If you haven't read previous parts of this series, clicking here will take you back to the beginning.
Onward: As I mentioned in the first part of this series, I was interested in things other than comic books when I was a kid. One of those was magic and I learned about it because I obtained a special, magical library card. It enabled me at age ten or eleven — maybe even younger — to check out books from the so-called "adult" section of our public library. That's where they hid the books in which magicians, who are sworn to never reveal how tricks are done reveal how tricks are done. I wrote about that very special card here.
I got to be…well, not a good magician but about as good a magician as you could be at that age. I got better at it as I got older but never as good as some other kids my age. Why didn't I? Probably because I was interested in so many other things and had decided that what I wanted to be when I grew up was not a Professional Magician but a Professional Writer.
I know a number of the best magicians in the world and all of them — with no exceptions — devoted about a jillion hours to studying, reading magic books and doing the ten things you need to do to be a really good magician. Those ten things are — in this order — practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice and — of course — practice. Oh! — and it also helps if you practice a lot.
There are tricks you can master in an hour or two if you know the secrets and/or make or purchase certain gimmicks. But to be proficient at the art, you need to do the ten things over and over and over…and you also need to practice a lot. Because of my other interests, I was never willing or able to do all that much of what you had to do.
I never thought of making a living or even the occasional buck doing magic but I also didn't want to become as bad as it as I am these days. My magic kit has cobwebs and I am fatally out of the "P" word, plus I developed a touch of arthritis or something similar in my hands. There's a great sleight-of-hand move that I mastered around the age of thirteen. But since I passed the age of forty or so, my fingers — which are fine for typing like I'm doing at this moment — just can't or do that move anymore.
I was able to pass the difficult-to-pass audition to be upgraded from Associate Member to Magician Member at the Magic Castle but that has been my crowning performance for the last half-century. Magic was just something I had to sacrifice to get better at writing. Drawing, as we'll get to in the next chapter of this, was kind of the same thing.
At the Castle, I am usually in the company of some of the greatest magicians in the world — guys who do it all the time and I mean all the time. One such obsessive practicioner is a gentleman I've mentioned before on this blog, Richard Turner.
I joined the Castle in the early eighties and one night, I hosted a bunch of my fellow comic book writers there. We all put on jackets and ties — mandatory in the evening at the Magic Castle — and went to dinner and some shows there. I might be leaving someone out but I think it was me, Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Mike Barr and Steve Gerber. In one of the showrooms, we saw this amazing person. He demonstrated uncanny skills to cheat at card games. You'll see him in a moment. It was all the more impressive because Richard Turner was blind.
All of us comic book writers had the same thought at the same moment that night: Oh, my God! We found Daredevil! And I had the though to put him on a TV show I was writing at the time, a show some of you may remember called That's Incredible! Here's a not-great video of Richard Turner's first-ever appearance on network television. This was taped while he was still in L.A. for his Magic Castle appearances…
And Richard's still doing that act. A couple years ago, I was asked to suggest some magicians to be on Penn & Teller Fool Us and I told them they had to get Richard Turner on there. They already had him on some list. You can get a sense of how good this guy is by watching Teller's face…
By the time I met Richard, I had neglected my magic enough to not be very good at it anymore. His skills impressed me and so did his devotion to practicing. And practicing and practicing…all the time. That first video above was not exaggerating. Even when I'm sitting and talking with Richard, he has a deck in one hand and he's doing one-hand shuffles or moving all the aces to exactly where he wants them.
I'm dwelling on him here because meeting him crystalized for me a decision I'd already made without formally saying it to myself. I'd decided to focus on writing and to move magic way down on the list of priorities in my life. I also made that decision about drawing once I was around artists who in their own way were as remarkable as Richard Turner. We'll get to them in the next chapter of this.
