Marvel Super Heroes could be a new test for Magic: The Gathering

The Uncanny Valley is a concept created by Masahiro Mori, a robotics professor, in the 1970s. It's the hypothesis that the more an object resembles a human being, the more likely it is to cause revulsion in those who recognize the original object.

Mori coined the term while evaluating how humans reacted to objects that resembled humans, especially robots. In recent decades, the "Uncanny Valley" has taken on new meanings in media due to advances in technology and computer graphics, where films and games with hyper-realistic characters started causing revulsion for some critics, and the recent flood of AI-generated videos pushed the term into the mainstream — after all, the characters might look human, but they're not human enough.

I believe the Uncanny Valley can affect any individual without the reference object needing to be a human. It just needs the object to be replicating another known object and to be similar enough to be recognized as a "recreation," but with differences that make it distinct from the original.

It happens all the time, and we usually don't notice it. In Magic: The Gathering, the phenomenon has been occurring for a few releases.

Cultural references to the source material have existed in Magic forever. Theros's gods and Amonkhet's gods reference Greek and Egyptian pantheons, and Throne of Eldraine had several nods to classic fantasy literature, but none reached the point of causing as much strangeness as the sequence of releases between Murders at Karlov Manor and Aetherdrift, and remnants of this behavior still show up on cards like Stand Up for Yourself or Social Snub.

The strangeness, in this case, comes from how directly Magic references a pop culture object or stereotype. As much as the object — the card itself — is a Magic card, it causes revulsion because it gets too close to the material it's inspired by, while maintaining obvious thematic differences that make it recognizable.

On the other hand, the object causes revulsion when compared to a "Magic card" because, just as there's a reaction to it being too "on the nose" about what it's referencing, its differences from other cards — even within the same set — stand out to the point of creating the feeling that it's a card trying to be something else (a pop culture reference or a real-world object).

This phenomenon has been happening mainly in Universes Beyond. On one hand, the most acclaimed sets, like The Lord of the Rings, Final Fantasy, and Avatar: The Last Airbender, carry worldbuilding (or worlds, in Final Fantasy's case) and aesthetics that fit within Magic: The Gathering's perceived aesthetic. Someone might feel strangeness with Cloud, Midgar Mercenary or Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER in their favorite card game, but the capacity for aesthetic acceptance is still very broad.

Other partnerships exist in universes where the uncanny valley hits places that Duskmourn or Aetherdrift could never reach: a fictional representation of objects too close to the real world, but distinct enough to be translated as a relevant object from that universe to appear on Magic cards.

You can't deny the role of a pizza in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles universe, or how much a camera is a major core of Spider-Man's character, but that doesn't change the fact that they portray a fictional version of real-world objects in fictional versions of a city.

The strangeness also involves the "sense of belonging" of those characters in relation to Magic's aesthetic. Despite the cartoonish visuals, Aang, Swift Savior and the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender manage to have dozens of aesthetic similarities with other characters and planes from Magic's canonical universe — Aang could easily be a Jeskai monk in Tarkir.

An urban version of New York City doesn't have that same benefit: New Capenna is the closest and portrays a plane inspired by past-century mafias, where demons dominate hierarchical structures. The difference between Michelangelo, Weirdness to 11 or most Spider-Man cards and anything from Magic's universe is stark enough that a player can't conceive of them as a "Magic card" as easily as they could with aesthetically closer universes.

Aesthetic strangeness is behind a significant portion of the criticism aimed at Universes Beyond, but it's more present in these two sets. Posts about crossover fatigue or the volume of releases were more noticeable during the TMNT and Spider-Man seasons than during other UB releases so far — it remains to be seen which category Marvel Super Heroes, scheduled for June 26, will fall into.

Magic's next set carries the same variety of products and marketing/media attention that The Lord of the Rings and Final Fantasy had before becoming the two best-selling sets in Magic: The Gathering's history. At the same time, it carries the aspects that made Spider-Man and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles so infamous among the card game's general audience.

Consider the newly revealed Lucky the Pizza Dog. Is he a good boy? He's definitely a good boy! But it's still a dog carrying a pizza in its mouth in a mundane, ordinary setting. For each card with this aesthetic, Magic's "uncanny valley" will be perceived for the same reasons as its predecessors, but there are other reasons that could harm the collective perception of this set.

Just as the Ninja Turtles don't fit aesthetically with Magic, some Marvel characters, like the already revealed Captain America, The Sentry, and Moon Girl, also have designs that don't fit the card game's overall environment.

Other revealed cards, however, show less jarring work. The Vision is an excellent example of how to merge a character from another brand with Magic: The Gathering's aesthetic. Cards like Doom Reigns Supreme and Namor the Sub-mariner share this benefit: they portray Marvel characters through Magic: The Gathering's lens, rather than subverting the rules to fit that element onto a card.

Depending on the path Marvel Super Heroes takes, the set could be as well-received as its predecessors or establish for Magic yet another test of how much the game's "uncanny valley" can affect collective perception of it.

Super Heroes is a tentpole set — the expansion of the year, with a huge product category — which carries the reputation of its predecessors for breaking sales records and joining the pantheon of best-selling collections in history. The precedent is positive for the set, and it has an advantage over Spider-Man or TMNT by covering so many characters from Marvel's distinct "universes."

It could dodge most of the mundane objects that would drive negative public reaction and focus on the parts that truly matter, like the characters — even though some don't fit Magic's overall aesthetic that well, embracing their uniqueness as the highlight of this partnership could be celebrated.

If the set's design tries to create representations that push too far beyond the game's uncanny valley and repeat the choices made with Spider-Man and TMNT, this will be the first tentpole set of Universes Beyond where community perception may be less positive, and it will be important to assess how much Magic's "uncanny valley" actually affects sales.

Spider-Man was one of Magic's ten best-selling sets, despite being perceived by the community as a flop. We don't have TMNT's numbers yet to make comparisons. I have no doubt that Marvel Super Heroes will be a success — the question is how much of a success it will be and how much that might be tied to how close the set is to its New York predecessors.