In 2013, Wizards of the Coast published a reproduction of the original Dungeons and Dragons box set. Though it was a faithful reproduction of the original box and booklets in most ways, each piece of cover art was replaced with something new. Now, former DnD designer Mike Mearls has revealed that the decision to change the art was taken to avoid a copyright kerfuffle with Marvel – because the original cover art was quite probably plagiarised.
Mearls worked as a Dungeons and Dragons designer at Wizards of the Coast from 2005 to 2023. In 2013, he was the Group Manager of the Dungeons and Dragons R&D team. Writing on X.com on Monday, Mearls recalls that when the team first lined up the reprint of ODnD for the DnD release schedule, “eagle-eyed game historians” spotted that “at least one cover image from ODnD looked like it had been partially traced from a Marvel comic”.
In 2009, retro DnD blog Grognardia noted a very close resemblance between Greg Bell’s cover art for the ODnD box set and a panel from a Doctor Strange comic showing a mounted viking. He attributes the find to The Acaeum, but that site has since folded.
Mearls says that “in the 1970s, long before the internet and image searches, artists would trace elements from random places all the time”. Marvel in the ‘70s was far from the cultural juggernaut it was in the early 2010s, and the business considerations were very different for TSR then than for WotC in 2013. As Mearls says, “do you know who is a big business partner with Hasbro? Yes, Marvel”.
Mearls recalls the legal team’s opinion that, since WotC knew the original art was likely infringing on copyright, it “had to go”. And “as swapping out one piece but not the others would look weird”, the decision was made to give the whole reprint package new artwork.
This little episode really highlights how much the world has changed between the origins of DnD and the modern day: it’s hard to imagine a time when the easiest reference image to illustrate one of the DnD classes would be a Marvel comic, and there was better art of the DnD races to be found on the covers of fantasy novels than inside the monster manual. But original DnD was one of the forces that helped to create the modern media landscape.
Playing DnD this festive season? Make sure you check out this homebrew adventure that lets you fight the ultimate Christmas boss – Mariah Carey.
Source: Wargamer
