In another blow to Wizards of the Coast after the recent Candlekeep Mysteries debacle, an artist has been accused of stealing art for one of the cards featured in the upcoming Magic: The Gathering Strixhaven Mystical Archive. The card in question is the Japan variant of Crux of Fate and appears to feature plagarized fan art of the long-running character Nicol Bolas.
Crux Of Fate - Magic: The Gathering Strixhaven
The upcoming set Strixhaven for Magic: the Gathering is set to feature various cards from the game's history, with fancy new art and some cool Japan-exclusive variants to boot. One of those cards, Crux of Fate, has been at the center of an online storm when a fan artist known as Scarypet discovered that their art has been plagiarized and featured on the Japan-variant of the card in question.
After a fan commented on the artist's fan piece on Deviantart, they took to Twitter to show off exactly what they had discovered. There's an exact match between various different parts of the art found on the card, including Nichol Bolas' head and arm. The artist responsible for the card, Jason Felix, has since been suspended from working with Wizards of the Coast. In a statement released by the company, they said that the card "may overtly feature Magic: The Gathering fan art" and "we will be suspending future work with Jason Felix until we have been able to bring this matter to successful conclusion."
When asked about it, Scarypet said that they didn't have anything more to say at this time.
It Doesn't End There For Jason Felix
In response to the Twitter thread posted by artist Scarypet, other users pointed out that even more of the Crux of Fate art may be stolen. In particular, the other character featured on the card, Ugin, bears a start similarity to art by Magic: The Gathering artist Raymond Swanland. As you can see in the video below, the art is another 1-to-1 exact match for the position and pose of certain parts of the character's body.
You can judge for yourself whether more art was indeed stolen for the Crux of Fate card. One thing's for sure, all of Jason Felix's previous artwork for Magic: The Gathering, and other projects is going to be under intense scrutiny over the coming weeks and months. We have also approached both Jason Felix and Raymond Swanland for comment on the situation.
