Originally Posted by
John Venus
Thanks for the links. I've heard about the Moore/Morrison but haven't seen it all compiled in one place.
I agree, Everyday Magic was a nice palate cleanser after reading her treatment in Books of Magic. Also, there is a 20 year gap between Zatara's death in American Gothic and Seven Soldier. Sad it took DC that long to publish a story that showed her dealing with her father's death head on.
There were some comics Pre-Nu 52 that explored the sexual tension between Batman and Zatanna but in this decade, it's definitely Constantine.
I think I'll like if he was reinvented and modernized. Him being a dude in distress was amusing but I also found him to be really insecure. Especially in that 100 page 'Zatanna Special'.
Yep. The more powerful a hero get, the more the story is about how they use their powers.
One thing I've always wondered is given the kind of bullshit that people fall for in RL, how bad would it be in a world where magic exists? If I was given a Zatanna I would try to explore that. She would still be a stage magician plus superhero. The public knows she has powers but they don't know exactly how powerful. Some think she only has minor powers and is faking the rest while others think that every thing she does is magic. My take on Zatanna would have her serve as the bridge between the magical and the human world. When she is not on tour she would travel from one place to another, responding to people's calls about supposed supernatural problems. Sometimes the threats are real but a lot of other times, they turns out to be hoax, people seeing monsters and ghosts everywhere because they already live in a world where they exist. For villains, there would be the requisite 'world ending magical threats', I would use some of the bad guys that were created for her like Druid and the Walrock of Ys from Zatanna's Search as well as Brother Night from Dini's run and also Klarion but Allura must be her archnemsis. There are also two Flash villains whom I think would make for an interesting Zatanna villains: Abra Kadara and Dr Alchemist. The former is a 64th century villain who uses technology to pretend to be
magic but he's also been powered by real magic as well. He is unstable and has a nasty streak. The latter is an unstable genius who uses alchemy to manipulate objects.
However, one villain archetype I would love to explore would be that of a fake mystic who tricks people into thinking that he is a real magician. He would con people out of their money by claiming that he can talk to the dead for them or selling them junk like healing crystals that don't work. Zee, at first would think that she can just expose him for the charlatan he is but then realizes that she can't change the minds of people who don't want to believe he's wrong. He would be well connected to media moguls and in he takes advantage of Zee's attempts to discredit him by ruining her reputation instead by clever use of misdirection and misinformation. This would put her in a tough spot where she can't solve the problem with magic, has to salvage her reputation and stop the guy before he can do real damage. It would be also be a nice change of pace from another powerful magical who poses as existential level threat to the goody guys.