‘Magic: The Gathering’ Hits Insulting Low With ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ Source Material Cards
Whether you love or hate Magic: The Gathering‘s recent Universes Beyond crossover efforts (or even the game all together), the upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender has one thing that every player, of every stripe can agree on: The hands-down worst ‘source material’ cards ever produced.
First introduced with the recent Final Fantasy set, said cards do exactly what they say on the tin, each one delivering a reprint of a previously released MTG card that, instead of an original artwork commissioned from one of Wizards of the Coast’s many partnered artists, features an image taken directly from its respective Universes Beyond franchise’s original media.
For Final Fantasy, said images were sourced from a variety of official material, including key art, character profiles, and the games themselves.
For the recent Spider-Man set, the publisher turned to his Marvel Comics bibliography, opting to ease their paradox of choice by going with artwork specifically crafted for his comic book adventures.
Likewise, while its full range of offerings has yet to be revealed, the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set will at least draw from Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s original Mirage Comics series (and if one were to chance an educated guess, likely from the team’s 1985 cartoon).
Though these prints usually come out looking pretty damn good, they’re not without their issues, chief among them being WotC’s baffling struggles with proper framing and the lazy nature of their production, as the cards are not only screenshotted from already-existing media, but those taken from older works are presented as is, leaving older material to look exactly as fuzzy and artifact-laden as one would imagine.
Unfortunately, WotC has apparently learned nothing in terms of either pain point, as the upcoming set not only continues both trends, but ramps them up to 20 and breaks the dial.
Of the set’s source material cards revealed up to now, each of them have been screenshotted from the series’ original release as was broadcast on Nickelodeon and eventually released on DVD, with the only changes made, if any, being to their brightness, contrast, and color saturation (and sloppily too, as seen in the Agent of Treachery below, where Azula’s blue flame has the very distinct ‘up the saturation, up the brightness’ halo effect).
The glaring problem here is that Avatar was produced right before the advent of High Definition broadcast capabilities, and thus holds a native resolution of just 640 x 480.
As a result, each card looks insultingly cheap, almost like WotC threw screenshots into the first Google search result for ‘MTG proxy card maker’ and called it a day.
As for framing, well, Fire Lord Ozai has something to say about that himself:
(And in admitted nitpick, it should be noted that WotC also goes with the absolute worst, least helpful citation format I have personally ever seen, choosing to identify each card by its season and total episode number, but only naming the season rather than the episode. Just look at the Cruel Tutor below – ‘B3: Fire Ch: 58?’ That’s insane.)
What makes this lazy approach to Avatar‘s source material cards particularly egregious is the fact that WotC has not only shown they’re willing and able to redraw lower definition television screenshots for use in MTG, but they did so with another Nickelodeon mainstay.
Their focus on memes may still stand as an example of everything wrong with modern pop-culture, but credit where credit is due, the Spongebob Squarepants Secret Lair sets don’t look like complete s**t.
Unfortunately, with less than a month to go until the set’s official release, it’s unlikely WotC will make any drastic changes to their Avatar: The Last Airbender source material cards.
And thought not all of these cards have been revealed yet, it’s unlikely that any of them will buck this trend, as, again, the source material only exists in standard definition.
NEXT: ‘Magic: The Gathering’ Blames ‘Spider-Man’ Set Disinterest On “Negative Influencer Commentary”
