We recently released our version of the Marlo’s Magazines; a six-volume, 2,250-page collection of Ed Marlo’s magic. I thought it might be interesting to share a little about how a project like this came about.
As a teenager, I was a frequent visitor to The Second Deal, an online magic community that was primarily comprised of Marlo-centric magicians. People like Jon Racherbaumer, Ken Simmons, Doug Conn, Lance Pierce, and others held court there, and the conversations would be specifically in the weeds about the inner depths of card magic. In many ways, this community was extremely important in my magic development; it’s where I met friends like Jack Parker, Tomas Blomberg, Scott Robinson, Jamie Badman, and others who would be instrumental in my magic as I grew up.
This community gave me a deep appreciation for Marlo’s work. And I kept reading about these Magazines that Marlo wrote. I was desperate to get hold of them, but they were expensive (at the time about $350 - $500 on the second-hand market) as only 300 copies were produced. Over several years, I was able to save up and acquire a full set.
Over the next twenty years, I would sporadically open up the books to learn a trick or move, and then put them down. I did this repeatedly, and it felt like every time I opened one of the books, I learned something new.
As Vanishing Inc. grew, I knew that I wanted to make these books available to a broader audience. Josh and I spoke with Simon Aronson (himself a Marlo student), who encouraged us to do so. The problem? The rights were owned by Lee Freed, whom we didn’t know how to reach. We spent several years trying, but however hard we tried, we couldn’t track him down. Then, after Simon passed away in 2019, I got an email from Lee Freed. He said that Simon had asked him to allow us to publish the books and that he wanted to honour that request.
