Zatanna #8

Review: We get started with Zatanna visiting her psychiatrist, in order to try to overcome her fear of puppets. Yes, puppets... And who can blame her?! Those damned things are CREEPY!!! But I digress... Now where was I? Oh yes, the puppets. Zatanna explains to her shrink that she had gone to received an award for her magic act, and that on the way to the stage she spotted a display case full of puppets. They freak her out a bit, but she decides to go on-stage anyway to get her award. During her acceptance speech, she spots one of the puppets out of the corner of her eye, standing on the edge of the stage, watching her. Needless to say, Zatanna quickly wraps the speech up and rushes back outside, where she discovers that the puppet she thought she saw was still in its case. The shrink asks Zatanna if there was an instance in her past explaining her irrational fear of puppets, and all Zatanna can come up with is when her father was preforming at a Vaudeville revival show with a world-renowned puppeteer when she was a little girl. While her father wasn't around, Zatanna wandered into the path of a murderer, and blacked out. The shrink tells Zatanna that she should meditate on that scene, and Zatanna leaves, planning on doing just that. Upon heading home, Zatanna looks into the puppeteer from that old Vaudeville show, and learns that soon after that act with her father, he vanished. Since she was unable to ask him for help, Zatanna goes to sleep and hunts down Fuseli, a nightmare demon she had dealings with a few issues back. Zatanna tells Fuseli to enter her dreams so she could head back to her childhood and the time she ran into that murderer, since that seemed to be where her fear of puppets began. The demon complies, and Zatanna realizes that the murderer was the puppeteer, and that when she happened across him, he was in the process of stabbing some poor sap to death. Not wanting any witnesses, the puppeteer goes to stab little Zatanna, but her father arrives, and flies into a rage. Zatanna's father turns the puppeteer into a puppet as punishment for his actions, and since Zatanna was hysterical due to what she had witnessed(and really, who wouldn't be after seeing THAT?!)Zatanna's father mindwipes Zatanna, causing her to forget the entire scene. Now having her answers, Zatanna wakes up, and this issue ends with Zatanna tied to her bed with the creepy puppet standing over her with a knife.

Thoughts: I have to say that I enjoyed this comic. It wasn't the best issue of Zatanna that I've ever read, and it took a long time before we got to the main gist of the story, but it was still a good read. I would have preferred it if the story had moved a bit faster(basically this entire issue set up the scene on the last page), but hey, what can you do? So next issue should give us Zatanna versus a possessed puppet... That should be... something...

Score: 7 1/2 out of 10.Damned creepy puppets!!!