Hated the Red Mind Worm Hair comb thing… To much Klingon…

The Seven Soldiers story arc, where she “lost” her powers after the events in Identity Crisis was a nice touch.

Oh, and they actually made fun of her third costume in an issue of Blue Devil:
Blue Devil (hitting in her) “You know, not a lot of women can get away with wearing a bug on their head.” (I think.) And she apparently didn’t mind! Then again BD was quite dashing even as a blue demon. They might’ve made a nice couple had BD not already have a love interest.

Damn, that was such a fun comic. Yet another great character ruined by DC.

The top hat and fishnets look is for her job as a stage magician. It is like Clark Kent wearing glasses, Hal Jordan wearing a flight suit or Barry Allen wearing a lab coat. It stands to reason that she might have a different costume for her work as a superhero.

It just seems to be another comic book oddity, like wings on Namor’s feet or Amazon dressed in a patriotic American themed costume, though she currently claims no loyalty to any nation.

Of course you can’t beat fishnets

AKA George Perez Month.

.siht ekil ti erefferp d’I

And yeah… the actress who played her in Smallville was perfect.

I think Zatanna as a character is great, but her power makes her kinda difficult as a hero. Theoretically she can make anything happen by saying it backwards, right? Having that sort of power makes it kinda difficult to write plots around her, as she could basically solve any problem on page 1 by just saying the right words.

Zatanna is a great, great character in large part because she is one of the those rare superheroes who acts like someone you might actually meet. She is one of those semi-hippie chicks that knows way too much about chakras and tarot cards. She has made some really bad relationship choices in the past and is just flirtatious enough to cause almost anyone to think they’ve got a shot. However, the vast majority of them don’t. She knows all kinds of famous and/or semi-famous people, but really isn’t impressed with any of that anymore. Instead, she is trying to get her messy life together.

Nearly everybody has met some version of that person. It is a total type.

Sadly, her powers really need some further definition. Zatanna doesn’t have a hook like “will power” that limits her basically limitless abilities. There is no built-in reason to say that she can’t do something. That leaves the writer with too few options beyond stupidity and laziness for her to not solve any problem in, like, 45 seconds. It is a shame, because from a personality perspective she could totally sustain an on-going.

I do my best to ignore Zatanna’s relationship with Constantine. Really, I can hardly think of two characters less suited for each other.

That’s probably why she’s always shown to regret it.
The fling with a guy who seemed great, but turned out to be a prick.
Seems to be the way it goes wth most of Constantines girls, so seems pretty right.

Zatanna isn’t really that much more powerful than other sorcerers; it’s just that among superheroes, she’s usually comes across as more versatile. For example, recently she tried to use her magic against the African god Anansi, and was just no match. Besides, the League already has plenty of similarly uber heroes without magic (Green Lantern, for one.)

Zatanna’s identity is not secret. Maybe she was believed to be just a stage magician by the public at first, but after years with the League, that’s not likely. Note also that her name IS Zatanna, it’s not a stage name.

Oh, and the backwards-talk thing? It’s just a gimmick. It’s been shown (and not just in the comics) that she can cast spells normally if she wants to. She’s just honoring her father, who also cast magic that way for years because he discovered his magic by reading a book from his ancestor -Leonardo DaVinci!- that had been written backwards to hide its secrets (That was historically true btw.)

-”In any case Batman will always have a way to defeat her.”

Granted, Batman has plans for beating everybody. But what do the rest of the heroes do if BATMAN goes evil?? O_O

Zatanna and John Constantine seem to be the two characters who can freely hop between the mainstream DC universe and the Vertigo universe.

And each other’s beds– a surprising detail Brian forgot from this! (That and her appearance in Swamp Thing 49-50 that led to Zatara’s death)

I think you’re right, but the specific way her power works makes it seem like she can do pretty much anything.

Yeah, as I was writing that, I made the connection to Scarlet Witch. I think that in a similar way, her powers are limited by her definition of wrong and right. If someone decided Zatanna should go a little nuts, one “on erom stnatum” later, DC would have a nice little House of Z to shill for a summer.

Someone send that to Didio. See if BMB would jump ship for a summer.

The 90s miniseries followed on Books of Magic vol. 1 (back when that was in DC continuity), centered on a struggle with Phantom Stranger villain Tannarak, and culminated in the adoption of yet another bad costume, the acquisition of a Wizard’s Staff, and the (very temporary) end of backwards-speak.

The later Zatanna issues of Books of Magic vol. 2 include one of the best Zatanna stories ever, with Tala and Tannarak. (Tim Hunter is only a bit player in that issue.)

When she was in the JLA her powers were limited to manipulation of earth, fire, air, and water. She’s often shown as subject to exhaustion based on the magnitude of the magic being attempted; somehow she draws energy from herself by working magic, and she has limits, though they’re not well-defined.

My perpetual question about Zatanna: doesn’t being a super-heroic member of the world-famous Justice League, using her name and often her stage costume, completely defeat the “hide in plain sight” secret identity of a stage magician? What do average people in the DCU who allegedly think of Zatanna as being like David Copperfield think she’s doing on the membership of the JLA?

I thank you’re right, but the specific way her power works makes it seem like she can do pretty much anything. With other powerful characters like Superman or Professor X, the nature of their powers still limits what they can do, but with Zatanna’s power there’s not such an obvious limit. Any extremely character is bound to be kinda dull if there’s not some inherent constraint to her powers. Otherwise the conlicts she faces will feel kinda pointless, if she could basically just wish them away with a wave of her hand. I guess Zatanna’s powers are limited in some way, because I’ve never seen her use them for some massive, universe-changing spell, but there doesn’t seem to be any consensus on how powerful she is. Hell, in the Seven Soldiers mini she even broke the fourth wall (twice) to draw the reader into her spell, which means she has some serious skills! And speaking of Seven Soldiers, I liked Morrison’s idea that her ability to cast spells is affected by whether or not she believes she’s doing the right thing. I think future writers could use that as sort of an organic limitation to her powers, instead of coming up with something arbitrary (like the Green Lanterns’ yellow weakness) or too obvious (like making her lose the ability to speak).

As far as the limits of her power, it’s probably not any different than Superman, Prof X or the Scarlett Witch. They have as much power as the writer wants them to have. She’s been a powerful member of League, but I don’t know if she’s single handedly taken out Darkseid or anything like that.

In any case Batman will always have a way to defeat her.

I think Zatanna as a character is great, but her power makes her kinda difficult as a hero. Theoretically she can make anything happen by saying it backwards, right? Having that sort of power makes it kinda difficult to write plots around her, as she could basically solve any problem on page 1 by just saying the right words. So the writers have to either come up with ways of restraining her power, or use her as a supporting character who isn’t involved in the action, like John Ney Rieber did in Books of Magic. Has it ever been established if there’s some sort upper limit to her power, or will *anything* she says actually happen?

I thought it was kinda cheap how she was used as a plot device in Identity Crisis, though Morrison found a nice way of making lemonade out of lemons in the Zatanna mini, when he used what happened in Identity Crisis as means of solving the “limitless power dilemma” mentioned above.