Zatanna 1
From Barbelith
"Talking Backwards/Sdrawkcab Gniklat"
Barbelith thread: Was it something I said? (http://www.barbelith.com/topic/20686)
| Table of contents |
Background and General Commentary
Genre: It's the magic book. Or is that Klarion? Let's call it "cosmic magic" with an urban romantic twist.
Synopsis: Zatanna is an ex-Justice Leaguer, one of the premiere superheroines on the world in which she lives. She can make anything happen - just by descring the event, backwards. Only not anymore; a seance in the same castle where her father died goes horrifically wrong, and it's all Zee's fault, because she wished for 'the man of her dreams'. Now she's in therapy.
Annotations
| Featured Characters | Featured Locations |
|---|---|
|
|
Page 1
Zatanna is wearing a chaos magic star t-shirt instead of her usual garters, etc.
Page 4
Well, no-one seems to know who anyone else in Zatanna's therapy group (eight in total) is, but we do have Gimmix (dating the events of this issue to prior to Seven Soldiers 0) and the girl with red/black tights latterly introduces herself as Misty. She may be intended as a reference to the Misty comic for girls (http://www.mistycomic.co.uk/) (or so say the comments on Jog the Blog (http://joglikescomics.blogspot.com/2005/04/so-many-more-books-but-heres-all-i.html)). Misty is also the name of screen- and comics scribe Paul Dini (http://www.tv.com/paul-dini/person/39929/biography.html)'s wife; another fact enumerated at that link is that Paul's favourite superhero is... Zatanna, and it was indeed he who wrote the last comic titled Zatanna.
The 75 y.o. woman trapped in the body of a young girl is Sally Sonic, who plays a role in The Bulleteer mini.
On Gimmix's initial resentment of her comparative situation, which Zatanna describes as "the most lurid account of Monster sex I can imagine outside of Starro the Conqueror (http://www.geocities.com/amazing_tales/micros/starro2.gif)'s porno stash":
Gumbitch -- the glib 'alien rape' bit is gimmix' intervention at the hands of the bald dudes
Ultimateagentr -- The guy with the black hair and his back to us is the Mind-Grabber Kid (http://galileo.spaceports.com/~xsufiru/databank/Mind-GrabberKid/). See page 20, panel 1-2.
According to writer Grant Morrison in a recent interview (http://www.comicon.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=36;t=004167), the conselor who leads Zatanna's support group is intended to be Etta Candy.
Grant Morrison - "Etta from the Golden Age Wonder Woman stories turns up as the counselor in issue one and probably utterly contradicts her last appearance but there you go. I don't think she was named, so no-one need know."
Page 5
A first for Grant? Zatara's dialogue, his dying words, in this last panel is a direct lift from Swamp Thing #50, by Alan Moore. The two have (http://www.barbelith.com/topic/15501) a (http://www.barbelith.com/topic/15358) (perceived) degree (http://www.barbelith.com/topic/11433) of (http://www.barbelith.com/topic/19207) antipathy (http://www.barbelith.com/topic/20334) toward one another. Of course, this is a fairly integral bit of Zatanna continuity.
captainkyle: i read this (and Klarion 1) at wizard world la. and though i breezed through the zatanna proof, i did notice and enjoy one thing that subsequently got taken out of the final product. in the proof at the dc comics booth, on page 5 at the bottom, the burning image of zatanna's father said something like "constantine, if you don't get her out in time . . ." or whatever. the point is, i thought it was great that it tied zatanna in with john, especially given her later line about her fatal flaw for falling for losers. but i guess editorial didn't want any inkling of vertigo and/or the constantine film in the seven soldiers line.
Perhaps the figure is Gwydion instead of Zatara? Maybe it's an ambiguous face like the one in Guardian 2.
Mario: Here's a wild thought...what if Gwydion IS Zatara?
Certainly, the images of the two as aflame in the bottom frame, ask to be juxtaposed and have Freudian/Electra complex (http://www.answers.com/electra%20complex) interpretation imposed.
Maybe Zatanna likes people on fire because they remind her of his father.
Pages 6-7
Flashback to the seance; as with the 'American Gothic' tale, Baron Winter(s) (http://pc59te.dte.uma.es/cdb/series/dc/baronwinter.htm) is the host, though he takes no active part here. The other participants were - then - totalling seven: Zatanna, Constantine (http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/h/hellblaz.htm), Doctor Occult (http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery;jsessionid=vmgrde2ibrgt?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=Doctor+Occult&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1&sbid=lc04a), Mento (Steve Dayton) (http://www.titanstower.com/source/whoswho/dayton.html), Sargon the Sorceror (http://www.answers.com/Sargon%20the%20Sorceror) and Zatara (http://www.answers.com/Zatara) - the latter two were burned to death and Mento was left mentally incontinent by the force of the experience. If Baron Winter(s) is not counted, then this is yet another occurrence of a group of six heroes failing at their mission without a seventh member.
Zatanna's new group consists of: Timothy Ravenwind (http://www.dcuguide.com/who.php?name=timothyraven), Doctor 13 (http://www.answers.com/Doctor%20Thirteen), Ibis (Mr. Invincible) and Taia (http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/i/ibis.htm) -- bringing the total number to either five or six depending, again, on whether the Baron counts.
The dreams Zatanna refers to are evidently dreams of the Sheeda.
The date is 7/13/04. Or, for Americans, 13/7/04. Ibis and Taia have traversed the globe seven times.
Page 8
The SilverBulletComicBooks roundtable review team (http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/reviews/111318392926809.htm) (among other folks) informs us that:
King Ra-Man is the artist formerly known as Prince Ra-Man (http://www.toonopedia.com/ra-man.htm), a really obscure character from The House of Secrets who is best known for being snuffed out by a Shadow Demon in The Crisis of Infinite Earths (http://www.answers.com/crisis%20on%20infinite%20earths) and prompting Shade, the Changing Man's remark: “They’ve got Prince Ra-Man!” One of the few hilarious moments of the best dramatic presentation in super-hero comic books.
Notably, given this and the above bio of Zatara describing him giving his life during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, which presumably Swamp Thing #50 (cover-date, July '86) dovetailed with in some manner (it's certainly cataclysmic enough,) allied with endless speculation at the DC Comics 7 Soldiers Boards (http://dcboards.warnerbros.com/web/forum.jspa?forumID=2000000004), makes one wonder if this may serve similar a similar function with the upcoming Infinite Crisis event?
Ra-Man might be considered a sixth, or seventh, member of this group.
SiliconDream -- Prince Ra-Man popped up for about three panels in Animal Man, when all the pre-Crisis folks were returning toward the end of Morrison's run. He didn't do much of anything, just got embedded in a wall and whined a lot.
The eight-legged horse could refer to the steeds of the Sheeda, or the horse of Odin, which has been suggested to be a reference to the four men required to carry a coffin.
The six-sided sun is a cube that calculates the reality of Ra-Realm and our own reality, according to Ra-Man: This has been posited by scientists and philosophers as the possible nature to our reality (As a program being run by an uber-computer), as well as one of the themes in The Matrix and Morrison's own Sebastian O. Compare to the dice-AI Croatoan described in Klarion 4, and the cubic form of the infant universe of Qwewq.
Page 9
The Imaginal World (http://www.kheper.net/topics/Islamic_esotericism/imaginal.html) is an astral realm found in Sufi mysticism. (Interestingly, according to that link, it's also called "the eighth realm," over the seven realms of the physical world.)
It appears qualitatively correspondent to/descriptive of other 'soft places', like Slaughter Swamp, Miracle Mesa and Limbo Town.
Page 11
Given Morrison's proclivities for metafiction, the comment: "Space has an edge" could refer to the edge of the panel, or the page. Other Morrison-written characters that have dealt with the panel's edge like it was a real object include Animal Man and the hero of Vimanarama. (Seaguy) too?)
Page 12
The "Daathian Frontier" refers to Daath/Da'at (http://www.zaalberg.freeserve.co.uk/daath.htm), the 'false' sephiroth of Qabbala, which symbolizes "Knowledge" or "Gnosis", but leads to the Qlippothic (or negative) side of said. Promethea #20, by Alan Moore and J.H. Williams III contains a fairly complete comicbook description. Therein it is also known as 'The Beggar' and given the number 11, or pi.
"Ys" is an old Breton word for Avalon (which is etymologically related to Castle Revolving.)
Page 13
While there is no reference to a Red God of Ys, there is a DC villain called the Warlock of Ys (http://www.glcorps.org/warlock.html), who has battled with both Zatanna and her father in the past. "Tahuti" is the proper name of the Egyptian Ibis-god, Thoth (http://www.pantheon.org/articles/t/thoth.html), god of magic, communication and wisdom.
Page 15
The tree could be the Tree of Knowledge, from the Bible (and Qabbala.) It also has some similarities to the Akashic Record (http://www.aracaria.com.au/glossary/1.html) of theosophic thought, and the Library of Dream, from Sandman.
Page 20
Gwydion is a sorceror from Welsh legend, of a suitably ambivalent morality.
Gumbitch --the shelves tell me gwydion used to go by the appellation 'Long-Arm' (among others o corrs) - someone bearing that name has already cropped up in 7soldiers. [lancelot is the 'dreamiest' of the knights of the round.] there's also a confusion of etymology that suggests gwydion could have been merlin's twin or perhaps his wife. it's the nasty, destructive aspect of the essential pivot of british myth.
Page 22
The "team gig" Gimmix refers to is a reference to Seven Soldiers 0.
Back to Zatanna
Back to Seven Soldiers Annotations
