Product description : This is a new kind of booktest disguised in a comic book ! The idea is innovative, it gives plenty of new ways to present it and is well printed. What do you want more ?
Price and where to buy it : This is sold at $99.99 and you can find it in nearly every Murphys partner (so you can get it at your favorite magic shop)
What you get : You get a nice package with inside the comic book which has been specially written for this effect (The comic book is nicely wrapped into protection paper so it won't get damaged during the shipping) and you also get written instructions with everything you need to know about all the effects that are allowed with this prop. Everything feels quality, the comic book has a soft cover unless you order the « deluxe » version which has a hard cover and is in black and white if I remember well. The deluxe version has 1 effect more and it is a limited edition. The comic book is 48 pages long.
The pros and the cons : Here is the core of my review, let's begin with the cons, as I will usually be doing, I prefer to keep the good things for the end.
THE CONS :
It's not a comic book which you can find in your local bookshop so it may raises suspicion among your spectators. However, nowadays, there are plenty of comic book in the world, people just can't know all of them so to be using one they have never seen before won't be a huge problem.
You have to do minimal memory work, I put this as a con because I know a lot of magicians don't want to put effort in this kind of effect but trust me, this is very minimal one and you do get informations on the actual comic in order to help you which is a nice addition.
THE PROS :
You have a lot built into this, from symbol revelations to serial numbers, you can reveal a lot of things with minimal informations, which can be easily obtained. So you are able to reveal multiple things and you're not limited to only one word (even if you can still do a word revelation)
The fact it's a comic book makes it take a whole ew direction in the booktest field. You can build your routine so that you explain what you were doing in your childhood and you can start from there to explore a new field.
The comic book is very well made ! It has been specially made for the trick but the quality of it is very good, I wouldn't consider it as a prop if it was set up in a bookshop. The story is quite nice too ! It's not an important point for the performers but since it's a « real » story, you can completely read it without discovering the gimmicked part of it.
The price is not that high if you think about it, this has needed a lot of people, writers, artists so it's like they have been putting out a real comic book. The fact they choosed to do it in 2 languages also shows how much the authors wanted to be fair with nearly everyone.
It really is a pack small play big kind of trick since you only need a book and you could perform this close-up, parlour, stage, nearly in every situation and you could adapt the way you will reveal each things so it would play as big as possible.
Overall rating : I really enjoyed this product, I was impressed by the other release from Yoan called « David Stone Word(s) » but this one is as, if not better, good as the word search ! It really offers a new and different way to perform booktest and you are able to reveal plenty of things, much more than just a word. Really like this one, 3/4 hearts for me.
As for the difficulty level, you will need to do a little memory work but it's really nothing and in a afternoon, you will be able to learn everything ! 3/5 stars.
Similar products : I can't find any other booktest which has been disguised as a comic book, this is really a unique prop, a really good one.