Last week, star comic book artist, Adi Granov, alleged that Fransesco Mattina, an artist who regularly did variant covers for DC titles (and who had three solicited covers set to be released in September 2024), used generative artificial intelligence (A.I.) at least in part on his covers. Well, DC has now pulled all of Mattina’s future covers, including the previously solicited covers.
The change in solicitations was first noticed by Rich Johnston, and while most of the covers are currently listed now as “To Be Announced,” for one of the books, DC moved a cover meant for a future issue up a few months to take the place of a soon-to-be-released Mattina cover.
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What were the allegations against Mattina?
Last week, Adi Granov, a star artist most famous for his work on Iron Man (which eventually led to Granov being heaviliy involved in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a designer and concept artist), posted the following message on his Facebook page:
When image generators first came to prominence the first person who came to mind was the serial plagiarist Francesco Mattina as I thought he’d think all his Christmases have come at once. If you don’t remember, he made a whole career out of photobashing other people’s art (mine included) into whatever you want to call his “work”. I don’t post about artists I dislike, but I neither consider him an artist nor can I hide my dislike for the continued blatant plagiarism. Anyhow, here’s his new cover. Not only is he a hack, but he’s not even good enough to hide the glaring mistake on one of the most iconic symbols in all of pop-culture.
Here is a detail of Superman’s S symbol, where it appears as though the bottom was replicated one time too many…
Granov’s allegations (and he went further into detail in the comments of the post, noting other aspects of the artwork that seemed suspicious) went viral, and other fans and artists would begin to pick apart Mattina’s other covers solicited for September, like his covers for Superman #18 and Batman: The Brave and the Bold #17…
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What do the new DC solicitations look like?
DC recently altered its solicitations, with the books originally credited to Mattina now listed as “TBA”…
ACTION COMICS #1069 CVR C TBA CARD STOCK VAR
Retail: $5.99 Discount: 53% Price: $2.8153 Trim: COMIC 6 5/8″ x 10 3/16″
0724DC145
| JUL247145 | DCC24070145 | DC Comics
(W) Gail Simone, Rainbow Rowell (A) Eddy Barrows, Danny Miki, Cian Tormey (CA) TBA
IT’S INTERGALACTIC WAR AS THE SUPERMAN SUPERSTARS ERA CONTINUES! THE CHALLENGES CONTINUE as Superman finds himself an UNWILLING GLADIATOR in a war of a thousand worlds! Either he completes the challenges, or we lose the cities of Paris, Chicago, and KANDOR! Join us on a wild tale of adventure and inter-galactic WAR! Plus, is there a way for Lois and Clark to keep working together without compromising their values–and their relationship?
Mattina’s The Batman: The Brave and the Bold cover for #15 has already been replaced by a cover by Khary Randolph (the Randolph cover would have appeared on a future issue. That future Randolph cover is now, of course, also “TBA”).
CBR reached out to DC for comment, and have not received a response by publication.
Source: DC’s solicitations (as noted by Rich Johnston)
