- Writer: Mariko Tamaki
- Artist: Javier Rodriguez
- 2024
- Read: 6/24/24-10/23/24
- Grade: B- (by the end of this writing this has been changed to a solid A-)
Mariko Tamaki earned my attention immediately with the first issue of this series, and the fact that she was working with one of my favorite characters added no small amount of excitement. In the interest of being up front, this is not quite as unified an effort as “Supergirl Being Super”, but has a startling amount of depth, and the fact that this story is so thematically different from her other work is an indicator of her range (admittedly, two is a small sample size).
Much like Seven Soldiers, this series does some wonderful work setting the tone and creating a sense of ominous foreboding. Despite the vibrant colors, of which I am a great fan throughout, the early stages of this story are filled with the sense of something dark coming, and the visual cues are truly impressive. One of the things I find so rewarding about these cues is that they are subtle and Rodriguez uses his art, and a general faith in the basic intelligence of the reader, to decipher his clever clues. It starts as simply as the way Zatanna’s pet rabbits are cowering in fear at the opening of the first issue.
There’s so much value in Tamaki’s restraint here. It really allows the medium to showcase some of its unique strengths. The fact that something is wrong is both immediately apparent without being bluntly hammered upon the audience. However, this isn’t the only instance of this in the opening issue. It builds skillfully with nearly every frame. From her run in the desert,
And the cryptic gazes of the patrons of the casino
This full panel engagement is one of the things that is tragically absent from so many books, and would absolutely improve the overall health of the form if it were to be more consistently employed. Unfortunately, much like Seven Soldiers, it does only last a little while as the built tension snaps just as the first issue closes. It was not as anticlimactic in this instance as the battle is only beginning, and I can understand the impulse to have some manner of action sequence to appease the impatient modern reader. All of this and I’ve only covered enough ground to discuss the ambiance of the first few pages (I suppose there’s plenty of meat on this bone).
Before I get into some of the wonderful nuance and surprising depth of the story, I want to take some real time to talk about the art, the coloring in particular, here. The two facets to which I’d like to pay especial attention are the distinctiveness of the flashback and surrealist imagery and the fascinating use of a selectively monochrome palette.
Rodriguez finds a unique way to establish a flashback setting, namely striking visuals and a dedicated set of colors -specifically bright pastels coupled with negative space.
And still he manages to keep the modern setting vibrant and interesting while making it distinct and engaging in its own right.
However, he’s not even finished there as he utilizes a third mode for the surreal or magical. Shifting to hyper-contrasting colors and monochrome or bicolor characters is such a distinctive choice.
These three coloring modes are at once recognizable and fitting for their settings and act as a useful shorthand for the reader. Furthermore, they are also simultaneously unifying and clearly present a cohesive artistic style for the entire series. While the action panels are not a particular strength, many of them appear as obligatory demands of the current state of the medium rather than naturally occurring events anyway, so it’s no great crime against the work’s overall aims. As a last note on the art, it also gives us this
This is the kind of image that is fit for a wall, and the piece I’ve had the most joy returning to since having finished my reading.
All that said and I’ve yet to even open the discussion of the story. There are several interesting themes that are only possible due to the noncanonical, Black Label nature of the story. I am more convinced than ever that comic book continuity is a burden that should be shed at the first available instance such that the needs of a quality story should not be subordinated to a bloated fictional history that is largely incoherent anyway.
This story rewrites Zatanna’s entire history into a pair of childhood magical tragedies that have made her swear off the practice entirely and, right out of the gate, Tamaki brings the power and importance of words to the forefront. As there are few ideas that are more central to my own writing, I suppose it’s not so shocking to find that I harbor such an affection for Zatanna, but there’s no doubt that this theme presents itself early and remains throughout.
Even in her dreaming memory, the word-or words- of power (I suspect it’s her own name backwards, but I’ve nothing to base that on) is so devastating as to be censored from her recollection. However, this censorship is not only subconscious but also a very real part of how she sees the world. Zatanna frequently protests that what she does is not magic, and is so antagonistic to the idea that she constantly feels the need to correct those who make this semantic error. And since I’m ever a childishly minded sort, I’m incapable of resisting the urge to remember the last time a semantic argument was had over this exact topic…
Immaturity aside, the power of words is a gateway theme into others such as the giving and taking of power. This ultimately ends up being a powerfully poignant line of thinking when you view the story as a comment on the state of modern parenting. Stick with me here.
At the risk of spoiling the major elements of the narrative (consider yourself warned), the central conflict revolves around Zatanna’s relationship with her father, Zatara, and the actions the latter took in the aftermath of Zatanna’s disastrous magical accident which cost the life of a young boy. However, there’s more to this than a simple instance of childhood rage having devastating consequences. After her first attempt to do a simple (non-magical) trick for her childhood friends fails, Zatanna turns to her father for supernatural help.
Her father is distant, disinterested, and withdrawn. He’s not even concerned enough to put down the book he is reading. Furthermore, he is hidden by the wings of his chair, the wide distance and thick smoke of the room, and the shadows. Zatanna is in a very real sense speaking with someone she hardly knows and, based on her downcast glance and the way she holds her hat in her hands as she sheepishly asks for help, almost certainly fears. It is only after this interaction, presumably having been armed with real magic by her father, that the disaster occurs.
Now I have to make a few assumptions here from the shaky ground of an argument from silence (not ideal, but I believe justifiable in this instance). The text makes no indication that there is an extended period of training between Zatanna’s request to her father and her second attempt to do her trick for the children. In fact, his dismissive response is intruding into the following frame suggesting that little if any real time has passed between the events.
One could also argue that the events happen on the same day because the children are wearing the same clothing as Zatanna’s first attempt, but since this scene is in flashback and the artist may not have been as concerned with indicating the movement of time as the needs of my argument demand, it is hardly a bulletproof chain of evidence. In any case, Zatara is not present to witness the outcome of his tutelage, and there is no indication that there was any manner of extensive training in the use of this power. This brings what is perhaps the most important series of frames from the entire series into the foreground
Zatara was incapable of, or unwilling to, fulfill the obligations of fatherhood. His focus is on his own interests and pursuit of his own ambitions, and when confronted he armed his daughter with a power she did not understand, could not hope to control, and posed a real danger to herself and others. He did so in a haphazard and unsupervised fashion in service of making the parental interaction as short as possible and with a minimum of inconvenience to his own endeavors. Ahem…
Laughably, this instigates the most engaged, albeit short, period of Zatara’s parenting life as he purports to undo Zatanna’s mistake.
The irony of this moment is almost painful. After Zatanna’s uncontrolled demonstration of power, and under the auspices of undoing the damage her accident caused, Zatara leads his daughter into the night without explanation, he allows her to believe that there is some hope for the return of the missing child, blindfolds her, and proceeds to attempt to steal the power she has begun manifesting.
The more I think about all of this the more fascinating it gets, the higher my opinion I have of this work, and the less guilty I feel about the haphazardly stream-of-conscious manner of my exploration (this is the moment where my grading changed). In this tale, Zatara nearly destroys himself trying to steal his daughter’s power. Because of this, she grows up an orphan wracked by guilt, afraid and ashamed of her own abilities, and content with mediocrity and ambitionlessness. In effect, despite the fact that he failed to take her power, Zatara, very literally, left Zatanna powerless for much of her life.
I don’t want to suggest that Zatanna be completely exonerated in the accidental death of her childhood friend; she may not have been old enough to be legally culpable, but she was certainly old enough to understand the moral consequence of her actions. However, one must not overlook the circumstances of that childhood, and the environment that contributed to that tragedy. I mean, just look at this poor child’s bedroom.
Littered with plates, cups, and loose food, her top hat clearly a broken heirloom discarded by her father, these are all signs that despite her father’s physical presence, Zatanna is very much on her own. What’s even more, and I’ve just this moment made myself very sad, despite his absenteeism, Zatanna still emulates her father through her wardrobe and choice of profession as if the modest modicum of attention she is brave enough to seek is ultimately his.
Before I say my parting remarks on a response that flew past overlong some time ago, I shouldn’t gloss over the elements of the story that I think are less successful simply for the sake of my overall affection for the piece. This forces me to talk about The Casters, The Bunnies, and, sadly, John Constantine. The first of these is a sort of governing body of magic users who police the behavior of those whose irresponsible use of magic apparently has the ability to conjure demons. Now, should I be reliable in reading this correctly, Zatara’s original attempt to steal Zatanna’s powers turned him into a powerful demon and trapped him in her memory where he lay undetected for years. As his power grew, he sent demon’s into the waking world in an attempt to destroy the society of Casters who had sought to control his ambition and capture Zatanna so he could take her power. In an oblique sense (being as generous as possible) the Casters provide an organized authority whose own desire for power could be argued to in some measure be responsible for Zatara’s behavior, but one would have to take hearsay arguments at face value for that manner of reading, and of that I am particularly unfond. With the exception of the Stranger, who provides narrative proof that the sharing or taking of power is not the inherent evil the Casters claim it to be, and the cathartic scene of a horde of demons destroying the self-righteous, self-appointed masters of all magic users, the truth is this organization has little bearing upon, or necessity in, the story. Then there’s the Bunnies…
This…organization?…person?…well I’m not really sure what to say beyond the Bunnies claim to be some kind of antithesis to the authority of the Casters. Beyond that there isn’t much to be said. The Bunny character serves the purpose of awakening Zatanna’s magic use, providing some exposition of questionable reliability, and contrasting the point of view of the Stranger and the Casters. The bunnies themselves seem to be watching Zatanna throughout her life, were present during the incident with her father, and added a little levity and cuteness to the climactic battle with the demons. Ultimately both of these groups seem narratively superfluous. Not that either is poorly written or conceived, and there is some value in filling out the magical world, but I can’t help but wonder if the story wouldn’t have been more thematically cohesive without them.
Lastly there is John Constantine (sigh…I don’t want to do this). Out of the gate, I want to say that he is charmingly written here, he’s thematically reinforcing, believable, and necessary. One might ask why he should be counted amongst the weaknesses of the series, and I must admit to a first for the Archive. This is the first time I’m classifying a narrative and artistic success as a failure solely on the basis of my personal affinity for the main character. It’s my Archive; I can be as arbitrary as I like. I will withhold my quixotic bemoaning of frivolous sexuality. To expect modern entertainment to even countenance, much less espouse, what modernity would certainly classify as my prudish sensibilities is certainly beyond foolish. I will instead focus on how Zatanna’s childhood has (in a predictably tragic fashion) led her to another absentee protector.
Am I allowed to read way too much into the fact that Zatanna was given a hat by both her father and John Constantine?
Regardless, I’m not arguing that there is some kind of moral equivalence between the two men, but neither are they polar opposites. While Zatara is clearly a villain, Constantine falls far short of being a hero. After being hired by Casters to watch and ultimately kill Zatanna, he seems content to let the demons murder all of the Casters because in his estimation they are bad people and they have it coming. When Zatanna asks him who is going to die in the coming conflict he answers bluntly,
Ambivalence, moral relativism, and selective and self-serving empathy, not high marks in and of themselves, but compared to a murderer demon who wants to sacrifice you to the whims of his own ambition, I guess it’s not as bad as it could be. But Zatanna, especially this Zatanna, deserves far better. Perhaps not entirely as a result of these absent figures in her life but certainly not wholly unaffected by them, Zatanna’s life at the outset of this story is strategically empty. As previously stated she resists the urge to move to a larger venue and larger audiences, she lives alone with only her bunnies for company, she appears to have no serious or demanding relationships of any kind, and she shows no sign of any impulse to change any part of that situation. She has every excuse to behave just as detached and self-centered as the world weary John Constantine. And yet when push comes to shove…
No powers, no understanding of what is happening, no thought for self, for the sake of a complete stranger… and no hesitation
It’s such a simple thing to ask for, but the fact that Zatanna is sweet, charming, funny, strong, and absolutely the hero of this story is truly wonderful, and that’s hardly guaranteed these days. The fact that she has a soft spot for a broken man-child with the attendance reliability of a mono-riddled 10th grader is forgivable, should she be said to be in need of forgiveness at all, and understandable considering the trauma of her formative years. What’s extraordinary, dare I say heroic, is that though she does become jaded to power, she never does the same to people.
Despite the fact that I found the Casters and the Bunnies to be less than essential narrative elements, and Zatanna’s relationship with someone of John Constantine’s caliber to be a condescension that beggars metaphor, I would absolutely recommend this series to any of the PG13+ crowd who are tired of the thematic emptiness of most of the modern comic medium.
One last gift of the limited nature of this series is that of character growth, something rarely permitted to characters within the grander DC continuity. This story ends with Zatanna graduating into the larger venue, the bigger stage, the brighter lights, and onto the roster of the waiting Justice League. Oh, and lest we forget…completely unafraid to say the magic word
Leave a Reply