The official image for Marvel NOW titled "Divided We Stand" had Kate Bishop in a brand-new costume, but the costume design was not created by Marvel. The costume design actually originated with a fanartist called Vylla, whose official website can be found here. The issue was bought to the attention of Mike Deodato Jr, the artist behind the official image.
Mike tweeted an apology and stated that it was a mistake, saying that Vylla's design had come up when he was googling for image reference on Kate Bishop's Hawkeye costume and he'd mistaken it for an official design.
Vylla's response when first contacted about the news was pretty chill. "It's not a huge deal and I'm not really mad. Just surprised and would like to make sure it's not a design they're going to used in the future. Or hey. Credit would be cool." When Vylla heard Deodato's apology, the response was gracious as well. When the artist was asked about the possibility of suing, the response was "I have and will in the future make mistakes on par with that. I'm gonna let Karma take this one and hope people are cool to me when I inevitably say/do a dumb thing on the internet. "
Vylla does hope the design won't be repeatedly used. When asked if Marvel would change to design, Vylla responded "Don't know! That's up to Marvel. At this point I don't care either way for this piece. After all, I get to play with their designs all the time. As long as they don't repeatedly use it, I'm cool with a one-off."
Kate Bishop is also known as Hawkeye and first debuted as a character in Young Avengers #1 in 2005 as the successor to the previous Hawkeye, Clint Barton. "Divided We Stand" refers to the aftermath of Marvels current Civil War II event which has the heroes in conflict. They are divided into factions led by Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel) and Tony Stark (Iron Man).
While it's great that everyone was kind and courteous during this incident, I think it would probably be a good idea for Marvel to contact Vylla. After all, if Vylla's design was good enough to be mistaken for a real thing, maybe they could give the artist a job or at least some compensation for the work used. It's true that Vylla uses Marvel designs in a fannish context, but Marvel is a huge company and will make a lot more money with their use of Vylla's design compared to the reversal. What do you think? Should Marvel contact Vylla?
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