Licensor Approval is no joke

99% of collectors never noticed, but a small percentage of Cryptozoic Entertainment’s CZX Crisis on Infinite Earths sketch cards have some gold foil paint on them. That has to do with Licensor rules (in this case from Warner Brothers). The I.P. Licensor almost always sends along specific instructions for how their characters can be portrayed on sketch cards. For example: Wolverine can’t be smoking cigars, or Robin can’t look like the real life actor Burt Ward. — In the case of Cryptozoic Entertainment’s CZX Crisis on Infinite Earths, Warner Brothers was adamant that artist signatures should only be on the back of the sketch card. The front of the card was reserved for actor signatures only. It seems trivial, but sketch cards go through a scan-&-approval process. Someone from Warner Brothers had the power to reject any card for any reason.

When a card is rejected, everyone loses. The card manufacturer has one less insert card. The artist doesn’t get his/her artwork shared with the world. And then there’s the negotiation of payment. The artist should be paid for his/her work, but the manufacturer never got a finished product and already has sunk cost in printing & shipping. The whole thing is a mess. — So when Cryptozoic received a small batch of Crisis on Infinite Earths sketch cards with artist signatures on the front of the cards, the in-house art team began mitigation.

The solution was to paint over the signatures with gold foil. Artists were first notified by email, and then remediation began. The good news is that every artist also signed the back of the cards, so they got artistic credit. And technically the artists were forewarned in their initial contract & instructions that rejections would happen if the rules were not followed. This measure actually insured everything passed approvals and everyone got paid.

Corrective steps were doubly important on the actor-signed sketchagraph cards. In these cases there might be significant money tied up in the actor signatures and rejected cards could mean a larger financial loss. I would hate to think that the above Melissa Benoist sketchagraph was at risk of being destroyed. Note that there was already printed gold foil around the signing box, so the gold paint had to blend-in.

I found all of the above images on eBay, and this last one leaves me at a loss. — This is an intended sketchagraph card that never received a Grant Gustin signature. It looks like the artist didn’t even try to leave the signing box blank, so the only options for the manufacturer were to submit it as a standard sketch card or destroy it. I think everyone leans towards saving the sketch card when possible.

Following the rules is important. Otherwise the Licensor and Manufacturer have to make hard decisions that may impact the artists. — What do you think? … Did Cryptozoic Entertainment make the right call trying to save as many cards as possible? Happy Collecting!