#tarnak

Zatanna In the 90's  & the 00′s

Most people are already familiar with her stories from this era so I will go most of them real quick.  

-Her most notable appearance was her guest appearance in 1990′s  Books of Magic #2 written by Neil Gaiman with the art for this issue being done by Scott Hampton. I have mixed feeling about this. On one handd, I would recommend Books of Magic to anybody who wants to know about the magical side of the DCU. I am, however, not a fan of how Zatanna was written in this.

First off, she is uncharacteristically affectionate toward John Constantine despite telling him to 'crawl under a rock and die' during their last published meeting. Remember, John is indirectly responsible for John Zatara's death and even in the comic him and Baron Winters were kind of blase about the whole thing afterwards:  

At first he is sorry but then: 

“Oh well, shit happens” 

Poor Mento turns into a villain afterwards (not that he was a very good good guy prior), Sargon has no legacy and Zatanna lost her father. John is kind of blase about the whole thing, of course, he is  the one who lost the least. If he actually cared about her he would be comforting her not smirking in the corner, smoking a cigarette while she sobs over her father’s ashes.    

 Then there is the scene at the bar; despite being charged with protecting Timothy Hunter (who is destined to be a powerful magician), Zatanna endangers him by knowingly taking him to a bar full off seedy magical characters:  

Look at that, she gets scared and loses her nerve.  It makes no sense because up until this point, she's faced everything from demons from hell to multiversal threats to multiple alien invasions and has proven to be resourceful even with her powers significantly reduced or even gone. You could handwave it away as PTSD from her father's death but no such indication is given in the comic itself.  The whole scene is just set up so John Constantine can appear and look cool.  We do get a 'oh I could have handled them' line from Zee which sounds patronizing (to the reader not Zee herself since there is no indication within BoM that she could have handled it).

If you think about the relationship with Constantine from Zatanna’s perspective, it makes no sense.  Would you date someone who indirectly got your father killed (assuming you had a good relationship with your father)? Not to mention she has a lot of stories and relationships under her belt but apparently this is the only one worth bringing up.  

-Zatanna got 4 issue mini series titled Zatanna: Come Together released in 1993 written by Lee Mars with art by Esteban Maroto which did show reflecting on her actions in BoM.  As editor Kim Yale explained in the letter columns, this was meant to be a 'feminist revamp' of the character.  The plot involves Zatanna's mom Sindella contacting her from beyond the grave (sound familiar?) to try and warn her of a threat which turns out to be a Chtulhu like monster hiding underneath San Francisco. Deciding that her father's backwards spell is ineffective, Zatanna decides to take up her mothers magic instead. Unfortunately, the main issue is that the 'upgrade' to her powers involved 'magical eye beams' and a magical staff which is considerably less original than casting spells backwards. Her new outfit is considerably much more generic than any of her previous ones: 

But Zatanna describing herself as the 'bridge between the human and magical' worlds was perfect and of course we get to see defeat a powerful all by herself again.  As a character piece, I think the mini series works really well but as a new direction (as in powers and costume)? Nah.

The art by Esteben Maroto was exquisite and it was interesting to see Zatanna trying to live a normal life and work in an office, given everything she’s been through up until this point, it makes sense:   

 I also like Joshua as a love interest for her. Initially in the mini she is dating a guy named Ron, who is kind of jerk, they break off and she sleeps with Joshua.  I like Joshua but like Jeff Sloan, he is not the kind of guy who can handle the kind of things Zatanna deals with on a normal basis.      

I also do have a minor quibble with one scene where she says 'oh if John Constantine were here, he would have figured it out.':

 Ummm Zee, you’ve driven away alien army, defeated demons, the JL used to just sit back and let you save the day all by your damn self, what’s this ‘oh woe, save me John’ nonsense?  I thought this was a feminist book.       

-The revamp from the mini series didn't stick. Only time it showed up in a comic outside of that mini was briefly during John Ostrander’s Spectre run (Ostrander is the husband of Kim Yale, I highly recommend their work on Suicide Squad as well as Ostrander's run on 'Spectre' and Martian Manhunter).  

In her following appearances, her stage magician outfit became her default outfit. Writers/artists either didn't know or didn't care about the reason why she wore the Perez designed ‘bug head’ outfit (except for one writer/artist whom I will get to). The stage magician used to be just that, her stage outfit, the Perez outfit (while not perfect) was meant to represent her own identity. References to her dad became more prominent and Sindella largely began to fade away.

During the 90's  and 00's, Zatanna was largely a guest star. She appeared in the Action Comics, Martian Manhunter, Books of Magic, Spectre, Hellblazer, Teen Titans, Batman and events like Final Night, Day of Judgement, Underworld Unleashed albeit not in a pivotal role like during her JL days.

A couple of her notable appearances before and around the time Identity Crisis hit:

-One of the personal favorites being 1995's Adventures of Superman #522 (w: Karl Kesel, a: Stuart Immonen) in which Zatanna, Martian Manhunter, Superman and Perry White work together to create a spell to restore a destroyed Metropolis. This is one of my favorite guest appearances by her.  Karl Kesel also wrote her when she briefly appeared in Final Night #3 and both times he wrote her dialogue well, with the flair and dramatics of a showman.

Although this is the kind of comic that makes people go ‘why didn’t she or the League help during No Man’s Land’? But it’s comics, so I’m sure there could be a hand waved away somehow. ‘Gotham’s magic aura is too dark and doing that spell could be catastrophic’, see, that took only took me 3 seconds. Besides I’m not reading Batbooks to find out what the JL is doing. 

-2001's Wonder Woman #175, a one page cameo written and drawn by Phil Jiminez :  

Note that Zatanna is in her Perez costume and can chant her spells forward as well.   

This was part of a much larger crossover involving WW leading every major/minor female superhero against every major/minor female supervillain lead by Circe (and also an excuse for Phil to flex on his artistic skill and encyclopedic knowledge of the DCU especially the female heroes). Jiminez is a huge Perez fanboy and uber feminist and it shows.   

- 2004's 'JLA: Incarnations' #4 (w: John Ostrander, a: Val Semeiks) , this was a retelling of the JLA's history after 1985 COIE through the news reports of reporter and superhero fanboy Tully Reed.  This issue retells the story of Aquaman disbanding the League. It also features Zatanna casting a planet wide spell:

-2005's Justice (written by Alex Ross and Jim Krueger with art by Alex Ross and Doug Braithwaite), this is a big ensemble story with a lot of sub plots running. One of which involves Superman, Zatanna and Red Tornado teaming up against Brainiac.

-Paul Dini wrote her first animated appearance in 1992's Batman: The Animated Series episode 'Zatanna' and in 2003, he would write the one shot 'Zatanna: Everyday Magic'.   It addressed Zatanna's love life, introduced a new rogue for her (Nimue Ravensong) and it's a rare story wherein Zatanna saves John Constantine instead of the other way around. We learn that she bears no grudge against him but she is not pining for him either even if she helped him. 

With that out of the way, lets address the elephant in the room;

Identity Crisis

This was and still remains a very controversial story. Ralph Dibney/Elongated Man comes home to find his wife, Sue Dibney, murdered and burned to death. This leads to the revelation that years ago, Sue was raped by Dr Light (who used to be a harmless supervillain) and the League voted to mind wipe him with Zatanna carrying out the deed.

Batman found out and Zatanna mindwiped him too. The culprit turned out to be Jean Loring; Ray Palmer's ex-wife who had snapped and did it so Ray would spend more time with her.  Much has been written about how the story handles the rape of Sue Dibney, the mental illness of Jean Loring and darkening once lighter and wholesome characters but the character most damaged by Identity Crisis was probably Zatanna.

Writers couldn't make up their minds on whether she was a willful participant of the mind wipe or a young rookie coaxed into it by the older League members.  There is also the reveal of her mind wiping Catwoman (an insult to Selina's redemption arc in her own title and to both characters)  and other villains like Toyman to make them harmless but the revelation only made some of them more dangerous.

Source: Catwoman Vol 2 #50-51

 It's less about her and really more about using her as a plot device to justify making villains dark and gritty or to make them relevant again. Hence why writers had trouble making up their minds on how remorseful she was about it which started the downward trend of trying to make her a more morally gray character and afterwards plots involving Zatanna started to revolve around mindwipes or at the very least stories couldn't go without mentioning it.Even with Catwoman, later stories would try to bad aid it by having Zatanna claim that she only ‘nudged’ Selina’s mind and that her choices were still her own.   

 Source: JLA #115

Source: JLA #116

^The above is by Geoff Johns who can’t write morally gray characters for peanuts.  Note that in his take she was sorry but 

Where as in Superman #644 by Greg Rucka she is more remorseful about the whole thing and has clearly defined boundaries:  

On the bright side, in 2006 we were introduced to Zachary Zatara, Zatanna's cousin created by Geoff Johns and Tony Daniel who debuted in that volume of Teen Titans. This made Zatanna one of the rare female heroes with a male side kick. 

She was also still the main go-to-person whenever a magical threat appeared, guest starring in Action Comics, Detective Comics, Birds of Prey and Power Girl but the stink from Identity Crisis still lingered. 

It was Morrison and Dini who pulled Zatanna out of the pit that Identity Crisis put her in.   

First, Morrison wrote her in their Seven Soldiers maxi-series, which showed her hitting rock bottom and joining a support group:

Source Seven Soldiers #4

then going on a mind bending magical journey with a female underling named Misty Kilogre  during which she redeems herself by taking on a cosmic entity and briefly reuniting her father.

Source: Seven Soldiers #4 

Then Paul Dini wrote her in his Detective Comics run, which had Bruce finally bury that animosity he had towards her over the mind wipe.

Which I covered here:

https://johnvenus.tumblr.com/post/674738267300708352/zatanna-x-bruce-a-timeline-part-12

  https://johnvenus.tumblr.com/post/674751230017519616/the-detective-the-magician-a-timeline-of-batman

Plus some better interactions between Zatanna and Catwoman:  

https://johnvenus.tumblr.com/post/674753793344274432/the-detective-the-magician-epilogue-with

Later he fleshed out the history between Thomas and John Zatara in his Streets of Gotham run.  He also established that Zatanna and Giovanni were Romanii in ‘Hearth of Hush’ and ‘House of Hush’ story arcs.    

Spring boarding off of his 'Tec run Zatanna finally.....

finally....  

finally.........

for the first time in 40 years.....

....got her solo ongoing in 2010.........

.....only for it to be cancelled after 16 issues because the Great Disaster...New 52 was going to happen (at the time we were told it was due to low sales).  

As for the ongoing itself; I think it was off to good start and could have grown into something special had it been allowed to continue.  Dini is largely a street level writer so his handling of magic tend to be so-and-so but he nailed the character work and he repeatedly emphasized her non magical skills like escape artistry, sleight of hand tricks, martial arts and showed that she was clever and resourceful even in situations where she can't use her magic.

Dini’s Zatanna was confident, powerful, charming and clever. 

He established Shadowcrest mansion as her powerful library of magical books and artifacts, San Francisco was her base, he tried to give her a Rogues Gallery beginning with Brother Night, he showed Zatanna and Zachary interacting for as well as their history and he established a supporting cast for her, including love interest (Dale Colton) and the trans stage hand Mickey (who appeared in a flashback in a male body).

 You could easily imagine a tv show with this premise. Dini is also the only writer since 1993 Come Together mini to reference Sindella, as her classic self and he would even reference the Hidden City much later in another series 'Zatanna/Black Canary: Bloodspell'.

He also summed up the character and her mission perfectly in the first issue:

 And unwittingly wrote the coda for the character in this dream sequence:

Zatanna lost her father and her mother, she may have saved the world countless times but she couldn't save the people closest to her. Which adds an interesting element to her relationship with Zachary. Being the only family she has left, she must feel protective over her cousin.    

That said, Dini's run isn't perfect. His plots can feel a little shallow and is largely saved by the character interactions and he was often too reliant on defining Zee as her father's daughter.  Yes, Zatara is important and the idea of him raising her as a single dad and teaching her everything she knows is an important facet of her character but we don't need a flashback to her father every time Zatanna casts a spell nor does every enemy need to tie back to him.

Also, between Spectre Vol #7, Reign in Hell, JLA Vol 2 #39,  Zatanna #2, she’s said goodbye to her father’s ghost 4 times now under 4 different writers.  

The ultimate problem with the Zatanna ongoing is that its late. She should have gotten one soon after her debut in the 60′s or at the very least during the late 80′s or early 90′s when DC could sustain ongoings for B-D list characters like Question, the Ray, Starman and slowly turn them into fan favorites. By the New Tens, most audiences who remember her exploits in the Satellite era had faded away.  We saw that she has a good supporting cast (her father, mother, Jeff Sloan, Mickey, Zachary), a descent rogues gallery that just needs a few tweaks (Allura, the Druid, Warlock. Adam, High Lord, Caligro, Brother Night)  and she is very well connected to a lot of heroes (Atom, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Wonder Woman, Batman, Elongated Man) but the only thing that really eluded her and kept from shining is the lack of an going for her.  

Now, onto JLD   and YJ:   lets look at what worked and didn't work with the version of Zatanna on JLD and YJ.

What worked on YJ:

Her personality is true to the comics. I like her design both her stage magician outfit and her normal clothing. I also like the friendship she has with Artemis Crock. In the Golden Age comics, John Zatara often clashed with a villain called ‘Tigress’ who had no magical powers of her own and was more of a super powered. This character had not relation to the Paula or Artemis Crock version of Tigress/Huntress that would be introduced later on but Zatanna being friends with a version of Tigress is a nice sly reference.  

Lacey Chabert is also one of the best voice actors she’s had. I mostly hear Jenifer Hale (who voiced her on JLU) but Lacey is a close second. She infuses her character with a sense of playfulness and charm.    

I also appreciate the fact that the show didn’t kill off John Zatara (as of this writing) because that would have felt repetitve. 

What didn’t work on YJ:   

I wasn’t a fan of deaging her and putting her in Dick Grayon’s generation. I was reluctant at first but I was willing to roll with it if the show had done something amazing with her. But after 4 seasons,  I’ve got to give this version a thumbs down.     

Look, John Zatara is one of the cooler Dads in the DCU but Zatanna is the one with actual history with the League. Putting him on the League robs her of her relationship with her peers.  Sure it’s a different universe and all but Ollie, Hal, Dinah, even Red Tornado  are all depicted as akin to their Satellite era selves and their history and relationships are all acknowledged. Dick Grayson still becomes Nightwing and a great leader consistent with the comics even if the details are different, same goes Batman and Green Arrow quitting the League to do their own thing.

Scenes like WW proclaiming that the League needs more female heroes is doubly jarring when you’re aware that they outright replaced one of their female members with a man.   

There seems to be this presumption that Zatanna doesn’t have anything worthwhile to adapt from the comics. Either the writers were ignorant of her history (which is part of why I’m writing this) or they didn’t think it was good enough for their universe.  

Yes, some of the comic book stories are flawed or silly but comic book adaptations are full of examples of characters being revamped into being more bad ass and to be given more pathos. Look at Mr Freeze before ‘Heart of Ice’ or Kiteman before Tom King’s Batman run or even in YJ itself, characters like Sportsmaster are revamped to be more bad ass. I’m sure the same could be done for Allura, the Druid, the Warlock of Ys, Hellrazer and even Adam. 

Also, Sindella is reduced to *just* being a bystander who died on cancer with no lines whereas in the comic books, her story is what introduced us to the term Homo Magi. In the show, all the relevancy of the Homo Magi is given to Vandal Savage. That’s just....not right. 

Zatanna herself was barely a main character in her own arc. It was largely about her sidekicks and Vandal Savage. There is also the implication of her grooming her sidekicks to be the next Dr Fate even though she says it’s a choice at the end. The fact that there was a flashback showing that she got the idea long after she was training her side kicks but at the same time she doesn’t answer Khalid asking her about it, is a case of writers wanting to have their cake and eat it too. 

Even if she wasn’t grooming her side kicks it still reduces the Zatara’s to just being the Dr Fate of E-16. If its a choice between Zatanna borrowing someone else’s lore vs her having her own, I would rather choose the latter.    

As for her relationship with Dick Grayson, like I said above deaging her comes at the expense of her canonical relationships in the comics. At least with Bruce/Zee we saw that relationship play out in the comic books, knowing that the Zataras trained Bruce revealed that they had talent that even normal humans could learn and pairing them didn’t undermine her history. Whereas putting her in Dick Grayson’s generation displaces Raven who is supposed to be the magic user of Dick’s generation. I also much prefer Dick with Kory but the modern narrative is that Kory was his first love/crush and Babs is his true love. In the YJ verse, the spot of first love is given to Zatanna and we don’t even get to see how that played out on screen. We just know that they broke up for whatever reason and Dick is with Babs now (maybe the latter half of Season 4 will give us answer but honestly, I’m over this show). I honestly have no idea how Starfire or her relationship with Dick could be done justice on this show or how Raven will fit in to this world. I thought the latter might be one of Zatanna’s proteges but nope.    

But hey, we may not have gotten any of Zatanna’s own lore on the show but we still got this sizzling scene of her kissing Dick Grayson in front of everyone to show how much of a stud he is:      

Source: Young Justice #20 

::groan::  

And really, Babs is sleeping with him but won’t commit to a relationship with Dick because he’s too much of a horn dog. If it was any other guy, I would have said to Babs that she was getting scammed. And is Dick really such a manwhore that he can’t go a week without hooking up with someone? 

Now, on to JL Dark:  

What worked on JLDark:  Normalizing Zatanna wearing pants, Zee getting cred for defeating Prayala and the Upside Down Man, singing bohemian rhapsody backwards to summon a lightning storm,  teaming her up with Wonder Woman in Rebirth and bringing back her connection to Batman. Plus I like her interactions with Bobo and Ragman.     

What didn’t work on JLDark:   

Apparently the only Zatanna stories that matter now are the ones with John Constantine in them.  Chiefly Swamp Thing #50 and Books of Magic #2. Like, that’s it, that’s the basis for the entire character and story arcs now. This was the case in JLD Vol 1. Rebirth did better by drawing influence Morrison’s Seven Soliders and Dini’s ‘Tec plus her own ongoing but it’s not perfect.   

The problem is pairing her with Constantine and taking their relationship to the extent of turning her into an extension of John Constantine culminating to the point where you get crap like JL Dark Apocalypse where she gets fridged just to progress John’s arc. Not to mention DCeased where her role is to just sit back and let Constantine save the day. As though every other magic user is ineffective or undeserving of their ability.  

To give you some perspective, Zatanna was created in 1964, John Constantine debuted in 1985.  Thus she had been around for 21 years longer than he did and has her own lore. The reason why Alan Moore paired them in Swamp Thing #50 is because Constantine was a new character and Zatanna was a more established character thus by establishing a past relationship between the two, he could further entrench John into the DCU.  Even throughout the issue John is manipulating the various players into joining the seance, he tricks both Sargon and Baron Winters into being there,  Mento had no idea what he was getting into and is left insane afterwards (he becomes a Titan villain ) and he was leveraging his past relationship with Zatanna and her father’s protective instinct so he would come along as well.

She also told John to crawl under a rock and die.    We don’t see Zatanna’s reaction or her mourning her father. Constantine is the one who suffered the least in the entire ordeal.  Yet in her subsequent appearances in Books of Magic and Hellblazer she is strangely friendly with him.  This makes no sense if you think about it from Zatanna’s perspective. Her father, who raised her from birth as a single father figure and whose heroic journey is kicked off by searching for him, is indirectly murdered by an old boyfriend.  

The folks who like the JohnZee seem to be either:

-ignorant of Zatanna’s broader history.

-are Constantine fans who Zatanna to comfort the bad boy. Eugh.  

-or just like the aesthetics of the two together.  

Dini handled it right in ‘Everyday Magic’, she doesn’t hold a grudge against but she can’t stand him either. She helped him out of trouble but doesn’t pine for him either.  Plus she is the undisputed main character of the one shot .  

In JLD Vol1, in order to justify the John/Zee relationship, Zatanna’s own knowledge of magic and cleverness is cut down so he can contribute, she cant be effective and is taken down like a glorified red shirt just so once again she has to rely on John to help save the day and post Nu52 all her other relationships are erased (except Batman) and implied to be terrible at relationships with a bad boy fetish to justify her coming back to John.

The ‘bad boy fetish’ or her being bad at relationships things is simply not true. Yes, she described herself as falling for losers in Seven Soldiers but that’s because she was in a bad place at that point and had low self esteem. Look at her actual on panel relationships, some of which we’ve covered here; she was mature enough to break things off with Barry and she liked Bruce because he stayed at her bedside after she was injured and she accepted and moved on when he said he wasn’t ready for a relationship. As we saw with Jeff Sloan, any normal guy would be comically inept when it comes to the stuff that she deals with on a daily basis. In Come Together, she dumped Ron the jerk so she could hook up with the much nicer Joshua.  In ‘Everyday Magic’ a guy she was dating asked her to use magic to pay for their bills at a diner but she refuses and leaves the guy to wash his own dishes.  She has never been somebody who makes bad decisions at relationships.  

Also all her supporting characters; Zachary, Mickey, is practically non existent now. Last time we saw Sindella in JLD, she had dark hair and none of her tragic backstory is acknoweledged. John Zatara is treated like the only relevant parent she has.  

Rebirth was a little better because it brought back some of her relationships like Batman and Wonder Woman. However it came  with the caveat that John Zatara and John Constantine had a secret history together wherein Constantine did Giovanni’s dirty work for him and that the two hatched the plan that ended up getting Zatara killed:  

Once again, we are stuck with a Zatanna who *has* to rely on John Constantine to save the day. What worse is that in trying to force this terrible pairing DC is also tainting John Zatara from a wholesome father figure (who made mistakes in the past, true) and renders Zatanna into little more than pawn of her father and Constantine and a plot device to defeat the oncoming Big Bad.   

The main problem with the YJ and JLD versions is not utilizing anything she can call her own from her canon stories and only relying on her father and in JLD’s case defining her entirely by her father and John Consantine.  

It’s also not fair to John Constantine either. Much as I hate his Nu52 and Rebirth versions, he is not supposed to be the ‘Magic Batman’ of the DCU or a blonde Dr Strange in a trenchcoat. Zatanna appeared in what 2 issues of his 300 issue long ongoing? John Constantine is suppposed to be a horror characters who lives in the fringes of the DCU where writers can tell storylines that normally wouldn’t be permitted in the regular DCU.  

Although, yes, the gross double standard of John Constantine getting an ongoing almost immiedietly after his debut in Swamp Thing and said ongoing being allowed to run for 300+ issues (Vertigo titles can keep running even if they dip below cancellation numbers) while poor Zatanna who had much more build up in her JLA years had to wait 40 years to get hers makes this all the more worse. And even after appearing in JLD, Zee still doesn’t get a sniff at an ongoing beyond a feature in DC’s New Talent Showcase, of course Consantine very briefly got his own ongoing in addition to JLD. Nevermind a tv show, cartoon shorts and DTV movies where he gets to be obnoxious and make every other magical character looks like chumps. And if you think Zatanna gets it bad, maybe try looking into the stories of Dr Fate, Phantom Stranger, Madame Xanadu, Spectre, Zauriel they all have rich, unique histories and they’ve all been turned into chumps in front of John Constantine as well.   

The stories by Gerry Conway, Lee Mars and Paul Dini may not have been perfect but there were trying to set up Zatanna as her own character with her own setting, supporting characters and villains.   

I also don’t blame Peter Milligan, Jeff Lemire  for her depiction in Vol 1 nor James Tynion IV or Ram V for her depiction in Vol 2. James Tynion wrote a Zatanna who resembled her pre Nu 52 self in ‘Tec but had to switch writing a Zatanna who was darker and moodier for JLD Vol 2.  This take seems to be what DC wants and it sucks. Plus writers are more likely to follow up whatever the most recent writers are doing. Just like Joe Cavalieri was following up on Gerry Conway’s take when he wrote the Hallrazer issues in JLA or Matthew Sturges following up on Paul Dini, writers pairing up John and Zee are only doing so because the previous writers did it as well and feel that the two *must* be paired together. To Tynion IV and Ram V’s credit, they are drawing from Dini’s work and Seven Soldiers but still, I think more references could be added to their library.   

Ultimately the problem lies with DC, from their long standing reluctance to giving their female heroes their own ongoings to their need to define their female heroes entirely by their romantic relationships.

Anyway, this post got really long.  I will be making individual posts for some of the stories mentioned here as well as some that I had to skip over.

This site was really helpful in tracking down Zatanna's appearances:  https://dcuguide.com/w/Zatanna_(Zatanna_Zatara)_Chronology    There are separate sections for her chronological and non chronological appearances.