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A pattern has begin to emerge over the course of the latest “Universes Beyond” sets for Magic: The Gathering, where a bonus sheet of alternate art cards offers the game a chance to reprint some classic cards under the banner of… well, reusing a bunch of art from the series the set represents. Final Fantasy‘s “Through the Ages” bonus sheet leveraged everything from box art to classic Tetsuya Nomura and Yoshitaka Amano art. Spider-Man‘s “Marvel Universe” grabbed iconic comics art from decades of classic stories.
Avatar: The Last Airbender, with its set out next month, is going to be no different, with “Source Material”, a massive 61-card bonus sheet that offers a reprint inspired by each and every episode of The Last Airbender, tying a still from every episode to a classic card. Except for one big difference:
None of those past bonus sheets had a hilarious massive face filling a card frame to stare you down.
Enter Avatar‘s reprint of “Cruel Tutor”. It’s interesting from a Magic perspective, as Cruel Tutor is a very old card that has very rarely been reprinted in Magic‘s history—the Avatar set is only the fourth such printing of the card. But it’s also interesting because Wizards of the Coast decided that the fourth-ever “Cruel Tutor” print should just be Fire Lord Ozai’s massive grinning face.
On the one hand, it does make sense. Ozai is indeed a character who uses pain to impart knowledge—remember when he gave Zuko his face burn as a child, telling him, “You will learn respect, and suffering will be your teacher.” And the moment the screenshot is from, “Sozin’s Comet, Part 1: The Phoenix King”, is suitably flavorful for that. It’s a scene from the four-parter that ends The Last Airbender where, in flashback, Ozai delivers his plan to use the titular comet to energize firebending abilities so he can turn the Earth Kingdom to ash, taking a brief moment of defiance from Zuko (and leaning into Azula’s depravity) to concoct, well, a lesson from a cruel tutor.
On the other… the card is just really, laughably weird. It’s a grainy screenshot from a 4:3 aspect ratio show cut down to the size of a Magic card, and all that’s left is a blown-up crop of Ozai’s smirking face. It’s such a bizarre shot, when the episode the card represents has plenty of other options to use for an image of Ozai. Imagine drawing your hand and getting flashbanged by the giant face of grinning Mark Hamill just glaring back up at you. It almost looks like a meme proxy card someone printed themselves, rather than something that will exist in an official Magic set.
These kinds of bonus sheets in “Universes Beyond” have already proven to be a bit of a sticking point among Magic fans already displeased at just how much crossover material is coming into the game at the moment—cards that really need reprints end up getting a treatment that doesn’t leverage one of the true joys of Magic: being able to get new artwork for cards. Reuse of already-available assets like Spider-Man comics, Final Fantasy box art, or in this case, screenshots from episodes of a TV show robs you of getting that, even if the broader sets they’re a part of are still chock full of new original art beyond them.
But there is just still something very, very funny about one shit-eating grin among many of Ozai’s making its way to Magic like this.
The Avatar: The Last Airbender set for Magic: The Gathering releases November 21—and you can head on over to Wizards of the Coast’s official site to see more of the newly revealed Avatar cards.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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