Zatanna #13 – Review

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

The Story: Beware, Zee—you’re coming dangerously close to becoming a crazy cat lady.

The Review: DC has quite a lot of iconic characters, many of whom have some kind of hold on our public consciousness even if you’ve never read a comic.  But the true test of a character’s popularity comes out when they have to carry their own title.  Many of the great DC superheroes couldn’t make it—just look at Aquaman’s on-off solo career.  What determines the longevity of these titles is often not just the star him/herself; it’s also the strength of the supporting cast.

Besides her namesake father and cousin, Zatanna has no closely associated characters of her own, so Dini’s had to build her cast from the ground up.  Despite the multiple appearances of stagehand Mikey and Detective Dale Colton, you still have little to no idea who these people are, or where their association with Zee comes from.  Colton has particularly been a mystery with his inexplicable affinity for handling occult matters.

Dini finally makes a thorough effort to clear out some cobwebs from Colton’s history, which smartly ties into his strict watch over Brother Night.  The truth about the detective’s origins certainly has a suitably sordid flavor, not the least of which involving his mother’s mad ravings and behavior.  But how these revelations will develop his character in the long-term, or flesh out his role in this series—those questions remain open-ended.

Speaking of Brother Night, Dini also takes some pains to pump up his street cred as Zatanna’s first ongoing villain.  Since their early encounters mostly involved Zee dismissing his various lackeys, and most of his power originated from a much bigger demonic source, it was easy to classify him as an overblown thug.  But the ease with which he sways his fellow prisoners (and others) to his bidding, and the dark magicks he uses to break out (ladder of human bones—sick) indicates he may be much more competent a foe for Zatanna this time around.

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.