Zatanna #11 – Review

By: Paul Dini (writer), Jamal Igle (penciller), Jon Sibal (inker), John Kalisz (colorist)

The Story: You know, puppets aren’t so scary when they feature hot women in fishnets.

The Review: One thing you may notice about television writers who get into comics is they tend to bring their teleplay habits with them, some of which don’t really suit the glossy page as much as the small screen.  Dini is one of those TV writers who has made the transition better than many of his colleagues, but even he can’t seem to escape completely from his past.

The most obvious leftover from his TV days is how much he relies on expository monologues—characters recalling events in flashback—to move the plot forward.  The past two issues featured Oscar Hampel blathering first about how he’d been wronged and then how he wronged others.  By the time Mikey gets done filling Zatanna in about she managed to track down her puppetized-boss in this issue, you get pretty tired of explanatory dialogue.  It’s an easy storytelling method, but it doesn’t do much to add tension or excitement to the story.

It doesn’t do much in the character department either.  With so much talk about the plot going on, none of the characters demonstrate much personality, even the usually engaging Zatanna.  Despite Mikey playing a big role in rescuing Zee, you still don’t know anything about her, which is a big problem for the title’s long-term livelihood.  If the supporting cast is weak, the burden of carrying interest falls solely on the lead—and if she falls flat, the whole story collapses.

Dini makes a couple attempts to inject some meaning to the story, but they feel forced and weakly executed.  Zatanna’s sudden crush on Detective Colton is a real groaner, as they showed little to zero chemistry in all their incredibly brief appearances together.  As for Zee’s spiritual and psychological issues with puppets somehow tying in with her dad’s manipulation of her mind—well, she says it does, but you don’t really see it, so it’s hard to take seriously.

Television or no, there are some flaws to the script that are pretty hard to ignore.  One that’s been the bane of this series since day one has been the lack of any kind of sense whatsoever to the magical stuff.  Dini basically limits it when he needs to keep Zee in trouble for a little longer, then lets it work when he’s ready for the story to move on, but makes no effort to explain why spells work in certain ways.

Here are just some of the many unanswered questions you’ll be asking throughout this issue: why can she bring her mind back to normal, but not the rest of her body?  Why can she use the magic in the totems (none of which are shown or explained in detail, by the way) to allow herself to move, but not return to normal?  And how convenient is it that Mikey is under some unexplained “enchantment” that happens to solve everybody’s problems in one swoop?

A big minus is Cliff Chiang’s absence from art duties.  Igle is a strong artist, but his more conventional pencils feel a little too run-of-the-mill and safe to work on a mystic title.  It doesn’t provide a properly mysterious, moody atmosphere, and it doesn’t do much to spice up a mediocre script.  Even Kalisz’s previously great colors seem dampened to suit the art change.

Conclusion: The writing remains as acceptable as ever, although the switch to a more standard fare artist dips the overall quality.  Dini should focus more fundamentally on characterization and world-building more than trying to create challenging conflicts for his lead.

Grade: C

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – I previously credit the coloring duties on this series to John Kausz—which is a misspelling, and for that, I’ve very, very sorry.

– It’s actually been a while since I’ve seen the classic “chloroform them from behind” trick.

– If it’s a realm of peace and healing, what’s a demon doing there?  Aren’t they kind of the opposite?