Longtime Magic: The Gathering artist Donato Giancola has accused newcomer Fay Dalton of plagiarizing his work for a card illustration in a recent set.
The card in question, Trouble in Pairs, was printed in Murders at Karlov Manor Commander with an artist credit for Fay Dalton. Reddit user hypnotichog created a post on the magicTCG subreddit that highlighted similarities between a character on the card with a mohawk hairstyle and a character painted by Donato Giancola for the cover of The Ravengers, a mid-1990s novel by Stephen Billias set in the Cyberpunk 2020 universe.
A few hours after the Reddit post appeared, Donato Giancola posted his own comparison image on his Facebook page, declaring himself “Nearly speechless, but not speechless enough not to contact a lawyer.” and asking, “What were you thinking Fay Dalton?”
Several current and former Magic: The Gathering artists commented on Giancola’s Facebook post, including Lars Grant-West, who created a third comparison image highlighting minute details that suggest “a flip-and-paintover” of Giancola’s work.
Further hints at plagiarism were found in another Reddit thread, where user BinaryLegend pointed out the other character in the art for Trouble in Pairs appears to be an amalgamation of illustrations from Will Hulsey and Boris Vallejo.
The head of the character in the foreground of Trouble in Pairs looks to be a variation of the man on the cover of an issue of Trapped Detective Story Magazine, illustrated by Hulsey, and the neck and arm of the character seem to be lifted from a 1987 painting by Vallejo titled “Corniche.”
And the allegations of plagiarism don’t end there. A post on X (formerly Twitter) from The Howling Salt Mine Podcast account found what looks to be the source material for the character’s right hand.
The fingers, knuckles, and line on the wrist all line up with a figure from a Morton Kunstler painting called “The Bull Toughest Marine in the Whole Damned Corps.”
With so much of the illustration of Trouble in Pairs looking like it was lifted from other work, Magic players on social media are guessing the axes and trench coat will surface in other works of art eventually as well.
The allegations come less than six months after Wizards of the Coast (WotC) cut ties with artist David Sondered, who admitted his illustration for Wayfarer’s Bauble in The Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander used the work of fellow Magic artist Lorenzo Lanfranconi without permission.
An account used by the WotC Community Team commented on the hypnotichog Reddit post: “We appreciate our community flagging concerns on the card art featured in ‘Trouble in Pairs’ – we’re looking into it.”
