There's an interesting convergence in Super-Magician comics. The publisher was Street & Smith Publications, who also put out The Shadow pulp magazine. Walter B. Gibson, the creator of The Shadow, knew the real Harry Blackstone, and according to this article on Wikipedia, he ghost-wrote most of the magician's books, and also wrote the scripts to the Blackstone comics and radio show. This sort of melding of reality and fiction predates the fuzzy edges of 21st century reality TV shows by at least 60 years.
The cumulative effect of these stories didn't fall into a vacuum. The exploits of The Shadow and Harry Blackstone, on the radio, in pulps, and comics, inspired the imaginations and careers of many who heard them. The Amazing Kreskin, for example, explains how they started him on his road to stardom:
Walter B. Gibson's The Shadow was another character that captured Kreskin's imagination as a youth. Today, many copies of the pulp serial from the '30s are in his collection. "Gibson was an authority on crime and magic, and he was a friend of Houdini's," Kreskin said. "Through the character Lamont Cranston (The Shadow), Gibson combined the criminal mind and the crime fighter mind."
The Shadow, of course, became one of the most popular radio programs of all time, but it isn't the only character for which Walter Gibson is known. He also authored the Super Magician comics of the 1940s, often under the pseudonym Maxwell Grant. The main character was based on the real-life magician Harry Blackstone. The premise was that he performed magic and fought crime.
"I have a copy of every Super Magician comic book ever produced (it ran about six years), encased and in mint condition," Kreskin said. "I can't imagine what they're worth, but you know what? I don't care. These books and other items are part of the embroidery that make up the fabric of who I am. They're not for sale, and I don't care to have them appraised. That's not the point."
This issue from 1947 is uncredited, so the writer could have been Walter Gibson, but I couldn't find any corroborating evidence in any book or on the Internet.
The plot for the 14 page Blackstone story "Blackstone Battles Doctor Zero" is relatively simple: The FBI enlists Blackstone and his assistant Rhoda to investigate a strange character whom people have been visiting just before they get kidnapped. As Blackstone puts it "people go to Zero's and are seen there -- then they are found somewhere else, which makes it very uncanny!" The art is competent, although a bit sketchy. I like the "Little Nemo"-esque feeling of the inflating card players.
After the lead is another Blackstone piece, a bit of magic instruction, in "Blackstone Shows Tom and Dick How To Do the Color Trick."
I'll post the other stories, an 8 page Red Dragon story "Spheres of Satan", an 8 page Lady In White story "The Shrinking Giant", and an 8 page Blackstone story "The Riddle of the Rajpoot Ruby", in subsequent blog entries.
," and surprisingly, David Mamet's "
." Both the Brunetti and Mamet books stress visual thinking and letting the images tell the story, adding dialog only when it naturally evolves the storyline. This means omitting "maid and butler" dialog, which explains to the reader what is going on, as well as text that's redundant to the visual.
” is an autobiographical story of a girl who trips while leaving a Girl Scouts meeting, smashes her front teeth, and spends several years with dentists. But it's also a teen coming of age story, a documentary of the 1987 San Francisco earthquake, and a fun slice-of-life memoir. In documenting her “dental drama,” Raina Telgemeier has created a wonderful, painful portrait of life as it revolved around friends, school, video games and dental procedures that lasted from sixth grade until high school.
” is its first release, we later see a figurine of Ariel on Raina’s desk when she’s in high school. Heck, even the details of the dental procedures are accurately captured in jaw-dropping detail.
" books, I’d sometimes stop mid-story to look at 
," written by Jim McCann and illustrated by Janet Lee, the artists have tried to create a similar work of whimsy, combining a fairy-tale story with lavish artwork, bringing to mind Baum & Neill, the Brothers Grimm, Little Nemo and maybe a touch of William Joyce. The result hovers somewhere between a graphic novel and an extended picture book.
," but I haven’t reviewed it yet for a simple reason: I’m biased. I think that practically everything he does is funny. By way of explanation, I started to list all the work by Wheeler which I've admired, but it started to turn into a comic-artist version of 
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." Designed to recall the look and feel of Maurice Sendak’s 
, it's a collection of Wheeler’s weekly cartoons from The Onion. At the book signing at Oregon Historical Society, Wheeler told me that Dark Horse balked at the cost of binding and boxing the comics, but somehow he got the project completed. They’re soooo cute!
” the relationship to the afterlife is slightly different than our own. Ghosts have a tendency to sneak back into the world of the living, and the living have the technology to visit the land of the dead. Agent Frank Gallows works for the Supernatural Immigration Task Force sending illegal ghosts back to the afterlife. While working on a case of a skeletal stallion, he accidentally sends terminally ill teen Garth Hale to Ghostopolis, which his boss Lieutenant Brock deems “a real screwup.” Fired from the force, Frank enlists the help of his ghostly ex-fiancée Claire Voyant and her barrier-breaking Plasmapod, a sort of hot-rod that can travel to the land of the dead, to find Garth and bring him back. Meanwhile, Garth wanders the realm, encountering his grandfather, and learning about Joe, the mysterious Tuskegee Airman who created the world of Ghostopolis, and Vaugner, the Machiavellian ruler of the land.
