagicCon: Las Vegas this weekend, the team revealed several cards from the upcoming expansion, and one in particular caught more than a few eyes, as artist Dan Frazier found himself in controversy over his artwork for the card, "The One Ring."
As you can see here, Frazier's card on the left was revealed to the public this weekend, along with different designs of the same art for different packs. However, on the right is another "The One Ring" card designed by artist Marta Neal, released as part of their 2023 The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth expansion. When you put them side-by-side, it becomes a little too obvious that Frazier copied Neal's design, reversed the image, made some changes to it, and sent it to WotC to be used in the new 2026 set.
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- Credit: Wizards of the Coast
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- Credit: Wizards of the Coast
Once word spread online, it was only a matter of time before Wizards of the Coast would need to address it. Which they did today in a statement released on social media this afternoon.
There are going to be two big takeaways from this going forward. The first is that WotC's team somehow did not catch this, despite having made a set based on the same franchise three years prior, and it made it all the way to getting displayed at a major event within months of the set coming out on the market. The second is that people are now going to go back and start examining Frazier's work over the years to see if he cut corners anywhere else in his designs for Magic: The Gathering and any other properties he has worked on. It's a black eye for everyone involved, but probably a necessary oen for the company to put artists under more scrutiny when checking their artwork for things such as AI and plagiarism.
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