(I just finished typing up some first reactions to the lead story, and now I'm going to bed after I post 'em.)
I've heard of Blackstone as a real-life magician, but never really studied him. I just knew the name, and had garnered the general impression that in his day he was highly regarded as one of the best in the business. (Following in the footsteps of Harry Houdini, I suppose.)
So after I read the lead story in this comic, I took a few minutes to read portions of his Wikipedia page. Which told me that the Blackstone comics -- presumably including this one -- were written by the late, great Walter Gibson, the same guy who wrote the majority of the old pulp novels about The Shadow. This did not come as a huge surprise; I was vaguely aware that Gibson himself had studied stage magic and was friendly with other magicians. In fact, I think I've read at least 2 or 3 Shadow novels from the 30s and 40s which each had practitioners of stage magic heavily involved in the plot -- presumably Gibson drawing upon actual knowledge of that subculture to add some colorful touches which would thrill his non-magician readers.
Anyway, back to the comic: When I started reading it, I wasn't sure what to expect in terms of "magic." Would the author go for nitty-gritty realism, with Blackstone simply bewildering his enemies with his impressive tricks to get them psychologically off-balance, looking the wrong way at the wrong time when it mattered most? Or would he appear to be using "real magic," putting him on a similar footing with supernaturally-empowered but-purely-fictional magician-heroes such as Mandrake, Zatara, Margo the Magician, and plenty of other Golden Age characters? (Just how many magician-heroes were there in that era, anyway?)
By the time Rhoda had somehow wandered off the screen into a junkyard, and lost a slipper there, I was pretty sure this was "really happening" -- instead of there simply being a flat image of a junkyard right in front of her as she remained physically within the theatre. I was unsurprised when the slipper later turned up in the actual junkyard, instead of having fallen out of sight anywhere inside the theatre.
Looking back at that scene just now, I see Blackstone saying firmly to Rhoda: "Hop back into this picture before it switches to our own film, or there's no telling where we'll wind up."
In context, the strong implication was that he knew that the film was somehow magical (at least when he wanted it to be), and that he knew how to use it to jump around in space -- from the theatre into the film itself, and then to the actual location where the film had been shot, and back again -- taking her along for the ride -- as if he were actually casting some sort of teleportation spell. But if they "missed their connection," they might not be able to jump right back to the stage in the theatre, which could mean a very long walk home?
This disappointed me -- I'd been hoping for the "realistic" approach to the adventures of a stage magician, instead of sheer escapism. I can get escapism (actual magic spells performed with a wave of the hand) in any of a zillion comic books or fantasy novels; I'd been thinking it would be a nice change of pace to only see Blackstone do things a stage magician in real life might be able to do, even if most of them were never truly explained to the reader, thus leaving us to guess as to some of the details.
I was a bit disappointed by the sudden transition to Blackstone and Rhoda, now dressed for the street, "just happening" to walk right past the actual bank. There's absolutely no reason offered for why they are there in the first place. They don't seem to think they are doing detective work. On the other hand, they don't seem to have ever stood in front of that bank on any previous day in the week or so since it's been robbed, so it's not that the bank is conveniently located on their usual path to and from the hotel or boarding house or whatever in which they are currently residing.
It also seems a bit odd that the bank robbers are still right there in the same neighborhood, with the loot hidden in a junkyard literally located right next to the bank, a week after the robbery. Nor am I terribly clear on why they assume that, out of all the hundreds of females who must walk down that street each day, a stray slipper found in the junkyard was probably lost by the girl currently walking alongside Blackstone the magician. Nor am I clear on why they care so much. If they're afraid that one silly slipper "proves" someone has been snooping around looking for the loot, and coming frighteningly close to the exact spot where it's concealed, then wouldn't it be more sensible to grab the loot and relocate it to some other place, a few miles away? Why waste precious time on Blackstone and his assistant when there's no telling what (if anything) they already know, or whom they have told? Why not just take the money and run?
Despite these points which bothered me about the internal logic of the plot, I admit it was quite entertaining to see the wrap-up, as Blackstone somehow trapped these thugs inside an Arabian travelogue film, then carried the reel of film to a prison, played it back, released those guys from inside the film, and let the Warden and his prison guards take it from there! If you grant the premise about his having true magic powers, as established with the earlier scene involving the newsreel footage, then it makes perfect sense that he could use that same power to trap people he didn't like within another reel of film.
It was also interesting to see that Rhoda, while apparently having complete confidence in her boss all throughout the story, initially didn't think he could possibly be working any true magic. "I couldn't have really lost the slipper in the junkyard, because I couldn't possibly have been there," she says firmly on Page 8.
Which makes it more surprising that she took it so calmly when he later used a magic whistle to indubitably teleport her away from the gang's clutches in the proverbial blink of an eye, with her materializing onstage while the thugs are literally left holding the bag (the one in which they had trapped her a minute earlier, but now it's suddenly empty instead of containing a hundred pounds or so of gorgeous blond). I think a girl being pursued by brutal bank robbers with guns would be fully entitled to scream occasionally, but she seemed to just shrug it off, then and later. (And she didn't even seem to expect combat pay for all she was going through. Who says you can't get good help these days?)
Author
Topic: Week 29 - Blackstone Master Magician Comics v1 #1 (Read 2246 times)
