Hex and the city

[superboyprime]

Zatanna #12 is a celebration of the beauty of symmetry, in more ways than one.





The culprit is a new character named Backslash, who wields a magic sword that can press "rewind" on time.



She tries to take him on with her fists (remember: Zee has a red belt in Martian kung fu!), but it's unsuccessful, and she winds up tied up. Finally, she stumbles onto how to cast spells this guy can't affect. "Dage! On Egadnob!" she yells.

Comments

[lieut_kettch]

So why doesn't she speak, "words forward, sentence backward" and have the guy cast her spell for her? Y'now, like "Duck Season! Wabbit Season! Duck Season! Wabbit Season! Wabbit Season! Duck Season! FIRE!"

[shadowpsykie]

teehee this made me giggle, maybe she is not a bugs bunny fan

[aaron_bourque]

Because that doesn't work in Dramatic Encounters(tm)!

[funbox]

Just waiting till she asks for the racecar... :]

[midnightvoyager]

Taco cat!

[superfangirl1]

Zing.

But it be hilarious if spell come out wrong. :P

[bariman]

A man, a plan, a canal -- Panama!

[dr_archeville]

Rats live on no Evil Star!

[zenbro]

Solo gigolos!
Spit Q-tips!
Party booby trap!
Kayak salad Alaska yak!
Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas!

[kirayoshi]

I, Madam, I made Radio! So I dared. Am I mad? Am I?

[lieut_kettch]

Will it be A Toyota?

[shadowpsykie]

ooooh, i love that a hero has san fran as their base :D

[icon_uk]

Hasn't done the Teen Titans much good...

[espanolbot]

They do also have Jack Knight and his family living there, but he's retired and running an art gallery now or something.

Except for that cameo in the first issue of Amazonz Attack that sort of looked like him, but wasn't confirmed as such (he and his son were looking at the Lincoln Memorial, and they were chopped up by one of the invading Amazons).

[retro_nouveau]

Motto. (a) It's a city we have on this alternate earth, (b) it's got a lot of cool history and landmarks, and (c) it's not on the northeastern U.S. coast, where 99% of DC and Marvel people are based. She seems more needed (almost more appropriate?) in Vegas to me, but yay.

[polarisnorth]

I love this art. It really fits with the story, I think.

[jlroberson]

Oh, don't. Just don't make me miss SF. That's cruel.

I think I should check this out. Thanks.

[batman]

The rest of the title is ... not this good.

I liked the issue with Zachary Zatara, but only for Zachary. Thus far Dini doesn't seem to get that sometimes Zatanna has to be a proactive hero for a change, rather than purely reacting to someone putting the whammy on her.

[arbre_rieur]

This issue wasn't by Dini. It's a fill-in by Matthew Sturges.

[batman]

Yeah, I know. This issue was good! But the rest haven't been and I wouldn't want anyone to think that this issue was typical of the quality of the title.

[mrstatham]

DC as a company hasn't got the concept of 'proactive' heroes since Joe Kelly did Justice League Elite, though. They think proactive means going around torturing supervillains as opposed to stopping the worst ones before a crime happens.

But then, how exactly do you write a proactive hero? There's a slippery slope already as a vigilante, and moreso if they go around attacking people who haven't particularly done anything yet.

Unless in terms of proactive you mean that she should be going out and having adventures anyway, but that doesn't really seem Dini's style, either. I still don't think he's the best person for writing Zee - I'd much rather have Morrison or someone who could be really imaginative with her power set and supporting characters, as opposed to Dini, who has been fun enough, from the look of things, but not amazingly imaginative.

[batman]

The issue I have with Zee's book at the moment is not just that it's uncreative, but that it's kind of ... a really weird insight into Dini's mind? Every story follows the same arc of "Zee is captured by a villain and then put into some kind of humiliating and degrading situation and sometimes saves herself but nowhere near as often as someone in her class of magic should be saving herself".

I feel that Zee lacks agency and that Dini really needs to stop humiliating and degrading her every single issue. It's not compelling and borders on kind of creepy.

I'd like to see an arc where Zee isn't trying to fight back from being put into things like turned into a puppet for two issues and instead having her actually be the magical powerhouse she's meant to be.

[mrstatham]

Given Dini's actually married to Zee - Or as close as, really - it makes it even more creepy when he puts her into these situations, frankly. But I do wonder why he can't really emulate the same feel as some of his Batman stories in here - They were really solid done-in-one stories that just worked so well, and really showed the grasp he had of the character.

Like I say, Dini could stand to take a few pages from Morrison's book, really. Big fights in a magical shop, taking on Zor the rogue Time Tailor, that stuff was great. And she didn't really seem ridiculously put in peril by someone way below her weight class.

[jarodrussell]

I feel that Zee lacks agency and that Dini really needs to stop humiliating and degrading her every single issue.

Pretty much this. I dropped Z's book back with issue #7 (stopped reading at #5), because it's a very dull book. And you know, I like scenes where Zatanna put into peril, tied to things, etc., but...if I want just that I can wait for someone to post scans online.

Books like Zatanna make me feel that comics exist solely because there's a large enough group of people that aren't comfortable enough with their fetishes to buy super-hero porn. Instead they buy books like this for the potential porn-like scenarios.

And, you know, the first issue of the book was really cool. It felt like Zatanna: CSI or something. Very dense, very smart, not unlike JL:Elite or Dixon's Birds of Prey felt...a super-hero book in procedural drag. Then, I dunno, poof.

[jlbarnett]

the best way to write a proactive hero, IMO, is one I've never seen. You'd need a detective type character(s) investigating, searching for known wanted super-criminals. He wouldn't have to be trying to suss out plans, just find locations and hideouts. Then he'd inform a strikeforce who'd go in and subdue them based on previous crimes.

[mrstatham]

Mm. The pro-active hero problem is that usually they're like ones Hal and Ollie put together for Cry for Justice - Which completely missed the point and went over the line in terms of morality, really, and the worst part is that Robinson seemed to think that was okay.

What you propose still has that dubious morality thing, to a degree, but it still works better than "I'mma interrogate a guy by bouncing around IN HIS BRAIN in a dubious recreation of the death of my best friend's wife".

[jlbarnett]

I don't quite see the dubious morality you mention

[kenn_el]

Have you ever read the Inza Doctor Fate series? Excellent example of proactive magickal superheroing. Zee could do well with that style, IMO.

[redkingcrab]

So this entire issue was just an elaborate setup for Zatanna to speak in palindromes? AND there's bondage in it? Sold.

[jarodrussell]

So she can cast spells that are palindromes! That's exciting to finally find that out, because I always hypothesized that palindromes were her Kryptonite given that her weakness was a "gag".

I love being wrong. :-)

[jarodrussell]

Also, is it just me, or does Backlash's sword handle look sort of familiar?

[icon_uk]

Looks more like someone cut his telephone's cord to me.

[mullon]

San Andreas has affected how I will view San Francisco forever.

[braisinhussy]

We do have some damn good taquerias.

[zenbro]

And what a nice shout-out in that panel for the Taqueria Cancun.

Dammit. I miss SF now AND I'm hungry.

[sadoeuphemist]

Wait, this doesn't actually work, does it? "Dage! On Egadnob!" backwards would be "Bondage no egad." The problem is she reverses each word individually, but keeps each word in the same position within the sentence, so it ceases to be a palindrome.

[sadoeuphemist]

What she'd have to do is use very specific palindromes, composed of individual palindromic words, or semordnilaps, which is a thing I didn't know existed until now. Like, if she wanted an evil entity brought to her alive, she could say "Evil reviled a deliver live." Backwards or forwards it comes out the same, but if you reverse each word individually, you get "Live deliver a reviled evil," which is what the spell actually does.

I still can't figure out how to get her out of those ropes, though.

[superboyprime]

My bad. She actually just said, "Egad! No bondage!" Like in the "nurses run" panel, she's saying the regular palindrome. Which still is odd, granted, seeing as how her spells usually, like you said, don't reverse word order. But there's been enough inconsistency on that to give a little leeway, I guess.

[espanolbot]

Hm, I guess SanFran being the most magical city in America kind of works. Would explain why the Endless were hanging around there in order to take part in their bet over the life of Emperor Norton anyways.

Also something similar was said in the ancient cartoon called Mummies Alive!, which connected San Francisco with Egyptian mythology due to it being the Western-most point in the ancient (Egypt-centric) world, as well as being the world of the setting sun and stuff.

[joeyconqueso]

Someone else remembers Mummies Alive ?

[mrosa]

The palindromes are funny; I like it when the heroes pull stunts like this - it all feels very Silver Age, when they used brains instead of muscles.