Wizards of the Coast debuted Magic: The Gathering’s upcoming Hobbit crossover set at MagicCon: Las Vegas this past weekend. Within twenty-four hours, the flagship card of that reveal, which is a a new version of The One Ring illustrated by veteran MTG artist Dan Frazier, was confirmed as a traced copy of artwork created by artist Marta Nael for the 2023 Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth set.
Frazier and WotC issued a joint statement on May 2. The artist did not soften it.
“I made a mistake, and I feel awful,” Frazier wrote. “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.”
WotC’s portion of the statement acknowledged its own review process failed to catch the issue before the card was shown publicly: “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.”
Note the qualifier: digital versions. The physical cards have already been printed. Nael’s name will not appear on them.
The community’s reaction came fast. Donato Giancola, one of the most respected fantasy illustrators working today and a longtime MTG contributor, posted on Facebook: “Wizards of the Coast just released a very sorry excuse for the most important card in their upcoming Hobbit set. They just digitally sampled the previous One Ring card from the Lord of the Rings set and flipped and deleted the Elvish Runes. I doubt Dan Frasier had any real say in how this came about. So much for the One Ring being unique. Welcome to Wizards of the Coast’s Digital Only Universes Beyond, photocopied art.”
Former MTG podcaster Joey Pasco was direct: “This is pretty messed up. As pointed out by Donato Giancola on FB, it seems the new printing of The One Ring is just a flipped cutout of a previous borderless printing (artist credit: Marta Nael) with the runes removed, then plopped onto a Dan Frazier background.”
Frazier’s agent confirmed that the artist was not shown the final version after several requested changes were implemented, which raises a question WotC has not answered: if Frazier did not approve the final card, who did? And how did an image that is visibly a mirrored, rune-stripped version of a three-year-old card pass through an internal review process at a company that made the original set?
Frazier has contributed art for 188 cards over the years, including the original five Moxen in Alpha. His standing in the MTG art community is not in dispute. The statement makes clear he bears responsibility for using Nael’s work as a direct reference. It also makes clear WotC’s review process is broken, because a company that produced Tales of Middle-earth in 2023 should have recognized its own card’s ring when a new version of it arrived for The Hobbit set in 2026.
The first major takeaway 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 being displayed at a major event within months of the set’s release.
The second takeaway is structural. WotC’s remedy is digital credit and compensation for Nael, which is more than nothing. But the physical cards carry only Frazier’s name. Every copy of The One Ring from The Hobbit set that moves through the secondary market will do so without acknowledging the artist whose work made it possible.
This is not the first time the MTG art pipeline has produced a situation that damaged a creator. It likely will not be the last. The review process that failed here is the same one responsible for approving every card that ships to print. WotC called this a moment to recognize that humans make mistakes. That is true. It is also a moment to ask why a company with thirty-plus years of experience and a review team specifically tasked with catching problems like this one sent a traced card to a major convention reveal without anyone noticing.
Does WotC’s response make this right? Or does Marta Nael deserve better than a name that will never appear on a physical card?
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