The third of the Seven Soldiers miniseries is, again, completely different from the other series that has gone before it. It's my least favorite of the batch so far, but will no doubt be some folks' favorite, and at any rate, it's still really good. This is one of the strengths of Seven Soldiers, that it can be many things to many people all the while being part of the same big structure, and I remain impressed and even awed by Morrison's magnum opus as a whole even if this particular part steered away from my interests a little bit. Basically, this is Morrison doing a Promethea-light, putting some of his studies of magic into one of the magical heroes of the DC Universe, and I tend to prefer my superhero magic a little less on the "grounded in real" side, so this feels a touch too "Vertigo" for me. However, a sense of fun still permeates the book, and Sook's artwork, with Gray's inks, is probably the best here that it has ever looked, even surpassing his excellent work on B.P.R.D.
While both Shining Knight and Guardian have been fairly straightforward in terms of structure, Zatanna veers a little closer to the style that Morrison employed on Seven Soldiers #0. The reality conflict is much more front and center in this one, and there are more overt references to the overall coming apocalypse, whereas Guardian and Shining Knight were mostly on the periphery of that central conflict. It's still approachable on a self-contained basis, but this is the first Seven Soldiers project so far that really does benefit a lot from having read at least Seven Soldiers #0. Certainly the reappearance of the new Gimmick Girl provides an interesting answer to what happened at the end of Seven Soldiers #0, although I have to express a little disappointment that even Morrison is falling into the trap of having his female characters raped or otherwise brutalized, an unpleasant trend making its way through the DC Universe.
There's a good chunk of this book that reads essentially like gibberish to me, as Morrison lays out the crazy layers of reality structure that mages see and travel in. Fortunately, while it's gibberish, it's fun gibberish, and it's hard not to fall in love with dialogue like "it's like those ghosts on the Daathian frontier, where thoughts are food." It's also not quite as deep into real magick theory as Moore's work on Promethea, staying closer to the superhero side of the story. Morrison doesn't give the sense that he's laying out lesson plans here, or even expounding on his theories, he's just using research that he's done to add flavor to the book.
In addition, while there are whole sections of this book that take place in strange, magic dimensions, there's also a mundane, grounded level on which the story works. The danger comes not just from an extra-dimensional threat, but from Zatanna's loneliness and resulting mistake. The humorous interaction between a bunch of superheroes with self esteem issues is strange and fun and makes a perfect framework for Zatanna's storytelling. Given that the story is told by intercutting flashbacks, I think a visual cue to indicate present and past time would have been useful, but it's relatively easy to work out what's happening when once you wrap your head around the whole story.
Which is probably the only visual complaint I have about the story, and it's more a "this would have been nice" than an actual complaint about a failure of storytelling. Sook's work started off looking very much like a Mignola knock-off, but with each project he's done, he's slowly started to migrate to his own style, and his work here is such that you wouldn't even think it was the same guy who did the early work. He blends the note-perfect expressions of Chriscross with the multi-layered storytelling of JH Williams and the strong attention to detail of someone like Frank Quitely, all while retaining the mastery of shadow that comes from emulating the work of Mike Mignola. Basically, as with the other Seven Soldiers projects, the art here is drop dead gorgeous from start to finish.
Seven Soldiers: Zatanna is as inventive, crazy, fun and beautiful as the other Seven Soldiers projects have been. Morrison sidesteps Zatanna's role in Identity Crisis to examine her as a heroine unto herself instead of as part of DC's continuity, and in so doing makes her a lot more vulnerable and a lot more interesting. There's also a really neat little twist about her magical powers, revealed on the last page of this issue, that promises to change her role even further in the course of this story. 8/10
