Zatanna #16 – Review

By: Adam Beechen (writer), Victor Ibáñez (artist), Ego (colorist)

The Story: What’s a girl got to do to get some freakin’ sleep around here?

The Review: I notice there’s been a recent uptick in the number of reviews where I discuss common story formulas and plot devices, which seem to be on the swell in DC lately.  It makes a fair bit of sense.  With most of the creative energies flowing into the upcoming relaunch (ten days and counting!), and the majority of titles spending their remaining issues on fill-in one-shots, you can’t exactly expect boat-rocking narratives or ideas.

Here we have another old plot structure: a character wants something, and things get in her way.  In Zatanna’s case, all she wants is something most of us working/studying stiffs can identify with: some good ol’ shut-eye—whatever that is.  In a way, the premise highlights a fairly significant logistical question in the world of comics: when do heroes sleep?  They work all day in their secret identities, and most of them operate as vigilantes at night.  That’s no way to live.

But Zee, like many of us, makes a determined attempted to have it all, even in spite of the antics from a certain teal-skinned lad from Limbo Town.  Of course I mean Uriah, smooth-talking peer to the more famous Limbonite, Klarion the Witch Boy.  Aside the absence of a feline familiar, Uriah serves as a pretty close analogue to Klarion: both are young, unnaturally eloquent lads of bratty disposition, who use their formidable magic to get what they want any way they can.

Uriah’s powers also prevents Zee from putting how down too easily as he worms his way into Shadowcrest under false pretenses, then proceeds to punk “one of the seven or eight most important magical items in any universe” from her tremendous library.  Thus ensues a chase across weird worlds, strange lands, and parallel dimensions, offering us a mere glimpse of the extraordinary life Zatanna must live on a daily basis.