December 2025

Mid December I received an unusual question from a fellow collector. I usually show the best find here, but sometimes I have to find one in the collection. The question was if I had a deck which I considered the worst in the collection and this deck immediately sprang to mind. So I looked it up and found that it had it's merits too. It  wasn't  an  easy  decision		but........here it is! I show this card here to illustrate my decision. I consider it the worst designed card, because it's such a clumsy attempt to combine broad designs with a narrow card and not all the cards are centered well. But on the bright side: it's an artist designed transformation deck... with a signed ace!

After I had found the deck I looked up Miriam's fiche and Amerika #352 showed that we had in fact received the deck as a gift in October 2002. We had ordered 5 decks from the artist and only had to pay for 4, which we sold here in the Netherlands. But Miriam had also noted that it was published as "Cardoons - SF Fantasy Poker Deck". The artist, who created the designs for the deck, goes by the name E. Michael Blake and he was nice enough to sign the ace of diamonds for me, as asked. It was the first "signed deck" in our collection, which grew over the years as a much appreciated sub-collection. And because it also was the first time that I was in direct contact with the artist, I forgot to ask all the important questions: printer, number and date?!
Michael copyrighted his back design in 1996 (see bottom), but if I remember well it took a few years before the deck was actually published.

At that time we didn't have any antique transformation decks yet, but only a few modern ones, like the wonderful "Key to the Kingdom". Creating a transformation deck requires a vivid imagination. When we met Bob Lancaster during the 2000 convention in New Haven, he showed us his designs for a few cards but complained about the lack of inspiration and finding the suit shapes in the world around him. He never finished his project, probably because he wasn't good in drawing and had used photo's for his designs. But I've also asked Linnea Gits (Uusi Studio) twice if she would be interested to create a transformation deck, alas without success. 
So I cherish contemporary artists, who venture into this special field, especially Elaine Lewis, who has produced a good number of transformation decks, all with different themes. But in this deck Michael Blake combines the designs as illustration for his own humorous texts. His style reminded me of some of the underground comics I once had. To keep the texts readable I've enlarged the scans a bit.

The usual black background here make it easier to forget the black borders and concentrate on the actual cards. It's apparent that the dimensions of Blake's designs don't match those of a standard wide card. That's a designer's fault with consequences. I don't know his exact ideas about how to solve this, but can imagine that an alternative was to adapt the size of the original designs. Maybe that was not possible without compromising the design, especially on the pip cards, and has lead him to this rather unaesthetic solution. But Blake can't be held responsible for the sometimes off center designs. That's the printer's doing. Still, I hope you can enjoy the original designs and appreciate his humor. Blake was nevertheless proud enough of his work to sign all the courts and a lot of pips with his initials EMB.

CLICK THE ACE TO SEE ALL THE PIPS OF THAT SUIT.