Overall: Zatara, Zatanna's moody cousin, teleports to her dressing room to give her a piece of his mind after she blew off Zatara's magic show after promising she'd go and watch it. However, Zatara can't find Zatanna since she is currently being mind controlled into marrying an immortal Las Vegas casino owner, who would in turn sell Zatanna's soul to a demon in order to prolong his own life. Zatara manages to track down Zatanna and the casino owner and he frees her from the mind control she was under. The demon in question, Mammon, appears and tries to claim Zatanna's soul, but is fought off by the combined magical abilities of Zatara and Zatanna. Instead of wasting his time with the magicians, Mammon turns his attention to the casino owner and decides to take his soul, since he failed to deliver Zatanna's soul as promised. Before he can take the man's soul, Zatara saves him by striking Mammon down with a few cars. The casino owner then begs the magicians to destroy his soul by making him something without a soul, so he wouldn't have to spend all of eternity being tortured by Mammon. After some thought, Zatanna relents and turns the casino owner into a giant lump of gold. By this point Mammon returns and is none too pleased to discover the soul he was about to claim had been taken from him. The magicians manage to convince Mammon that the lump of gold would lead other mortals to desire it, which would ultimately lead to more greedy souls for Mammon to claim. Mammon approves of this and heads back to hell, leaving the magicians to breath a sigh of relief. This issue ends with Zatanna finally going to watch Zatara at a nearby casino, just like Zatara had always wanted.
This was a fantastic end to a great storyline. First off, Zatara was in this comic, so that's already a major plus right there. The story itself was a lot of fun, with each character(Zatanna, Zatara and even Mammon)getting a chance to shine, and the ending, with Zatanna finally taking the time to watch Zatara preform, was a really nice touch. This is one of those under the radar comics that is really, really good every month. Now if only Zatara would become a permanent supporting character here...
Score: 9 out of 10.
What an odd picture...
What an odd picture...
I cannot wait until I read this. I approve this rating!! I am glad they didn't screw this story line over with a terrible ending like the last one.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, Zantanna is fine.
ReplyDeleteSecond of all, if I read the review correctly, Zatanna didn't really do anything that heroic in this issue. I mean, they got rid of the villain by telling him how to get more souls? If they had no qualms about greedy people getting tortured eternally, they should have just given him the casino owner. I guess you could argue those greedy people are probably going to have to pay for their sins anyway or something, but it seems like the resolution of this story is that as long as Zatanna and Zatara save their own hides, all is right with the world.
Maybe it's all in the idea that they "saved" the casino owner instead of letting him be punished. I don't know...
Lisha, I was so afraid to read this one, 'cause I kept expecting it to end up as poorly as the Brother Night storyline did, but yeah, I def liked it! Hope you enjoy it when you give it a read too.
ReplyDelete"First of all, Zantanna is fine." That's always a good way to start a comment off! :P I guess to an extent you're right, Kello... I mean, bottom line is that Zatanna and Zatara basically convinced the demon to go away and wait for more greedy souls. In the short run at least the demon left, but this definitely wasn't one of those, "Heroes fight and vanquish villain" types of stories. It was more like, "Heroes screw up villain's plans, and have shaky peace agreement with villain" endings... I guess it was a matter of either letting the casino owner, who was begging Zatanna to save him from eternal damnation, go to Hell with Mammon, or hope that nobody else would be stupid enough to make a deal with Mammon. Either way, it wasn't gonna be a straight foward happy ending.