Petition Created to Prevent Future Eisner Nomination of AI Work - The Daily Cartoonist
A petition was created to disqualify works using generative AI from future Eisner Award nominations after an anthology including AI-generated art was nominated.
- Incident date
- May 2026
- Target
- Fletcher Hanks
A controversy arose after the Stardust the Super Wizard Anthology received an Eisner Award nomination for Best Anthology. The anthology included a one-page image created using generative AI.
What happened
Byron O’Neal, Editor-In-Chief at Comic Book Yeti, started a petition to change the Eisner Award submission guidelines to disqualify works that used generative AI in the creative process. The AI-generated image was created by Michael Todasco, who openly acknowledged using AI. Todasco trained a model on the original Fletcher Hanks artwork and story structure to generate the published tale. As of May 18, 2026, the petition had 882 signatures.