Superstar comic book artist Adi Granov has called out DC comic book cover artist, Francesco Mattina, for what Granov alleges is the use of generative artificial intelligence (A.I.) at least in part to produce one of the three variant covers that Mattina did for DC Comics, as revealed in DC’s recent September 2024 solicitations. The specific cover that has drawn Granov’s allegation is Mattina’s variant for Action Comics #1069.
Mattina, who has a controversial history when it comes to artists accusing him of “swiping” their work, is being called out specifically for an error with Superman’s iconic S shield that appears as though it is a tell-tale sign of a generative A.I. glitch (generative A.I. is infamous for replicating certain things that are not meant to be replicated, so extra fingers or, in this case, perhaps an extra piece of Superman’s “S”).
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What did Ari Granov say about Mattina’s Action Comics cover?
Granov, a superstar artist most famous for his work on Iron Man (which eventually led to Granov being one a suit consultant for Iron Man’s armor for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as well as a conceptual illustrator for Iron Man 2, and a concept artist for Black Panther), 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…
In the comments of his post, Granov noted a number of other issues with the cover, but the S symbol is the most glaring of them all.
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What is Mattina’s controversial past with accusations over his covers?
Four years ago, Alex Garner called Mattina out for allegedly copying one of Garner’s pieces for a Flash cover. Garner posted on social media, “Francesco Mattina is known to have ripped off artists for years and yet editors consistently reward him with plum cover assignments. Normally I don’t go public with this sort of thing but I’m fed up with it.”
Other artists have made similar claims against Mattina in the past, including Jeehyung Lee and Walter O’Neill.
CBR reached out to DC for comment, but have not received a reply by time of publication.
Source: Adi Granov via Facebook
