Zatanna#11“Unstrung” concludes the multi-part evil puppet story in Zatanna. As seen last issue, Zee’s been turned into a puppet and Hempel has had his humanity restored thanks to some mis-firing magic. Zee, as the puppet “Miss Zee Zee” is to be donated to the Museum of Magic we keep seeing in this book. Hempel’s plan is foiled by Zee’s stage carpenter, Mikey, who gets into Hempel’s dressing room by playing make-up artist for his tv appearance, and dressing like trailer-trash Barbie to get close enough to drug him. Mikey managed to figure out Zatanna was missing, and made the connection to the Zee Zee puppet. There’s some amusing byplay between them, and some good natured teasing about Zee liking Detective Colton, which she denies in one breath and then asks if he said anything about her in the next.
With some help from Zee, and some stupidity from Hempel, the spells are reversed. This also happens, in part, due to the odd “immunity to magic” that Mikey has which was mentioned earlier in the series, here described as a blessing, although still not explained. The re-transformed Hempel, or Stringleshanks as he calls himself in this form, tries to escape, and is, ironically, sealed inside one of the large milk cans Houdini used to escape from. The epilogue features Zee back at the otherwordly psychiatrist we saw earlier in this arc, as Zee’s fear of puppets is explained and resolved by all she’s learned. Oddly, Brother Night is here as well, awaiting his turn to see the doctor. Night tells her he is “focused, rested, and ready,” which I suppose sets us up for the next arc.
This is a great example of Dini on top of his game. Lines dropped as an aside months ago become pivotal, like Mikey’s magic immunity/blessing. Zee wondering if Colton had asked about her, even in the middle of the magic crisis, was a nice, human touch, as was Mikey’s loyalty to her boss and friend, Zatanna. Brother Night, the villain from the first arc of the title, has been slowly building up to his comeback, no doubt next issue or the story past that.
What I liked and what I didn’t:
As I said, this was a well written piece, displaying Dini’s many good touches. His characters are believable and interesting. We still don’t know why Mikey can’t be bespelled, but it’s certainly something I’m interested in learning. Zee’s bit about Colton was both believable and amusing. Night’s slow build in the background of this arc was also nicely done. I like Dini’s layering, and his supporting cast, like Mikey and the therapist here and the Broker in the Bat-books, a real estate agent type who specializes in finding custom hideouts and places of interest to the variously themed villains of Gotham.
My only real gripe here is something I commented on last issue. Zee is missing for months, and Mikey is the only one to put it together? Zatanna is part of the super human community, and has been shown to be particularly close with Batman. You know, the World’s Greatest Detective? I find it unlikely at best that Mikey worked this out, but Bats, and even Nightwing/Batman didn’t. It’s one of the problems with being in a “shared universe,” if you want to handle things in house, sometimes you have to do things that don’t quite make sense like this. But, it’s a small complaint in a well executed story.
A COMIC BOOK BLOG RATINGProsConsMikey’s loyalty and brains, all the small touches and supporting charactersno one else working out the Zee Zee/Zatanna bit Rating90% You might also like...
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Zatanna #3 ReviewBy BlogsdnaTagged with: Jamal Igle Paul Dini ZatannaLeave a ReplyClick here to cancel replyYour name (Required)
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This post was added on 31 Mar 2011, 7:35 by Wayland who has contributed 275 posts to this blog.
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