ADDITIONAL HALLOWEEN PICTURES

Vintage magic posters make great Halloween decorations. Here's (above) one of my favorites. The paniced audience has been driven mad with fright.

This (above) is for Theory Cornerites who prefer simple, easy to read faces.

Is this (above) a detail from a book cover? I'm not sure. It would make a great stage set. 

Robots (above) are a popular subject for porch decorations. IMO they're twice as effective if they're giving grief to a dummy.

This (above) is one of the all-time best magic posters. It's of Kellar and the date on it is 1894...120 years ago!

This looks like an old carnival sideshow banner, but it's rendered so beautifully that it might have been a poster.

Here's (above) another rendered sideshow banner, this time of a spider woman. I've seen this kind of thing before. I guess that was a common attraction way back when.

DonB sent a link to a site that featured plenty of women in sideshow spider outfits. I'll hazard a guess that the carnival made money by selling Polaroid-type photos of audience volunteers in costume.

THE BEST KIND OF MAGIC POSTER

Here's a terrific one (above). It has it all: beautiful color and rendering, demons, advice from the Devil, and levitating women. Be sure to click to enlarge. You can hardly see what's going on in this tiny version.

I love this one (above). The color isn't as good, but the idea is wonderful: I'm guessing it's about an infidel magician who has penetrated into the secret enclave of a Moorish death cult. He's exposed when he tries to help a girl who's about to be sacrificed to a man-eating tiger. Only his knowledge of magic can save them now.

I don't like this poster (above). I'm a cartoonist but I take magic seriously, and I don't like to see it treated lightly as it is here.

Beautiful technique (above), but where's he rushing to? It's as if his magical powers were less important than a sale at Macy's.

Here's a good one (above). Thurston is presented as a scholar of the mystical arts. He's surrounded my mischievous demons and imps.

Another nice one (above), though the reproduction could be more colorful. Blackstone is portrayed as a man of such enormous power and mystical knowledge that his very presence rends the curtain that separates us from the demon world, and creatures from that place spill into our world all around him.

I don't know why, but the idea of lots of objects (above) floating in the air around a tied-up person intrigues me.


I like posters and magic tricks that are about cabinets (above). When we enclose a space we seem to steal that space from the nether world, and it becomes full of magical potential.

Nice poster...and big, the way all magic posters should be.

Another terrific Kellar poster (above)! The magician's presence has attracted demons who delight in helping him ensnare a space which is alive with mystical energy.

Awesome! The magician has revealed secrets to the audience (above) which were so fantastic and beyond our understanding, that he's driven his audience mad. Well, they can't say they didn't get their money's worth.

This magician's magnetism (above) sucks demons out of their own world and into ours.

A good poster (above), but it's a bit sparse. A magic poster should resemble the best of the old, crowded circus posters. It should promise more wonders than the mind can comprehend. I do like the lightning coming from his fingertips.

Here's (above) an improvement on the same theme. Demons always make a magic poster better.

Niiiice!

I like magic tricks that involve flash explosions. These remind us of Hell, and of the violence-inducing mysteries embedded in the real, everyday world.