Zatanna Zatara: Mistress of Magic Appreciation 2021

[John Venus]

All of this so Constantine can show up and look cool, oh and she kisses him again:

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You can see how this book became the basis of how she was depicted in JLD. Characterization and power wise, it was a step down from how she was depicted in the JL books prior and even how she would later end up being depicted in Dini's Everyday Magic and Morrison's Seven Soldiers.

[Frontier]

What this is telling me that Zee is at her best when she's not in a book with Constantine .

[Gaius]

Aaron Lopresti

[Edwin30]

Batman and Constantine are her two main love interests. None of the two are good for her.

She needs to be paired up with a civilian like Jeff Sloane.
Too many times I've seen Zee be utilized like a kissing booth by other heroes and I'm fed up with it.

[Frontier]

Batman and Constantine are her two main love interests. None of the two are good for her.

She needs to be paired up with a civilian like Jeff Sloane.
Too many times I've seen Zee be utilized like a kissing booth by other heroes and I'm fed up with it.

She needs a good guy without deep-seated emotional issues.

[John Venus]

I would say Constantine's now outpaced Batman as her love interest at this point. IMO, it's around John that she takes the biggest drops in IQ, competency and agency.

I don't mind her and Batman's childhood friendship and Bruce training with Zatara so long as they aren't pining for each other in the present. The relationship highlighted the fact that the Zataras were more than their powers and they had actual talent at sleight-of-hand and escape artistry as well.

I like Dale Colton as a possible love interest. Though, I admit, that's only because Dale looks more modern and conventionally handsome while Jeff Sloan looks like a sleazy 70's porn star.

By far, the most interesting chemistry is the one between the Wonder Woman and Zatanna. Maybe they can pull a Korra/Asami and should just hook up with each other.

I agree though that the writers need to stop pairing her with the male character she's in the closest proximity to.

[Mai Zen]

All of this so Constantine can show up and look cool, oh and she kisses him again:

010.jpg

011.jpg

012.jpg

You can see how this book became the basis of how she was depicted in JLD. Characterization and power wise, it was a step down from how she was depicted in the JL books prior and even how she would later end up being depicted in Dini's Everyday Magic and Morrison's Seven Soldiers.

I think Dini's Everyday Magic and Morrison's Seven Soldiers is counterpoints of Moore depiction of Zatanna and John Constantine. In Everyday Magic, it's John Constantine seeking help from Zatanna to lift the curse. Zee is active there and saving John from Ravensong and that one demon. Oh also this panel is pretty good
RCO004_1484012650 (1).jpg

I once read that Grant Morrison take a jab to Moore at his Zatanna Seven Soldiers. Heard Grant Morrison has a lot of beefs with Alan Moore. Like when Misty Kilgore complimenting Zatanna “I love the way you write about magic. It’s so like, down-to-earth and non-preachy.” Or direct reference of Moore Promethea authentic view of Ideaspace when Zatanna taking her squad to magic realm at first issue.

Here I found some interesting articles
https://www.google.com/amp/s/tractor...ce-things/amp/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/them0vi...ospective/amp/

[DrNewGod]

Batman and Constantine are her two main love interests. None of the two are good for her.

She needs to be paired up with a civilian like Jeff Sloane.
Too many times I've seen Zee be utilized like a kissing booth by other heroes and I'm fed up with it.

Hear ****ing hear!

[Rac7d*]

Batman and Constantine are her two main love interests. None of the two are good for her.

She needs to be paired up with a civilian like Jeff Sloane.
Too many times I've seen Zee be utilized like a kissing booth by other heroes and I'm fed up with it.

Is Batman anyone love aside from Selina and his baby mama talia
It’s
Mostly Constantine she is associated with

[DrNewGod]

...Too many times I've seen Zee be utilized like a kissing booth by other heroes and I'm fed up with it.

You know, it begs the question, "Why Z?" It would be easy to write it off to Z being such a sexy character that writers inherently want to give a percentage of the audience a (creepily) vicarious thrill.

Why didn't that happen with a bunch of other She-Heroes, who also have eye-popping qualities?

I can see writers hesitating to taking that road with Wonder Woman, as it gets sideways with the character's core. With Black Canary, I can see that her long association with Green Arrow maybe steers writers off that course. But Elasti-Girl, Vixen, Raven, etc. Why does GFing Z to superheroes seem to be such a thing?

[Edwin30]

I would say Constantine's now outpaced Batman as her love interest at this point. IMO, it's around John that she takes the biggest drops in IQ, competency and agency.

I don't mind her and Batman's childhood friendship and Bruce training with Zatara so long as they aren't pining for each other in the present. The relationship highlighted the fact that the Zataras were more than their powers and they had actual talent at sleight-of-hand and escape artistry as well.

I like Dale Colton as a possible love interest. Though, I admit, that's only because Dale looks more modern and conventionally handsome while Jeff Sloan looks like a sleazy 70's porn star.

By far, the most interesting chemistry is the one between the Wonder Woman and Zatanna. Maybe they can pull a Korra/Asami and should just hook up with each other.

I agree though that the writers need to stop pairing her with the male character she's in the closest proximity to.

Wonder woman is good but I don't see that working. Ww's writers might wanna pair her up with other people. A relationship with any major hero/heroine is bound to fail because they all have much richer history with their own supporting characters.

I'm more interested in Jeff Sloane than Dale Colton. When jeff was her boyfriend/manager I found it really cute how much he wanted Zatanna to love him. He had no powers, was clumsy and made the worst dad jokes but it's exactly what made him so lovable.
Nothing about him was great but Zee loved him when she could have got anyone. That's what I found most important about their relationship.

[Gaius]

I would say Constantine's now outpaced Batman as her love interest at this point. IMO, it's around John that she takes the biggest drops in IQ, competency and agency.

I don't mind her and Batman's childhood friendship and Bruce training with Zatara so long as they aren't pining for each other in the present. The relationship highlighted the fact that the Zataras were more than their powers and they had actual talent at sleight-of-hand and escape artistry as well.

I like Dale Colton as a possible love interest. Though, I admit, that's only because Dale looks more modern and conventionally handsome while Jeff Sloan looks like a sleazy 70's porn star.

By far, the most interesting chemistry is the one between the Wonder Woman and Zatanna. Maybe they can pull a Korra/Asami and should just hook up with each other.

I agree though that the writers need to stop pairing her with the male character she's in the closest proximity to.

I wouldn't really see them in a relationship but JLD and other stuff definitely makes me have it Diana/Zee would be each other's main friends outsider their own respective franchises.

[I'm a Fish]

I wouldn't really see them in a relationship but JLD and other stuff definitely makes me have it Diana/Zee would be each other's main friends outsider their own respective franchises.

Zee holding Diana's hand as Diana was fighting off Hecate's influence in The Witching Hour put them on my "these two need to become an iconic comics friendship" list.

[Edwin30]

I think the next writer for Zatanna can play with the idea that magic is not so rare as people think.
Zatanna never had a secret identity. So its obvious that people know she has real powers.
Make her deal with the difficulties of not having a secret identity and the advantages of working with the people/ police/ government etc.

There's a scene in Dini's run that I really like. Zachary finds out that Zee earns a lot for her shows. He's furious that he had to pay the bill for repairing Zee's car which he had drunkenly wrecked one day. He argued that she could have easily used magic to repair her car but instead she had a shop fix it and send the bill to him.

Zachary can't use his magic to make money appear because that would be stealing from someone.
He can use his magic to earn money like transporting cargo but I think their might be a government agency that looks into this sort of stuff and prevents people from using magic so that there is a healthy competitive market.

So the only way to pay the bills would be to work as a magician. This would actually be a nice way to ground/ put some rules on these magical characters. Just because they have magic powers doesn't mean life should be easy for them. Just make the general population acknowledge that magic is real and have rules for when and where magic can used.

[John Venus]

I think Dini's Everyday Magic and Morrison's Seven Soldiers is counterpoints of Moore depiction of Zatanna and John Constantine. In Everyday Magic, it's John Constantine seeking help from Zatanna to lift the curse. Zee is active there and saving John from Ravensong and that one demon. Oh also this panel is pretty good
RCO004_1484012650 (1).jpg

I once read that Grant Morrison take a jab to Moore at his Zatanna Seven Soldiers. Heard Grant Morrison has a lot of beefs with Alan Moore. Like when Misty Kilgore complimenting Zatanna “I love the way you write about magic. It’s so like, down-to-earth and non-preachy.” Or direct reference of Moore Promethea authentic view of Ideaspace when Zatanna taking her squad to magic realm at first issue.

Here I found some interesting articles
https://www.google.com/amp/s/tractor...ce-things/amp/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/them0vi...ospective/amp/

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.

Is Batman anyone love aside from Selina and his baby mama talia
It’s
Mostly Constantine she is associated with

There were some comics Pre-Nu 52 that explored the sexual tension between Batman and Zatanna but in this decade, it's definitely Constantine.

Wonder woman is good but I don't see that working. Ww's writers might wanna pair her up with other people. A relationship with any major hero/heroine is bound to fail because they all have much richer history with their own supporting characters.

I'm more interested in Jeff Sloane than Dale Colton. When jeff was her boyfriend/manager I found it really cute how much he wanted Zatanna to love him. He had no powers, was clumsy and made the worst dad jokes but it's exactly what made him so lovable.
Nothing about him was great but Zee loved him when she could have got anyone. That's what I found most important about their relationship.

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'.

I think the next writer for Zatanna can play with the idea that magic is not so rare as people think.
Zatanna never had a secret identity. So its obvious that people know she has real powers.
Make her deal with the difficulties of not having a secret identity and the advantages of working with the people/ police/ government etc.

There's a scene in Dini's run that I really like. Zachary finds out that Zee earns a lot for her shows. He's furious that he had to pay the bill for repairing Zee's car which he had drunkenly wrecked one day. He argued that she could have easily used magic to repair her car but instead she had a shop fix it and send the bill to him.

Zachary can't use his magic to make money appear because that would be stealing from someone.
He can use his magic to earn money like transporting cargo but I think their might be a government agency that looks into this sort of stuff and prevents people from using magic so that there is a healthy competitive market.

So the only way to pay the bills would be to work as a magician. This would actually be a nice way to ground/ put some rules on these magical characters. Just because they have magic powers doesn't mean life should be easy for them. Just make the general population acknowledge that magic is real and have rules for when and where magic can used.

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.