Magic Tricks

The Expert at the Card Table--The Graphic Novel is an amazing take on S.W. Erdnase's classic magical text. The book will likely have a limited audience (will explain below), but for those of us who need a more accessible edition of Erdnase (at a reasonable price), this might just be the one. That said, after purchasing the book, I feel compelled to say that there are severe allegations of intellectual property issues regarding the authorship (more explained at the end of the review) that made me regret buying this edition.

First caveat: do not buy this for your tween niece or nephew that is interested in starting off in card magic. There are a bunch of more modern books that might be better in this scenario. Joshua Jay's Magic the Complete Course or Jay's Amazing Book of Cards might be a more accessible starting point. If you want to go vintage, Hugard and Braue's The Royal Road to Card Magic is a classic that has stood the test of time and is suitable for any beginner.

So, unless your niece or nephew is a budding Dai Vernon or Richard Turner, Erdnase's 1902 classic text is not going to be a good starting point, whether you get the standard version or this one. That said, one of the major charms of this graphic novel version is that he keeps 100% of the old text. This will satisfy more sophisticated readers, but is likely not a good starting point for the beginning magician (child or adult). This is a graphic novel version, not a simplified version of the old text.

Second caveat: this is not for the seasoned card veteran, already steeped in Erdnase. They probably already have Dai Vernon's Revelation, Ortiz's Annotated Erdnase, David Ben's The Expert at the Card Table, Marlo on Erdnase, etc. So unless they are graphic novel fans, this is not the book for card veterans.

Making Erdnase into a graphic novel is probably something of a heresy for those in the card magic set who consider this the 'bible' of card magic, but you will have to trust me when I say that this just works.

Trustman's sketch-type style just somehow fits and there is no dissonance in the juxtaposition of the 1902 text and the modern, comic book format. For whatever reason, it just works. Combine this with the fact that every word that Erdnase wrote is contained within the speech bubbles and that every drawn by M.D. Smith is replicated in within the frames.

The thing that truly sets this version apart for me and probably the reason why I have gotten much farther with this version than the standard, printed version of Erdnase, is that the text is artfully broken down into bite sized phrases. This makes the text far easier for me to understand than in the original. Additionally, having the illustrations correlate so closely with the text is helpful.

As above, every figure from the original is contained within this text. Trustman will also adds additional figures to give a view from a different angle and will often take figures from an earlier part of the text, repeating them if they are helpful later on. This prevents you from having to go back to figure out the initial position (for example he adds figures 30 b and 30 c to better show hand position) and adds frames to show placement of hands and cards. This is probably best illustrated in the Three Card Monte section where there is only one figure (62) in the entire section. There is also helpful in the Legerdemain section where the original had few figures to show how the cards might look when placed on the table.

There are times, though, when I thought that the artist could have clarified things a bit better. There might have been a more close up view of some figures to better show hand position and in certain moves (palms, shifts, etc.) there could have been more clarity in showing how the cards move, either with arrows or shadows within a given frame or multiple frames showing a more stop action type of view.

All in all, though you can see that Trustman truly loves this book and this graphic novel is truly a homage to Erdnase. It's really quite an incredible accomplishment and I have enjoyed it greatly.

So why did I regret buying this book. Well, after seeing a video review by Steve Faulkner, I was intrigued. At the time I received this there were no reviews on Amazon and you couldn't purchase it on the usual magic store websites. So, I did a web search and found a post by the authors former wife and partner Sarah Trustman.

The allegations are that they worked on this book together, collaborated as they had on previous publications, and then had a falling out. David Trustman, the author of this book, then expunged Sarah's name from the work and self published the book. She has quite convincing evidence of extensive notes and preprints that show her contribution to the work.

Here's my take. I have no idea who is right in this situation. I certainly do not want to get between two former partners in the process of a break up. For the record, I do not know either David or Sarah Trustman nor have I bought any of their previous books or used their memory aid services. My goal is NOT to take sides--I have no skin in this game and have no idea who is right and wrong and who did what, when, where, or how.

That said, intellectual property is of paramount importance in magic and stealing methods, not giving credit, or presenting others work as your own is not something I really want to be part of. If Sarah Trustman had a major role in this endeavor, credits and monetary issues should have been ironed out before the books release. Sadly, although this is my favorite version of Erdnase to date, it still leaves an unsettling knot in my stomach. I do hope that the Trustmans can work out these issues.

It is a most excellent book, but, sadly,--given the questions regarding intellectual property--I regret buying it.