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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/ailathan on 2025-04-08 14:01:14+00:00.
Original Title: [American Comics] The Most “Legitomite” Art Thief in Comics, or the Guy who United Nazis and Hippies Against Himself, Got Banished From Comics, And His Multiple Attempts at a Comeback, How He Then Fell For a Different Art Thief, and His Name Became Synonymous with Theft
Introduction
Over the years I’ve written several posts that follow the same pattern. Something happens at a convention, usually an argument, and it causes major controversy both in the comics industry and among fans online for weeks. This story does all that and dwarfs the others. No, Clayton Crain did not run off with Granito’s wife but there will be some twists and turns as well as multiple songs. Get ready for the Charlie Sheen of comics!
Rob Granito has had an amazing career and would hold comics under a spell for about two months. His art style is so versatile, “he can pretty much paint anything.” “His name has been attached to major projects for […] Warner Brothers, DC and Marvel Comics, Disney, MTV, and VH1.” He worked on Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond under Bruce Timm as well as Spider-Man, Iron Man 2, and Samurai Jack. He’s a novelist. And amid all these accomplishments, he still found time to draw Canvin and Hobbes [sic] (which ended in 1995). And he was only 36 (in 2011)!
Granito had some real art cred too. “The White House commissioned portrait work for the President.”
His only fan says, "tara strong voice of batgirl has a batgirl of his in her home , so does the voice of optimus prime, Kevin Conroy THE voice of Batman, […] and so on and so on LOL”
If you’re thinking “wow, what an incredible career,” “that math doesn’t check out” or “nobody but Bill Watterson ever drew Calvin and Hobbes”, I’m not here to burst your bubble. You’re right. It is incredible. It’s all a lie (Granito’s age might be true).
That’s because Rob Granito is a fraud.
He’s a fraud so big, his name has become synonymous with art theft. Let me tell you how Rob Granito got exposed and driven out of comics as well as his attempts to return to the industry by absolutely crazy unconventional and creative means. This story has it all from atrocious grammar, sock puppets, blatant lies, a political team-up, interviews, songs, and a second famous comics grifter.
Rob Granito is a con artist, but he’s also a con artist. He wasn’t a successful convention artist who made a killing. He was a struggling artist hitting con after con, away from his family, and never made it. There are many of those. Not many inflate their biographies the way Granito did, but by all accounts, he was just getting by.
Who On Earth Is Rob Granito?
We don’t know a lot about Robert Granito (early interview (2008). It’s safe to assume that the little he’s shared about himself are lies but according to him, he was born in 1975. An “internationally known artist and illustrator”, he’d been hitting the convention circuit since 2000.
He first gained mainstream attention in March 2011 when, a few days before he was slated to appear at Megacon, comics blogger Rich Johnston of Bleeding Cool ran an article on him. “l’ve been sent a number of allegations saying that Rob is basically nothing but a chancer, faking a biography in order to sell his work,” so Johnston reached out to Granito who initially ignored him. Then he wrote back and revealed himself to be quite the writer with a distinct style (“borderline illiterate”, so his detractors). I’d kill to read anything written by Granito without an editor or spellcheck. Whether it’s old emails, a blog, or notes to himself. Anything.
Granito claimed to have done a “butt load” of covers for Shaddow of the Bat (“I dont know the [issue] numbers”) as well as the Batman and Calvin and Hobbes US Postal Service stamps. He was “currently working iwth Jay Diddilo on a batman title that has not yet been released.”
This raised more questions. Foremost, who the hell was Jay Diddilo? There was Dan DiDio, editor-in-chief of DC Comics, but nobody had ever heard of Diddilo. Granito clarified, “Jay is one of the big Writters for DC I probbibaly spelled his name rite.”
Otherwise Granito “was a ghost artist for most of the projects I did.” Johnston contacted the artists Granito had ghosted for, who all had incredibly different styles, and they had never heard of him. He would have been in high school when those works came out. (Comics have employed high schoolers but it’s been a while). He also definitely hadn’t drawn the USPS stamps.
American comics are not a business where ghosting is common, so Granito’s claims rang false immediately. We don’t have any other famous ghost artists in sequential arts.
How could this happen? Honestly, artists like Granito are a dime a dozen. Most don’t lie about credits but you’ll find exhibitors selling prints that aren’t theirs in every artist alley. Artist alleys operate in a legal gray zone: technically, most artists there are selling works that are copyright infringement. Artists are aware of this. Publishers turn a blind eye to the matter. If Granito drew Superman in his style, nobody would have minded. The problem was that he didn’t have a recognizable style and his artwork did.
Shockingly, an old interview later surfaced where Granito claimed to be working with Jay Diddilo a year prior. DC, however, confirmed that they had never heard of Granito or Diddilo, and had no plans to work with either.
It was beginning to look like Granito had lied about everything until someone with insider knowledge came in to defend him in a comment section:
“No he is legitomite i was a DC Assistant Editor until a year ago and we used Rob as a ghost artist on a number of books we used he is well known on the “insiders” level of the industry and did alot of promotion art for DC and Marvel dont believbe rumors i worked at DC as an art director for 6-7 years and we used Rob alot he is legit”
It’s safe to assume that that assistant editor and/or art director was Granito. It marked the beginning of Granito defenders with consistently poor spelling making it into comments sections.
Johnston closed his article by asking anyone who could verify Granito’s credits to reach out “[b]ecause right now there are some angry people looking to confront him at the next show he goes to.”
He could not have been more right.
Rob Granito Vs. The Internet
Johnston was woken up the next day by “a phone call from someone in the Granito camp. […] [P]eople close to him have expressed to me that […] they don’t know where they stand anymore. It’ll be interesting to see if ANYONE sticks by Rob after this.” Granito’s social media disappeared but his website (with his phone number) stayed up.
More people came out of the woodwork to share their experiences with Granito and those were not positive either. I couldn’t find a single “no, no, he’s a great guy; this is a huge misunderstanding” that didn’t sound like Granito. His one fan, frequent customer, and self-proclaimed best friend quickly asked to be excluded from the narrative. Another customer, the owner of a whole wall of Granitos, recalled, “I have never once seen him draw anything. Every artist, big-name or small-time, draws at his/her booth.”
A Facebook group called “Robert Granito is a Fraud” sprang to life, amassing over 3,000 members. Granito got an urban dictionary entry. Granito means “to blatantly take one person’s work and reproduce it for monetary gains without giving credit to the original creator of said work.” Use in a sentence: “Man, I saw your work at the convention, some other dude was selling it! You’ve been granito’d!" Granito had incredible longevity and still gets used today.
Some confirmed that Granito was a fixture at cons, often selling artwork signed by the Batman voice actors (though if you looked it up online, the signatures didn’t match). “I was at Toronto Comic-Con this weekend, and he made hundreds, and hundreds of dollars on his worthless art.”
A video asking conventions to ban Granito.
In his multiple follow-ups, Johnston documented so…
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