Zatanna: Pupaphobia (part four of four)

[espanolbot]

Previous part,
http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/4899911.html

Several months later...



Back at the Museum of Magic again, Oscar finishes his performance for some kids visiting the place, and is thanked by the curator for donating some more of his puppets for their exhibition... including "Miss Zee Zee". The curator asks whether he really wants to donate such a new and (as he mentioned) precious puppet so soon after his return, Oscar says that she was the puppet that got him out of retirement, and be wants to move onto other things as he expands his act.

But not for the moment, he intends to have a proper send off for her later that evening, after which he's got a bag full of magical items he looted from Zatanna's house at his disposal. After all, he's got a lifetime to figure out how to use them now.

This proves too much for Zee, who, the prospect of an eternity trapped in a glass case ahead of her, manages to get the willpower together to cast a spell in her head that allows some minimal movement, if not the ability to speak.

There's a knock at the door, and there's a sudden surprise guest.




This is Mikey, he's Zatanna's stage manager and a bloke turned into a woman after a magical accident. He still identifies as male, but decided that this was the best way to get Oscar's guard down before chloroforming the crap out of him when his back's turned.

Dale, Zee's cop friend, has been attempting to find her ever since Brother Night woke up and began running the San Francisco underworld from his jail cell... which is a situation that Zatanna isn't really able to deal with right now, so it'll have to wait.

Mikey then explains that he saw Oscar performing his "Miss Zee-Zee" act on TV, realised that something was up, and began stalking him in an attempt to see if he was connected with Zatanna's disappearance... which it turned out he was, yay Mikey!

At this point Oscar wakes up, and grabs this various magical doo-dads, point them at Mikey and threatening to turn him into a puppet too! Mikey warns him not to... only for the spell to rebound, and, well...



With Oscar now locked in a magically sealed milk can forever, Zee and Mikey decide to celebrate saving the day by going out for some beers, huzzah!

The issue wraps up with Zatanna meeting up with her therapist, presenting her with a shadow puppet of herself as a thank you gift. Her therapist says she doesn't normally accept gifts, but will on this occasion as it marks a place in Zee's emotional growth.

Zatanna explains that her phobia of puppets didn't so much come from Oscar attempting to murder her, so much as her father's mindwipe giving her a subconscious fear of being controlled, which she projected onto puppets as that what it made her feel like. Or something.

Either way, she thinks that she's over her fear now as she understands where it's coming from... Rather than taking the Mabel Pines approach, ie the seemingly harmless thing she had a phobia about trying to kill her JUSTIFIES why she was so scared in the first place.

Comments

[michaelhealy]

Did Zatanna just call someone else out over a fanservicey outfit?

[espanolbot]

Seems to be a running joke with Paul Dini's Zatanna comics, as it had Black Canary complaining about how one of Zatanna's assistant costumes was too revealling... leading to Zee point out the whole tights and bomber jacket thing.

[terrykun]

It may also just be a jab at the fact that Mikey still identifies as male, and seems to trend towards male/unisex clothing normally.

[crinos]

Okay, so the puppet guy was evil. Ho hum.

Seriously, you know "forever" isn't really doesn't last forever, right?

[7dialsmystery]

He escapes from the milkcan and is turned into Arnold Wesker's Scarface. Or at least that's my head canon.

[sadoeuphemist]

Okay, this is starting to seem like one of those transformation fetish webcomics, honestly.

[espanolbot]

Kind of hard to do a story in a setting with magic without it edging on that, same as these days it's near impossible for people to do a story with anthropomorphic animals (such as Blacksad) without it being tangentially attached to the furry fandom, intentions of the original creators or not.

Within this series though, it's largley played up for the body-horror aspect (the first issue has the magical gangser Brother Night organising a hit on the mundane Mafia, and the shock of being turned into toads and the like actually killed the victims... which was actually the point)... Except in the case of Mikey, where that's just how he is and it's not played for laughs or anything.

[leoboiko]

There's nothing wrong that could possibly happen with locking the immortal homicidal maniac into an inhuman solitary prison with nothing but his own twisted mind to keep him company for years to come.

[espanolbot]

Well Barry Allen blew up the universe a short while after this, so forever was... I dunno, a couple of months, in-universe?

[damar148]

I thought Mikey was Jenna Duffy in that flashback outfit.