By: Paul Dini (writer), Cliff Chiang (artist), John Kalisz (colorist)
The Story: Zatanna confronts a childhood horror that has re-manifested itself dangerously into her present.
The Review: Zatanna’s an interesting case in the world of comics: well-known, likable, a killer costume, the fun gimmicks of backwards talk, and the woman does magic! Yet as a character, writers seem to like the idea of her, but don’t know what to do with her. It mostly has to do with the messiness of writing magic in superhero comics. Superpowers have at least a semi-logical basis of which ones work or counter against others, but writers must create the rules of magic from the ground up. It’s a simple challenge in creator-owned properties, but in mainstream comics, the second another writer comes along, the magic rules get muddied or rewritten altogether. Hence you get portrayals of Zatanna where she’s the most powerful member of the Justice League, or where putting a bandana around her mouth renders her effectively useless.
Paul Dini now has the chance to reverse that trend with an ongoing featuring his pet character. Unsurprisingly, he’s shown that he has a great handle on her personality, which is bright and assertive while still proud of her femininity. Her voice and mannerisms leap off the page and always leave a strong impression of who she is. The other characters get very little to do in comparison. Then again, there’s never been any doubt that Dini can write a great Zatanna. But to make her stand up with the big leagues—so to speak—of DC heroes, he has to offer big outlets to use her powers in a really spectacular way.
So far, Dini has fallen into some age-old formulas for putting Zee in danger and getting her out of it: set up the villain; get the villain to trap, befuddle, or silence her in some way to make her temporarily innocuous; let her figure her way out of the trap, befuddlement, or silence; backwards words and done—villain suitably and ironically punished, Zee does a show, applause-applause, curtains down, fourth-wall-breaking wink to the audience, end scene.
In this issue, two parts of the formula have already been set in motion: villain set-up and the traditional trap, befuddlement, or silence. At least the trap plays on her phobias, which should make getting out of the trap more interesting, but that doesn’t make the endgame any less predictable. It’s also discouraging that with all the possibilities of imagination and creativity open in Zee’s magical world, she’s still relegated to using straightforward tricks against old tropes of villains—varieties of demons and the like.
The great magical stories (the Vertigo series and Japanese manga, among others) are less about spell-brawls between characters, and more about intriguing relationships among various magical factions, playing off real-world superstition and oddities in human behavior, and spells that require significant investments of time, resources, and character to pay off. Besides the cool concept of a mystic therapist who lives in a neutral zone between realities, Dini just isn’t mining the story-gold available here, and that will ultimately undermine long-term interest in this series.
If Dini ever decides to ramp up the creativity in ideas for this series, Cliff Chiang is just the artist to handle them. Chiang’s clean, lightly sketchy lines are exactly what work for the fluid, shadowy world of magic. His Zatanna is attractive without being campy, and his sense of design for everything—settings, characters, objects—has great detail. John Kalisz’s colors are the perfect complement, establishing the right moods for each scene and selling the supernatural elements as best as possible.
Conclusion: The series and its star remain enjoyable, and with a fantastic new art team on board, the issue is as fun to look at as read. However, each story arc’s plot structure is getting way too familiar, and there’s just a sense of wonder missing from DC’s dedicated magical title.
Grade: B-
Some Musings: – You know, it would have been simple enough to chalk up the fuzziness of Zee’s childhood memories to classic psychological repression without dicing up her dad’s moral standing in the process.
– Puking on Sesame Street. Good times. The expression of that one little girl in the reaction panel is priceless.
– And speaking of Sesame Street, I’m amazed the producers let Zee get away with wearing fishnets after the whole hubbub over Katy Perry’s bazoombas.
-Minhquan Nguyen