Review: Zatanna #9
I'm going to be honest here: I still feel like Zatanna isn't nearly as much about Zatanna as it should be. It's got her name in the title and everything, but for all that it's a fun book and I enjoy reading it, it seems to be as much about Zatanna's father as anything else. This is, quite frankly, a book that has only rarely passed the Bechdel test... and yet I love this comic almost as much as I love the character. Even if the comic's eternal return to the well of Zatara's legacy gets a little tired I am super-glad to be reading it.
Is that a heck of a mixed bag of an introduction or what? Read on for what I ultimately thought of this issue, with its shortened main feature and its perfectly surreal-hokey B-side!
OK, so here's what I can't figure out: is Zatanna a book about a good role model for young women? That's loaded and presumptuous of me, yes, but every time I read it that's what I find myself asking at some point, usually right around the time it turns out that her dad screwed something up or has been summoned from the beyond or is animating a pair of glasses or something like that. I keep thinking, would I give this to someone's little sister?
The answer I keep coming back to is, actually, yes; I would absolutely do so, and Zatanna herself is actually an excellent role model.
On the one hand, sure, everything is ultimately about having to clean up the detritus of Zatara's life but, as I've mused before, Zatanna's story isn't about how she goes running to the memory of daddy when trouble rises; it's that daddy won't stay in the damned ground and she keeps having to put him back there so that she can get back to pursuing her priorities. I'm no expert but I'm guessing that's pretty typical of the experience of the vast majority of young women: in a society that presents itself as a minefield of gender attitudes and demands - an endless baggage carousel of stereotypes, arbitrarily limited choices, unspoken expectations, hidden punishments and countless sources and types of discrimination and harassment - pretty much every woman is to some degree or another going to be dealing with the fallout of the previous generation's actions, views, choices and judgments. Heck, every person is having to deal with those, yes, but women especially and they have to do it for 22 cents less than every male dollar around them.
This particular issue's story - Zatanna taken prisoner and physically restrained by a doll - might be seen by a reader as an extreme expression of the gender disparity so common in the medium we all follow, yes, and that's a valid opinion. This isn't pointless T&A sadism fantasy play, however. This isn't some scream queen in the clutches of a random villain so the artist has an excuse to draw an arched back and heaving chest. Dini is showing us a hyperbole of that stereotype, and as soon as the scene is established and the narrative duty of explaining the villain's background is done we see Zatanna immediately exercise her own powers to reverse the circumstances, think through what she's learned, alter her understanding of the situation appropriately and then begin to work with her foe in search of a resolution for both of them. This isn't gender stereotyping, this is a writer exploding gender stereotypes and encouraging a little conflict resolution along the way.
He isn't trapping Zatanna in her father's shadow; he's showing us Zatanna's struggle against the patriarchy.
When one looks at Dini's other works, one sees the same thing over and over again. Just look at the stories of Jingle Belle and Ida Red. One is a young woman whose father is perhaps the most dominating of modern myths - freaking Santa Claus - and the other is a cowgirl sheriff in a town full of Texan mutants. He isn't giving us meaningless female stereotypes, he's giving us female central characters who work to make their own name in light of the reality that they have inherited a man's world.
So, even though I sigh a little and roll my eyes every time it turns out Zatanna's adventurous problems all started with her father, I need to keep in mind that that's for a reason and that the story I'm reading is about Zatanna having the ability to fix that problem.
What did I think of the B-side? Honestly, it was cute but it contains one major plot flaw that just makes me shake my head: why did Zatanna even have braces in the first place? Couldn't she have simply said THEET NETHGIARTS and been done with it? That was the first thing I thought of on the very first page and after that I couldn't stop asking myself that long enough to enjoy the actually kind of creepy method she used of trapping the thief. On the other hand, again, this is a story about Zatanna trusting her instincts and expressing her own agency rather than doing what the men around her tell her to do, and that turning out to be the right choice. It's hard to fault that... or it would be if she couldn't just magically fix her teeth on her own.
Ultimately, that one thing aside, the aesthetic of the second feature was perfect. It had that '70s Hostess Fruit Pie advertising look down pat and was just the right degree of cheese. I was no fan of Beechen's work on Batman Beyond but this was a fun little shot of silliness.
Klarion
Posted to Review on 14 February 2011
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Other stuff like this: Zatanna
I can't fully remember why I dropped Zatanna as the first arc was ending, but I do remember being peeved at the daddy dependence. Forgiveness is a virtue, though, and I'm glad there's buyers out there to justify an awesome character carrying her own series.
I've since learned that the writer's wife is, in real life, a stage magician. I can't decide whether that's awesome or maybe a little creepy? At any rate, the latest arc has swerved right back into daddy issues and disempowerment. Great.