STORY STUDY - MEDIUM: COMICS/GRAPHIC NOVELS “Zatanna: Symmetry”

Even in the DC universe where gods, aliens, people from Atlantis, super geniuses, and rich humans with armor exist, why should the presence of magicians surprise anyone?

I’m not going to bore with the details with the history of Zatanna Zatara… mostly because I don’t know it. I’ll just give the most basic details of what I know about her: She’s a stage magician and an actual crime-fighting magician. Her source of magic is backwards magic; in order to make something happen, she has to command it by saying it backwards.

In Zatanna: Symmetry, written by Matthew Sturges, and art by Stephane Roux, Zatanna goes to stop Backslash, a human with a two-bladed sword powered by a fairy whom he is holding prisoner, after he has killed two mer-folk.

When she tries to stop him using her backwards magic, he uses his sword to reverse time to make her speak normally, cancelling out her spells. Even physical fighting can literally be reversed to force her to retract her punch to his face so he can be close to hit her.

The fairy helps Zatanna by suggesting her to use words like “racecar”, “level”, and “kayak.” That’s right… palindromes!

Symmetry is luckily a self-contained story, and I absolutely love it from a writing standpoint. I don’t know if Sturges looked everywhere for palindromes or he had help, but regardless, the comic does whatever ridiculous palindromes that Zatanna can say in order to stop Backslash.

The only criticism I can give is Backslash, who has the weakest motivation that critics often make fun of.

It would be fine if this was a tongue-in-cheek joke story… but it’s not. It’s a comedic situation with a (to my knowledge) a light hearted character, but unless this is Justice League Action, there could’ve been more development.

Then again, the focus is more on Zatanna’s cleverness and knowledge of words, and on that level, it shines brilliantly.

I found out about Zatanna when she appeared in the Justice League Unlimited episode “This Little Piggy.” In this episode, Batman goes to her to help him fight Circe from Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey after she turns Wonder Woman into a pig. I know, right?

After getting into comics and being re-introduced with the character thanks to a fellow Red Panda Press colleague, I got lucky when this Zatanna collection was published, which contains all 16 issues of her solo series, plus two special issues.

Zatanna: Symmetry showcases another humorous and powerful female superhero that certainly deserves a lot more love and attention, which she currently has thanks to DC animated projects. You’d best attend and applaud when she performs a show near you.