Zatanna 3
From Barbelith
"Three Days of the Dead"
Barbelith thread: It's like they killed one of my favorite toys. (http://www.barbelith.com/topic/20686/from/175#post478933)
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Background & General Comments
Synopsis -- Crossovers galore! After exorcising a minor demon, Zatanna and Misty find themselves led by the ghost of Ali-Ka-Zoom to the ransacked mansion of Vincenzo the Undying Don -- better known to Ali as "Kid Scarface" from their days together in the Newsboy Army. Here, we meet Shining Knight's horse Vanguard -- and learn an amazing secret about Misty's past.
Annotations
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Page 1
This bus and it’s top-hatted passenger were last seen in Shining Knight #2.
Page 2
The 'three days of the dead' are hallowe'en; you know, with the witches. Also, three characters: Tempter, Ali-Ka-Zoom and Vincenzo, the Undying Don do precisely that.
The Tempter, the demon who appears at the beginning and again on the Bus of the Dead, looks very similar to Mister Melmoth from Klarion 3.
Zatanna seems to have regained some of her superheroic mojo. Maybe the new outfit; or is it just the hat?
Page 3
Misty evidently does have secrets - cf: p.19, but there's a distinct possibility of more; she resembles Klarion more and more for the blase attitude and chocolate fascination.
Of course the Tempter misses the bible; he's the supervillain protoplast therein.
Page 4
Jog (http://joglikescomics.blogspot.com/2005/08/just-one-today.html) discusses the Tempter's death:
Morrison continues his play with notions of revamping and erasing characters and concepts, with the dialogue getting more explicit than ever: Zatanna tells him “You’re an outdated concept, an obsolete thought form,” and Misty’s means of destroying him is not to cast a spell of death, but for the character to “!nettogrof eB” As The Tempter remarks later in the issue, “I can’t die. It’s obvious there’s been an error…” and he's quite correct - corporate superhero properties don’t die, they just fade from applicability.
Page 5
Here Misty recounts Magic's fourth rule as if it's an answer to an engram. Try this with the first three - I get 1. Illusion Is Everywhere 2. Master Forgery (or the old Invisibles epithet, 'Fake it, 'til you make it.') 3. Know Your Limits
4. is the old Boy Scout motto.
PANEL 5: “I’ve used my magic powers to change people’s lives and memories.”
Zatanna's reference to having wiped minds applies to DC's 2004 summer event comic Identity Crisis in which she altered rapine JLA foes in order to make them less so in (some say) an imperious example of retconning, best described by Flex Mentallo as a "need to rationalise my past weird adventures".
Page 7
This is the first reference Ali makes to things being bound up together;
PANEL 1: “One ‘Metanormal Investigator’.”
One metanormal investigator and about twelve police disappeared inside the cabinet. If a Metanormal Investigator is anything like a Metahuman Specialist, this may have been a predecessor of FBI agent Helen Helligan, who appeared in Shining Knight 3.
PANEL 5: “There nothing in that box but a big deep hole, where we dropped a poor foolish boy once and do you know why? Because he did something the rest of us decided was wrong.”
The unfortunate boy deposited in his police-tape bound cabinet is Captain 7 of the original Newsboy Army. The story of his crime and punishment is revealed between the lines in Manhattan Guardian #4.
Page 8
PANELS 1-2: “That final adventure took us all to Slaughter Swamp outside Gotham City. That’s where we met the Fairy Queen and the Terrible Time Tailor.”
Ali's recounting of the original Newsboy Army's last engagement reiterates the preliminary Seven Soldiers 0, and the 70's storyline in Len Wein's Justice League of America 100-2, reprised, post-Crisis in Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. (http://members.tripod.com/originalvigilante/starsandstripe1.htm)]. The Fairy Queen is a self-evident analogue to Gloriana Tenebrae; the (Terrible) Time Tailor more troublesome - the Seven Unknown Men of the aforementioned number none possessed a time-sewing machine, which they left, fleeing the Sheeda at Slaughter Swamp, which happens to have been the Newsboys' battle's locale too.
The final adventure of the original Newsboy Army is also told in Manhattan Guardian #4.
Again, Ali makes a binding reference.
It'd seem his burning of the cabinet is intended to have some magickal effect; given the metafictional preamble to it, this may relate (along with the continual allusions to fate and cycles) to the author's sentient universe (http://www.comixexperience.com/fbr0503.htm) plans.
Page 11
Misty's likening of the Spider mount to a toy is a re-emphasis on Boy Blue's discovery in SS 0; further affirmed by Vincenzo in Shining Knight 4 - from page 9 onwards in this issue, if not the whole comic, occurs after that title's finale.
PANEL 5: “Everybody! Horsefeathers.”
The horse is Vanguard, the loyal steed of Sir Justin, the Shining Knight.
Papers called me that, not I -- Wondering if "Kid Scarface" Vincenzo and Ali met a winged horse and named hir Horsefeathers, and that's why they both call Vanguard that.
Chad -- It's implied there's a psychic link, or at least an intense comraderie between Kid Scarface Vincenzo and Ali Ka-Zoom. One would assume they were friends in the past, when both were members of the original Newsboy Army. 7S:SK:2 establishes Don Vincenzo as the first one to call Vanguard 'Horsefeathers', and Ali coughs feathers and exclaims the name periodically after.
Page 13
Mario -- Some more of my Welsh translations: "Porth Uffern" = "Gates of Hell" "Peir" = "Cauldron" "Pen" = "Head" The linking of Cauldron & Head reminds me of Bran the Blessed.
Page 14
PANEL 1: “The wizard saw him alive two nights past.”
Ali-Ka-Zoom and Sir Justin met in Shining Knight #2.
I wonder if Vincenzo and Ali's bond extends beyond their mutual adventures and tragedy? Perhaps the 'trick' Ali alluded to earlier is simply the righting of old wrongs; hence his setting in motion of Justin, burning of his cabinet and salvatory mission for Kid Scarface - all performed whilst dead. Certainly, this opens up questions about Guardian 4, 'Sex Secrets of the Newsboy Army'.
Page 15
Ali leaves the living world, soliloquying; his work is done. He repeats his earlier assessment about 'mystery string holding everything together', and offers the final rule - exit stage right.
Page 17
SiliconDreams -- ...maybe this was obvious, but we have the clincher on Strato being an "air-golem," when Misty says, "This cloud has a face like a dead Japanese guy."
And right enough, that's Crazyface, the Don's other consiglieri, beneath his vapourised colleague.
Page 19
The big reveal! Misty is a Fairy Princess, sent into the world by the Huntsman who could not kill her for the Evil Queen! And part of the montage of exile/imprisonment imagery shows Misty at a spinning wheel or a loom....
Chad -- I'll see your Rumplestiltskin, and raise you The Wild Swans. Clothing as transfiguring element and industrial strength persona cleaner has already been referenced with Spyder and the Time Sewing Machine. I'm interested in what Misty will do with that contraption once the three of them get to Slaughter Swamp. Also: The loom has long been argued to be a symbol of "woman's work" in fairy tale literature. Learning to work the loom can be seen to be an acceptance of adulthood, of maturing into adult gender roles. See the above stories, and add Sleeping Beauty. In that story, a baby girl is cursed to die when she touches a loom. Well of course the "girl" dies, but is then reborn when she's kissed by a handsome prince: she sees that adulthood also brings romantic love.
Note also that the Sheeda ride spiders, creatures what spin their own threads....
Blah -- ...The Huntsman couldn't kill her so he brought back the heart of a deer (brain of a telepathic) instead and had Snow White run away. And when Snow white did run away she was helped by the 7 Dwarfs (Soldiers).
Juan_Arteaga -- Also notice that Glorianna Tenebrae, in the first issue of Shining Knight, refers to herself as 'fairest of them all.'
Chad-- ... It's all been there from the beginning. What we're up against with the Sheeda are proto-baddies, as Ystin and Arthur and the Knights of the Broken Table are proto-goodies. We're battling the endless fight tween Good™ and Evil™ -the basis of manichaean myth. Fairy tales, as AKA Spider sums it up in 7S #0. Of course Misty is Snow White... but she is of course the princess girl from Rumpelstiltskin, the princess from Wild Swans, the princess from Sleeping Beauty, the princess from Little Mermaid... and on and on. Note she's off to Slaughter Swamp to enlist the aid of Seven Unknown Men. Who may be named after chakras, or maybe dwarves. Misty will probably touch the spindle of the Time Sewing Machine and "die". I'm giddy, but I want to know about the Original Newsboy Army more.
Gumbitch -- See if chad’s right he’s just making the story smaller*, a classic move I’d say in reaching a point of analysis, noting a few similarities between related concepts and assuming they all mean the same thing, when, well, maybe they aren’t, even if the darkness they live in makes it seem like that.: so princesses in fairy tales are really one character from one fairy tale – they basically mean the same thing, say pulchritudinous matter in a fine form, actual and potential entwined and reinforcing one another, your nice little h at the end of jhvh. And that’s it. That’s as far as it goes. No real insight into the fact that teenage girls might be understood to behave in a variety of ways - she’s a princess and she’s fit and that’s all there is to it. the princess from princess and the pea is the same as the princess/young woman from any version of bluebeard - it’s just the same old wives telling the same old bits of story to describe the same old single aspect of adolescent female psychology? I reckon that’s doing fairytale narrative’s skill at describing a variety of sophisticated situations a bit of a disservice, if we must do the jung with them at all. in an neo-platonic interpretation i am familiar with, snow white in swnt7d is the monad and the dwarves her necessary and necessarily imperfect ‘offspring’ that bring us to the number of harmony. this already isn’t the same as the princess in a pack of tarot cards described above. Nor is that snow white the same, I don’t think, as the one whose sister is rose red and marries Arthur at the end after messing up the homunculus’ beard.
Sticking to the Celtic mythology most evident thus far, the most direct antecedent for Misty would be Arianrhod (http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=Arianrhod&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1&linktext=Arianrhod), given the Gwydion/Lancelot associations. Interesting article (http://www.mythinglinks.org/ct~weaving.html) on weaving in mythology. The loom is also accordant with the aforementioned 'time sewing-machine', and always a very viable device for discussing the creation of story in story, which further heightens the Chinese box-effect of the series.
Page 20
PANEL 2: “Instead I brought her the bleeding, beautiful brain of a 31st century Telepathic Savant.”
The brain the Huntsman gave Gloriana comes from the 31st century; it may have belonged to one of the Legion of Superheroes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_of_Super-Heroes). The most likely candidate is Saturn Girl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Girl), a founding member of the Legion and an accomplished telepath. Either Saturn Girl is doomed to die at Neh-Buh-Loh’s hand sometime in the future, or the brain came from one of her relatives.
PANEL 6: “I see Guilt made flesh.”
Sir Justin encountered Guilt Made Flesh in Shining Knight 2. Guilt is a weapon that the Sheeda use to break the spirit of their enemies and enslave them. They used Guilt against Justin, who resisted, and against Galahad, who broke. Is Neh-Buh-Loh another unwilling slave of the Sheeda?
Page 21
Zatanna's back on deck; she's evidently cured her inability to do spells.
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