Origin
Norgil the Magician was a talented stage magician who from time to time used his skill at sleight of hand and other skills of prestidigitation to capture crooks.
Creators
Along with writing The Shadow pulp novels Walter Gibson also wrote non-fiction, and short stories, one of the other series characters that he wrote about from time to time was Norgil the Magician who was a normal stage magician who sometimes caught petty cooks.
Most of the short stories had the same basic theme, with Norgil using a stage magic to outdo a thief and then explain to whoever was around to listen (and the reading audience) how the trick worked.
When Street & Smith started The Shadow Comic Walter Gibson also took on the task of writing the scripts for the comic along with the 24 Shadow novels he was writing a year, he also scripted a few Norgil the Magician as well, however perhaps due to the non-fantastic nature of the stories they didn’t last very long in the comic, for that matter only around a dozen text stories were produced.
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