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Comedy a la Card
by Karrell Fox

$6.95

(1 review, 4 customer ratings) ★★★★

PDF | by download [6.06 MByte]  
Comedy a la Card by Karrell Fox

The crazy card routines of one of the funniest magicians in the world. Very usable material including 23 hilarious card tricks, different from anything you ever tried before, totally unexpected, totally uninhibited in a very nice way, and totally entertaining. Illustrated by Roy Kissell.

1st edition 1960, 28 pages; digital edition 2012, 32 pages.

Table of Contents

  1. "Hum-Bug" Prediction
  2. Card In The Turban
  3. Lost And Found
  4. C-Thru Card
  5. Spotz
  6. Op-Trick-Al Illusion
  7. Hocus-Focus
  8. 2 Or 3 From 5 & 10
  9. Cardician Blendo
  10. Komical Cards
  11. A "Marxed" Card
  12. The "Blushing" King
  13. It's A "Scorcher"
  14. I C U C Blindfold
  15. Card Quad-6aglets
  16. The Magician's Helping Hand
  17. This Works - As A Rule
  18. It's Done With Mirrors
  19. The Winnah
  20. Yackit-Yak-Yoks
  21. The Constant Jumper
  22. The Twitching Muscle
  23. Jason's Favorite
  24. Card In Wallet Surprise
  25. Absent Minded Finish
  26. About The Author

word count: 7032 which is equivalent to 28 standard pages of text


Reviewed by Christopher Reynolds (confirmed purchase)
★★★★★   Date Added: Wednesday 03 August, 2022

I've recently been working through "Revolutionary Card Technique" by Ed Marlo, and I can't find anything funny about it. There's not even one fart joke in the whole thing.

After reading a positive review by Jamy Ian Swiss about the book "Much Ado About Something" by Karrell Fox, I purchased a copy of "Comedy Ala Card" by the same author.

I decided that $6.95 was a small price to pay for some card tricks that could maybe give me a good laugh.

According to Swiss, Fox is a master of comedy magic. But comedy is subjective, and Jamy Ian Swiss and I seem to have a glaring difference in opinion about what we find funny. "Comedy Ala Card" left me stone-faced as silent movie comedian Buster Keaton.

Puns and prop comedy in the right hands, like Tommy Cooper's, can slay an audience. But Karrell Fox's reliance on stale bits using oversized playing cards and wind-up chattering teeth purchased in the toy aisle of the $1.00 store is on life support, struggling to stay alive.

To be fair to Mr. Fox, he wrote this slim 32-page treatise in 1960 when Milton Berle was considered the zenith of comedy. But times have changed, and this book's gags haven't aged well.

But that doesn't mean that "Comedy Ala Card" completely wasted an hour of my life. It was refreshing that someone devoted time and energy to developing a card trick's comedy potential, not just writing another magic book filled with boring sleights that most magicians will only discuss at conventions but never use.

Fox has a discerning eye for visual humor, using simple and practical methods. And his writing is as easy to understand as directions for microwaving a frozen pizza. Some of his best ideas are written in brief, easy-to-digest snippets, no longer than a few sentences.

It's a truism that if you get one useable trick from a book, you get your money's worth. And I got at least three ideas from "Comedy Ala Card" that I can adapt and put into practice.

One gag, in particular, caught my eye. It was a card reveal using a large beach towel with a giant playing card printed on it wrapped around your head like a turban. After forcing a card, you unwrap the towel from your head at the finale of the trick, revealing the card's identity. My version involved gluing a playing card to the crotch of my underwear and dropping my pants to show the spectator's selection.

Now, that's funny!

Publisher:

This product is listed in the following categories:

Magic & Conjuring / Cards

Magic & Conjuring / Comedy Magic