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johnvenus · 3 years ago

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How YJ & JL Dark Dropped The Ball With Zatanna (Part 3/5)

Welcome to Part 3 of the post wherein I recap Zatanna’s character in DC comics to compare it with her depiction in JLD and YJ.

Part One: Zatanna’s Search and early JL appearances

https://johnvenus.tumblr.com/post/679908146955862016/how-yj-jldark-dropped-the-ball-with-zatanna

Part Two: Sindella’s Story https://johnvenus.tumblr.com/post/679908715915313152/how-yj-jldark-dropped-the-ball-with-zatanna

Part Three: Zatanna’s new look, becoming chairwoman, meeting Raven and losing her powers:

By George Perez

The New Look

The next major development for Zatanna happened in JLA #185 written by Gerry Conway with art by the incomparable George Perez.

The story begins with Barry Allen pondering his life, he’s been through hell in his own title where Iris is dead, so much has changed in his life and he is starting to hit an early mid life crisis.

He is talking to Zatanna about it on the Watchtower when the latter has an epiphany:

Its interesting that Barry is the one who inspires Zatanna to create her own costume especially since legacy is so intrinsic to the Flash Family as well as the Zatara’s. I know people make fun of the ‘snake head’ costume that Perez designed but I like it, primarily for the reason why she wore it; she wanted her own identity and not something that defines her by her parents.

I think the costume, like Perez’s other costumes such as Nightwing and Troia’s, suffers from having too many details and elements. I like the kimono sleeves, the headdress could be a reference to Sindella and the white cape, I could do without the thigh highs or head dress thing extending all the way to the back of her ears. Ivan Reis took a stab at re designing it but I don’t think it hit the mark. I would like to see another artist take a pass at it.

Also, yes, this would be the real beginning of a romantic subplot between her and Barry Allen. Iris was presumed dead in Barry’s own title during this period and Barry himself is going through a rough patch. Her taking his cowl and the next panel cutting to the kitchen ware is deliberately meant to be suggestive. However, in the very same issue we are told that they just ‘talked’ all night. This was the early 80′s when comics were still experimenting with mature topics. Even in the mid 80′s Dick and Starfire being in shown in bed together before marriage was considered controversial.

Still, for two people who just ‘talked’ all night, they sure are awkward about it to the point where even the other Leaguer’s notice:

Source: JLA #190

Side note: I miss when Barry was defined as a thoughtful scientist and not a crybaby who breaks the timeline every time he misses his mommy.

We still see her stage outfit when she gets a feature in Worlds Finest #274 written by Gerry Conway with art by Don Newton:

Her stage outfit is for performing by paying tribute to her father and her Perez costume represents her own self. This is honestly, how I prefer it to be done.

Raven

1980 also saw the introduction of Marv Wolfman and George Perez's New Teen Titans. A fantastic relaunch of the title that would come to define the team for the next several years. The introduction arc involves Raven seeking out help to stop her father Trigon. She goes to the League first and unlike what the interwebs would have you believe, Zee wasn't hostile to Raven nor does she have any prejudice against demons, she simply warned them because she could sense Trigon’s evil within Raven. This was their fist meeting and they don’t know anything about Raven at that point:

Source: New Teen Titans #5

Later, Raven gathers members of the New Teen Titan to help fight Trigon. We get a brief clash between the JL and the Titans though since this is a Titans, it's them who gets to tell off the League:

You can see Zee is on the adult side.

She is also the one who reveals that Raven had put a spell on Wally West making her fall in love with Raven so he would agree to come along to help:

Source: New Teen Titans #4

This reveal would have repercussions for years and Wally's connection to Raven would be a defining point during his time with the NTT (vol1) even carrying over to NTT Vol 2.

Raven and Zatanna didn't have much interaction after that but they were seen chatting during one of the rare get-togethers between the League and the Titans:

Source: Action Comics #546.

Also with Zatanna on the League, Raven on Titans, Dr Fate on the JSA and Dr Mist on the Global Guardians, everything feels so well balanced especially compared to today. I think magic characters work best on teams where they are the only magic users there.

Losing Her Powers

-JLA #190 (1981) features the return of Starro, Zee's powers start to go on the fritz once the League figures out Starro’s weakness is getting frozen, Zatanna whips up the spells that takes him out:

In the following issue (JLA #191) Zee realizes her powers have begun to fade away and interestingly enough, the first person she confides in with is Ray. Note that her father is still alive and out of everybody she’s interacted with thus far (Barry, Hal, Ralph, Katar, Shayera, DInah, Ollie, J’onn) she chose Ray.

Though she is not the only person whose powers are fading, the other Leaguer's are facing the same problem.

Barry asks Zatanna why she didn’t come to him since he is a ‘practical scientist’ while Ray is theoretical to which Zee cites that they have a confused relationship right now and she didn’t think it was a good idea. (Also, uhh, Barry, you may be smarter than the average police scientist but Ray is a Professor, unless it has to do with the Speed Force or a crime scene, Ray is the best option out of the two of you.)

The villain of the piece are the Key and Amazo. The latter is able to draw upon the ‘life energy’ of the League to replicate his powers. Key is trapped in a degenrative dwarf state and he is using the energy that Amazo steals to restore his body to it’s normal state

The League manages to find the HQ of Key and Amazo. This leads to a fight with Amazo and the League who all have half of their actual abilities.

We get a couple of cool moments of Zee relying on something besides magic to help herself:

The rest of JL (with their fading powers) take on Amazo and starts to get the upper hand, not realizing they were putting Key's life in danger. Zee is the first one to realize this, so she gives him a small portion of her life span so the Key won't die and so he won't threaten the JL anymore.

Sadly, this plot point won't ever be referenced again. And yeah, this is a very selfless act on her part. Also lol at the Key turning into a Zatanna simp at the end.

I miss the Zee/Ray Palmer friendship. I think the only time it's been referenced in modern comics was in Joe Kelly's JLA run during the 'Obsidian Age' story arc.

Also, I know most people associate Ray with Brandon Routh but I’ve always heard John C McGinnely who voiced him on JLU and is best known for playing Dr Cox on Scrubs.

If you're still scrolling through this post and wondering 'wow, there is a lot of and Constantine hasn't even shown up!' that's kind of my point, Zatanna has along extensive history beyond Constantine and it's sad that we get to see so little of it nowadays.

Teaming Up With Wonder Woman

Of course, Zee still had to get adjusted to her new powerset which leads to this moment in JLA #202:

I can’t help but crack up at this scene. Zatanna freaking out over accidentally hurting WW and the latter reassuring her by punching through a steel beam. Yeah, if my female friends had superpowers they would probably do something like this too.

This was a bonkers issue where Batman was on a routine space walk to fix the space satellite when a malfunction caused an explosion that sent him hurtling into space and created a hole in the League satellite that nearly sucked Hawkman into space (which you see WW and Zee fixing above).

WW, Zatanna, Hawkman and Red Tornado set out to rescue Batman whose been taken in by alien spaceship that’s been cloaked and hiding behind the sun since the Ice Age.

Wonder Woman takes more of a leadership role here and the League even have battle plans:

The ship was sent from an alien planet rescue an injured explorer in stasis. It found Batman instead and turned him into this:

Anyway, Hawkman manages to subdue Furry werewolf Batman (or should I say Batsaad?) and the fully automated alien space ship manages to restore him to normal. He wakes up back on the Watchtower and is none the wiser to what happened to him.

Do you think the League ever joke among each other about the time Batman got turned into a furry space werewolf when Batman is going through his more dickish phases?

The story ends Hawkman sending the alien ship to the real location of the explorer-in-stasis and I don’t think anybody has every written a follow up to this.

In the same year (1982), we got a much grander team up in Wonder Woman's own title in WW Vol 1 #291-293 titled 'Judgement In Infinity' written by Paul Levitz and Roy Thomas with art by Gene Colan. The story featured a cosmic being named the Adjudicator who travels to various worlds to judge their worthiness and wipe them out with but a thought if they aren’t. But he is confused about earth since it is at it’s peak but hasn’t destroyed itself yet. So decides to put not just E-1 (where the JL are) to test but also Earth 2, Earth X and Earth -I by sending his Four Horsemen; Death, Famine, Plague and War to judge which earth is worthy enough to survive.

The story line also drew in not just Zatanna but also Madame Xanadu, Supergirl, Phantom Lady (from Earth X), Black Canary, Huntress, Power Girl, Donna Troy, Starfire and Raven as well. Each story involved a different set of heroines teaming up to face one of the 4 Horsemen on one of the earths that's been put to test.

The first story teams up Wonder Woman and Zatanna against Famine in India on Earth 1.

Source: Wonder Woman Vol 1 #291

The second story shows Black Canary, Power Girl and Huntress fights Plague on Earth 2. The third story features Supergirl and Madame Xanadu teaming up with the Phantom Lady of the war torn Earth X fighting against war. The fourth story features Donna, Raven and Starfire fighting Death.

It all culminates with all the heroines (though mainly WW) fighting the Adjudicator aboard his own ship where Diana realizes that the Adjudicator is not some cosmic judge but the cosmic equivalent of a child playing with various worlds for fun and to keep him from harming himself. The heroines manage to escape just in time before the Adjudicator is picked up by his cosmic overseers.

Source: Wonder Woman #293

All in all, it's a cool cross over and it does not have the cliche 'Girls Night Out' moniker or a subplot involving all the men getting taken out so the women have to take over which, while well intention ed, always felt vaguely patronizing. No, this is just a cool crossover that just happens to feature female superheroes.

Zatanna becomes Chairwoman + Conclusion of Her Romance With Barry

In JLA #206 written by Gerry Conway with art by Carmine Infantino (who is once again flexing on his art skills), Zee is elected as chairperson of the League with WW, Batman, Flash and Elongated Man congratulating her:

Woah, there Ralph. We also get the conclusion of the romantic subplot with Barry:

Settle down, Ralph. I like when he was written as a mentor not a perv.

The story itself is actually flashback narrated by a father to a son in the 25th century. The villains of the piece are the Demon's Three who fought the JL way before Zatanna joined.

The League members take on the Demons Three, now more powerful than ever but they’re prepared and each League member gets picked off one by one leading to:

After Batman is taken out, Zee goes all out attacking the Demons Three but when the dust is settled:

Overall, this is a much better showing against the Demons Three than the one she got in JLD Vol1. The way magic is depicted is consistent with how Conway has depicted it thus far; magic is an energy, all magic is connected and in balance and its law is similar to the law of thermodynamics.

At the end of the story, when the son, Gardner (named after writer Gardner Fox) asks his father how he knows all these details, he replies that one of the heroes in the story was an ancestor of his. Huh, interesting. I wonder which one could it be?

Still, despite all this development, Zee still doesn't have an ongoing. Even Firestorm got one in 1982 while Zatanna only got a back up feature in World's Finest (from #276-278). Although TBF, WF was basically an anthology title during this period. Hawkman, Green Arrow and even Swamp Thing had back up features in WF as well. Her father also had a feature in World’s Finest back in the 50′s.

The most notable story is from World’s Finest #276-277 in which Zatanna has to fight an evil doppleganger of herself in order to regain the power she lost in JLA #190-191. The story also showed us that she still wore the classic stage magician costume while performing on stage and also featured the return of her stage manager love interest, Jeffery Sloan. Aside from him, we also meet Blackwall, a normal human who uses stage tricks whom earlier in the story reminded Zee that misdirection is useful even applied to real danger. She would use that to trick her evil doppleganger and gain back the power she lost.

Back to JLoA, Zee being chairwoman is brought up a couple of times, in JLA #207 where we can see that even Superman is adorably respectful of her status:

In JLA #217, we see her advising Superman when they were dealing with a mystical threat:

And in #219 afterwards, we see her acting more like a mentor, which usually involves going ‘Firestorm! No!”:

She also guest stared in Blue Devil #4 and #5 and later #13. Dan Cassidy is a stuntman who was cursed by an actual demon to be trapped in his own blue devil stunt suit. After a team up with Superman the latter takes him to the Watchtower to consult with Zatanna.

At this point, Zatanna has surpassed her father and cemented herself as the go-to person for magical problems. She also summons Zatara’s ‘Book of Magic’ from her father’s mansion (which I don’t think we’ve seen since Zatanna’s Search ended) to better understand Dan’s condition.

Unfortunately, even for her, reversing Dan’s curse is difficult. Still she helps him better understand his condition, they team up to fight a bad guy, oh and there is romantic tension between the two:

Out of all her romantic options, I like Blue Devil the best. He is in the entertainment business just like her. They are both inherently light hearted characters whose stories can be as light and dark as necessary. Plus they compliment each other; Dan is a physical fight with a power staff who is more likely to throw a punch while Zatanna is a mage and glass canon who fights from a distance and can fill Dan in on stuff he doesn’t know.

Finally, one notable JLA stories in which Zatanna plays a pivotal role is in JLA #225-227 written by Joey Cavalieri with art by Chuck Patton in which we see the League take on the Cult of Fialtux; an illumanti like organization with members scattered around the globe and built around the worship of Hellrazer. The latter is described as a ‘demon that not even hell could contain’. How cool is that?

The story opens with Ray Palmer having to stop some thieves at his university and of course. Which brings him to the Watchtower. Zatanna is shown to recognize the Cult:

The quartet goes to one of the cult’s church’s where they are attacked by the followers.

We get some cool action scenes with Zee, Hawkgirl, Black Canary and Green Arrow which I unfortunately have to cut since I don’t want to end up posting the whole comic. But I swear, this and other instances on Black Canary and Zatanna must have been what inspired Paul Dini to write the two in ‘Zatanna/Black Canary: Bloodspell’.

They quickly make their way to the place where one of the cult leaders are communicating with Hellrazer which leads us to:

Source: JLA #225

Zatanna ends up getting dragged into another dimension by Hellrazer. We get a cool scene of Black Canary, Hawkgirl and GA deciding to follow her into the portal.

They eventually find her but unbeknownst to them, she’s been possessed by Hellrazer. Meanwhile, the remainder of the League are traveling around the globe taking down the other cult leaders until only one location is left.

Back at the Perdition dimension, we see Shayera reflecting on the differences between her and Zatanna:

Source: JLA #227

Back then, both Shayera and Katar were depicted as scientists more than warriors. The 2001 JLU cartoon would portray her as a hot tempered warrior and while I love that version of Shayera as well, I think my ideal Shayera would be a balance of the Noble Warrior and scientist.

The quartet makes it to the location where the remainder of the League are fighting the final cult leader. Hellrazer frees himself from Zatanna’s body and the scale of the fight gets considerably bigger.

We also finally get a mention of her father, after a long time:

Add Hellrazer to the list of villains Zatanna fought that I would love to see brought back. I also love that we now have a recurring theme of the League just stepping back letting Zatanna save the day.

#228-230 isn't a Zee centric but it is a pivotal story for the JLA which I recommend checking out; it features the return of Martian Manhunter who has come to warn earth and the League of an invasion by his own people. The most notable fallout of this story arc would be the destruction of the Watchtower, Aquaman disbanding the JL in JLA Annual #2 and J'onn becoming an exile from his own planet. In many ways, this story arc was the precursor to the JLU episodes 'Secret Origins' as well as Starcrossed'.

I will mention again that I will do individual posts for the stories mentioned here. Consider this a condensed version of the ground I am going to cover.

Next up: Justice League Detroit, Vixen, John Zatara’s Death, Zatanna’s final story arc in JLA Vol 1 and Madame Xanadu.

Part 4: https://johnvenus.tumblr.com/post/679910087824916480/how-yj-and-jld-dropped-the-ball-with-zatanna-45

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