Thursday, September 16, 2004

You Gotta Do What? You Gotta Believe!

The last title was a reference to a specific episode of the TV series Angel, where Angel, the main character gets transformed into a puppet. No amount of explanation about the episode will make it seems like anything more than a terrible waste of time; you really just need to see it yourself to understand how good it is.

Tony was the first person to get the reference, so he earns the point. I’m assuming that the scoreboard will get much more interesting once we have many, many different scores and players on it Also, I might do a “lightning round” reference at the end of each week, worth anywhere from 2 to 5 points. What do you think?

Current High Scores
Ben, Solo Tremaine, Sara, Semjaza Azazel, Nerdsy, Mimmi, Arcadia: 1 Point

I’d like to thank Solo for figuring out what was wrong with the links on this site. Apparently quotation marks are bad.

Also, I‘d like to thank Tony again for the comic book I received in the mail yesterday. It prompted me to write this comic book-related post, which is hopefully the first in a series of mildly informative comic book articles on this site. Miss Arcadia express an interest in Zatanna, so I‘ll start with writing about her..

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Comic Characters You Know Nothing About #1:
Zatanna, Deus Ex Machina of the DC Universe

This is Zatanna, Mistress of Magic and quite possibly the most powerful character in the DC Universe. Although she has been a member of the Justice League for several decades Zatanna is one of it’s most obscure members. This is due to the fact that she has a very rich history and a complicated superpower. It is difficult to include her in a story without also explaining these things, so as such she her appearances are somewhat few and far between. Let’s start from the top, shall we?

Her father, Zatarra, was once the world’s greatest sorcerer (and coincidentally he made his first appearance in Action Comics #1, the first comic book Superman ever appeared in.) Zatarra worked as a stage magician to conceal his secret identity as a real magician, and also it would give him the chance to travel the globe without much suspicion. So Zatarra would travel from town to town, performing each night to captivated audiences who could the secret to his "magic tricks." After each show Zatarra would patrol the city, and dispense of any evil-doers he came across.

Even though he was insanely powerful in the field of magic, Zatarra was unpopular. Because of this fact, the character was doomed to obscurity; after a string of guest appearances following his debut Zatarra left comic books completely. Not to be heard from again for many years.

Then Zatanna burst onto the scene. Like her father Zatanna was a talented sorceress who traveled the globe to fight crime and perform stage magic (hence the costume.) In addition to fighting crime, Zatanna visited the four corners of the Earth in an effort to find her missing father.

Fortunately she wasn’t alone in the search, and every so often a fellow hero would help her in the search, and provide her with some helpful clues. Zatanna guest-starred in some of DC’s most popular comic books during this time: Hawkman, The Atom, Action Comics, Batman and even Superman. Over two years and a dozen comics later Zatanna found her father, and the happy magical family was reunited once more. Now that they were together again the two of them could go back to their quiet lives as local crime fighters, right? Wrong!

Zatanna appeared in a somewhat regular stream of comic books for the next decade or so, always as a guest-star and never n a comic book series of her own. This was pretty typical for female characters, especially during the 1960’s. In mainstream comics, Wonder Woman is the only female character to have a long-running series of her own. With 60+ years her comic completely dwarfs the second longest-running female series, Spider-Girl, and was just created in the past decade. It just seems that nobody likes to read comics with a female lead.

Thanks to her guest appearances, knowledge about Zatanna had spread throughout the comic book community. Everyone loved Zatanna, and wanted to see her in exciting adventures of her own. In the 1970’s fans got to decide who the next character to join the Justice League of America would be, and Zatanna won by an overwhelming margin! It makes sense to have her in the group, anyway, since she is just as, if not more powerufl than the other members.

Now, I haven’t bothered to explain Zatanna’s superpowers yet because well… they are hard to explain. Her power is to make the intangible tangible, her power is to shape reality, her power is to make the unbelievable believable. Confused yet? Good, you should be.

Long story short, using her inherited magical gifts Zatanna can do basically anything she wants. You want to tie up the bank robbers? No problem. You want to stop an alien invasion by putting a protective force field around the Earth? Easy as pie. You want Superman to eat dog food? Sure!

By reciting the desired effect of the spell backwards, Zatanna’s magic can do just about anything. And better yet, other forms of magic are the only thing that can negate her powers. This means just about everyone can fall victim to this. Defeating the Joker is as simple as saying “Amoc a ni si rekoj!”

Yes, over the years there have been very few adversaries who could stand up against her might, and I’m sure you can imagine how having a “Deus Ex Machina” like Zatanna would make for some very boring Justice League stories. If you have someone like her on the team, it is impossible to come up with any sort of challenging obstacles for the group to face. DC Comic Editors saw the flaw in having her on the team, and quickly disposed of Zatanna. First she was moved to the very unpopular Justice League International, a home for second-string heroes, in the early 1980's. When the comic was finally cancelled due to poor sales she faded out of the spotlight once again.

That is until fairly-recently, when the creators of Batman, the Animated Series decided to include her in an episode. Just seeing the classic character back in action caused a huge demand for new comic book stories featuring Zatanna. She soon received her own special one issue comic, and returned to the Justice League as a “reserve” member.

So there you have it. She still pops up from time to time, but for the most part she is doomed to a series of cameos and guest appearances. This Summer Zatanna has seen an awful lot of action, though. In addition to her latest guest appearances on TV's Justice League Unlimited she has a very important role in the mini-series Identity Crisis. By the end of the year it appears that the Mistress of Magic will make a return to a regular monthly comic as well. Yay.
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