Fantastic Comics has Fantastic LOTR MTG Cards
but we're definitely not turning into a gaming store!
Confession: to this day I find Magic: The Gathering an impenetrable game to play. People have taught it to me multiple times and the rules just don’t stick. So when Uel says to let people know that we have MTG cards (as well as Pokémon!) at the store, specifically the Lord of the Rings packs, I’m a bit at a loss as to how to hype this up.
Uel especially wanted to let you know about the Collector Booster packs. Apparently this is some rare booty that is fetching some obscene prices online. Well, at least that much is familiar. In high school, despite not knowing how to play, I got hooked into making custom MTG cards for players who really didn’t have the lunch money to snag a Shaq-Fu Planeswalker, which involved laser-printing up a fake card front and glue-sticking it onto a mana card to be shuffled into play.
And this got me thinking… why can’t we make our own collectible card game? As much as the gaming industry as a whole is subsidizing the local comic shop diaspora, most wholesalers of card packs are not making it easy for retailers to eke out a decent margin (though if we sell through these cards quickly, I might have to eat my words about Fantastic Comics not turning into Fantastic Cards & Comics).
Probably one of the weirdest ways for an MTG artist to get famous is to become a keyword in AI-art generation, which just illustrates how easy it is to mock up your own custom MTG cards. Or maybe a better illustration is to just mock up a custom MTG card in five minutes:
But what about rules for our new collectible card game? I’m awful at card games but even I could grasp the simple rules of a childhood game known as War, where you and your opponent flip over your cards at the same time. The higher value card wins. That’s the level of simplicity we should have.
But who would win in a battle between Stan Lee on a Unicorn vs Jim Shooter on an Akira-bike? Once again, we can defer to AI to decide:
As the battle commences, the Unicorn charges forth with an ethereal grace, Stan Lee's immortal spirit guiding its every step. The horn, an embodiment of imagination's force, gleams with supernatural energy. Lee's fingers dance along the strings of reality, weaving into existence a tapestry of superheroes and extraordinary beings. But Jim Shooter, a master manipulator of nightmares, meets the charge head-on. Leaning into every twist and turn of the Akira bike, he harnesses the machine's unholy fusion of technology and malevolence. Dark tendrils emerge from the bike's pulsating core, snaking through the air like a writhing serpent of destruction. A clash of powers ensues—the raw energy of the Unicorn's righteous fury against the calculated malevolence of Shooter's corrupted soul. Universes splinter and fracture, time bends and distorts, and through it all, the battle rages on. Pages torn from reality drift through the air, like forgotten chapters yearning to be rediscovered. In the end, as the dust settles and the cityscape returns to its desolate silence, a victor emerges—the lines of morality blurred, the casualties immeasurable. Stan Lee, atop the fiercely defiant unicorn, stands triumphant. But his victory comes at a price, for the battle has transmuted his idealism into something far more complex and flawed.
So of course Stan Lee wins against Jim Shooter’s corrupted soul, just like in real life. Huzzah! Obviously there are details and legal issues around actually making a card game like this, but as long as we’re in the speculation phase of our plans for worldwide domination, what fantastical (and likely copyright/trademark-violating) creature would you want to have a custom card made?