The Most Amazing Subway Graffiti

So, I happen to love subway posters. Chalk it up to my alternate life in advertising; I'm totally fascinated by them. I scrutinize them in painstaking detail, get unreasonably angry at the ones that are lazy, slapdash, or lacking in craftsmanship, and get really really excited about the ones that have been artfully and carefully constructed.

For example these:

These posters were out a couple summers ago and I loved them. So much so that I clearly had to document them for posterity. They were somehow entirely aware of their own ridiculousness, and yet still entirely sincere about it. It was genius.

Anyway. I saw another instance of genius a few days ago (although didn't think fast enough to get a picture). This one was not marketing genius, though, but inspiration from a civilian:

This particular poster was for some reality show or another, and featured a bunch of people standing around looking at the camera. There is a poster currently on the subway lines advertising an exhibit about Houdini at (I believe) the Brooklyn Museum. It features a big picture of Houdini with his name and some information about the exhibit underneath.

This graffiti artist had cut out the figure of Houdini and inserted him along with his name in the reality-series posters. The effect was that Houdini had somehow escaped from his own poster and materialized in this one. His name (the final touch), pasted next to him, seemed to announce, "Ta da! The great Houdini!"

It was kind of brilliant.