Tag: Zatanna

Best of DC: Week of July 31st, 2019

Runner Up: Justice League Dark Annual #1 – James Tynion IV, Ram V, Guillem March, Arif Prianto and Rob Leigh

The world needs more Swamp Thing stories.

This annual was dark, far darker than most of the Justice League Dark tales so far because of how self contained it was and the sheer weight of the situation therein. Sure, it wasn’t a world ending cataclysm like the one they just stopped, but that doesn’t make it any less horrible. I’d never heard of Ram V before, but their storytelling, combined with Guillem March’s art makes me feel like I’ve been pulled back into the old days of Vertigo.

Magic is broken. After Wonder Woman and Zatanna used the Ruby of Life to repair the damage they did to magic after defeating the Lords of Order, magic itself is repairing itself, but in a manner that throws the old rules out of the window.

Consequently, the Parliament of Trees has been destroyed and now Swamp Thing has no one to answer to as the new Parliament of Flowers is seeking a new champion. After confronting Constantine about coming on as a consultant for the League, the con-man convinces Swamp Thing to go on the search for the new Avatar before he loses his humanity like Swampy did. Swamp thing tries to act like he doesn’t care, but goes off to find the man.

The story descends into something of a tragedy as we’re introduced to Oleander Sorrel, a flower botanist, and his wife Natasha. 

What makes this story so great is that, like the best Swamp Thing stories, it focuses on other characters and their own personal situations. The pair suffer in a broken marriage after the death of their son which causes Natasha to leave Oleander and himself delving deeper into his work, later resulting in his death. He becomes the Avatar of Flowers, but refuses to let go of his humanity after Swamp Thing tries to convince him that he is no longer a man.

He seeks out his wife and watches over her until Jason Woodrue, a very old DC villain that really hasn’t been seen since the early days of The New 52, whispers in Oleanders ear. Oleander listens and suddenly a boy that looks very close to their son appears at the door. Natasha is happy, then another child appears and another until Natasha is absolutely blind with love for her new kids.

But not all gifts are good. There’s no way that Woodrue doesn’t get something out of this himself. There’s always an underlying plot and Swamp Thing manages to uncover what really happened to Oleander. The fire that killed him was actually a pool of caustic that he laid in his flower bed and kills himself in. Oleander did die in the pool, but his memory lived on in the flowers that he planted. This revelation stuns Oleander and the children he created out of flowers begin to dissipate. He grows weary, knowing that Swamp Thing was right and Woodrue manages to convince him to rest for a while before feasting upon his flower flesh, regaining his own connection to The Green.

This annual definitely fit the title. It was Dark, not only from a storytelling standpoint, but also visually. Natasha’s post crying face was heart wrenching to see and Gullem March squeezed every bit of emotion out of it that he could. Her lips quivered, her eye makeup ran just a bit and there was a hopelessness that could be felt. Oleander’s transformation was a beautiful kind of macabre with his appearance, composed entirely of flowers, looking very sinewy and skeletal at the same time. Colors are very warm, juxtaposed against an ever growing sense of dread that culminated in the most haunting scene of Oleander growing more and more flower children. The shot is perfect as Oleander is shown to be a hapless man whose only intent is to make his wife happy, but his methods are horrifying almost wrong.

When the children begin to disappear following the revelation, light is shown on them while the background remains dark. Their petals waft away with the night winds as Natasha has to watch in horror, likely to be absolutely broken by the experience of losing her kids. Woodrue eating Oleander afterwards, however, is brutal. The color shifts to a deep red and Woodrue furiously munches on the flowers, gnawing and tearing his way into Oleander’s body and emerging as a new creature unto himself.

I haven’t been able to find anything about this Ram V person, but I want to read more of their work. This book was absolutely stunning and I hope that it does well enough to warrant another Swamp Thing mini-series or full run. Amidst the cancellation of the show after just one season, it’s definitely something the world needs more of. This story was chilling, well paced and had a great focus on someone else while keeping it’s main star tangential as he should be in things like these. This is a definite high recommend from me.

Best of DC: Week of June 26th, 2019

Best of this Week: Batman: Damned #3 – Brian Azzarello, Lee Bermejo and Jared K. Fletcher

It ended as it began; with a fall.

Barman: Damned has finally reached its epic conclusion and it was absolutely worth it. Brian Azzarello wrote this to be his most haunting and dark story to date since Joker and Lee Bermejo gave everything he had to make the art in this book better than almost everything in the previous issues.

Constantine starts the issue with a monologue about control and how no human truly has it. We’re surrounded in a constant maelstrom of chaos and those that seek true control know this fact better than everyone. Obviously as this speech is being made, Batman is the one being referred to as a heart forms from the body of a bat inside of a decayed skeleton.

This imagery, gruesome and disturbing, let’s on more than it appears, making a lot more sense by the end of the book. Batman awakens in a coffin and struggles to get out before being saved by a gigantic Swmap Thing as his roots break into the coffin and lift the grave from the ground, mostly destroying the cemetery. Swamp Thing is a very ominous force in this story, staying large and speaking slowly, with some questionable statements about what’s truly at stake in the search to solve how the Joker died.

Constantine shows up and immediately starts bickering with Swamp Thing with the Avatar of the Green telling Batman not to trust the con-man as a mysterious figure works their way through the darkness, bringing angel statues to life. Striking as much fear as the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who, the statues spring to life and attack Constantine only for Swamp Thing and Batman to fight them off. The scream for Batman to be theirs, the lettering indicating that the being that had been speaking to Batman in the past was talking through them. One of them creates a nasty gash on Batman’s face, leading towards his mouth and he smashes it and chases after the woman in the shadows. She whispers of fates written, promises made and secrets kept,  which sends Batman spiraling out and causes the angel statues to fall.

Constantine jokes about beating the Angels and Batman says that he wishes that he could find answers to what’s plaguing him and Gotham City to which Constantine relies of the veil between life and death being thin as he takes him to someone that may be able to help. The pair arrive at a club hidden from humanity, but not those that have magical knowledge or seek it. Zatanna appears and, at Constantine’s request, acts as a medium with Deadman joining them all as just a guest. 

Things start to take an even darker tone as Zatanna’s spirit calling appears to be very painful, washing the pages in a harsh red. Batman believes that she’s calling the spirit of the Joker or the woman that’s been following him and instead the spirit of a young Bruce Wayne appears, pulling Bruce, Constantine and Deadman in the body of a rat into Bruce’s memories. There, they see the young Bruce being caressed by a horrifying Enchantress who reveals that Bruce made a deal with her. I think all the way back in the first issue, she would make him fearless and the only payment that she would need was his tears. I think the implication was that she had some sort of hand in the death of the Waynes and symbolically Bruce Wayne died as well.

I have never been more afraid of Enchantress that I have of Bermejo’s interpretation of her. Her hair is scraggly, her mody is meatless, all skin and bones. Her fingers are gnarled and her face… mannequin-like with her mouth connecting to her eyes, all of it hollow with terror and malice with her teeth falling out and the skin cracking, almost like porcelain. Deadman bites her foot to distract her while Constantine picks up Joe Chill’s gun and shoots her three time. To me, this seems to be a clear mirror of the deaths of the Waynes as she is shot in the head, chest and in one last unseen place. Thomas was shot in the head, Martha in the chest and we never see how the Child Bruce dies, but with Enchantress’ death, Bruce’s spirit is released from her deal.

Batman sees his dead body and thinks that he’s dead and Constantine says that it’s likely the past that he needs to let go of that’s dead. Batman rebuffs him and decides to head to the one place that he hasn’t since going on this adventure with Constantine, the Gotham City Morgue. Constantine departs and tells Batman to be careful what he says to some “Almighty force.” Once inside, Batman meets the man in the green hood that ran away from him in the first issue who tells him that he “fought hell for his soul and stands before him in judgement,” and his identity is made clear; He is The Spectre, the embodiment of the Rage of God in the form of a man.

*Spoilers Ahead if you wish to read on your own and don’t want to know how things turn out*

It is here that we understand the grand picture of what happened and how Joker dies. In what turns out to be their last fight, The Joker simply stabs him. One stab to the left side of his body, likely puncturing the lung, and he knew that the injury was fatal. He fights the Joker, sending him over the ledge of The Gotham Bridge where he holds on for dear life. Batman holds out his hand, thinking of saving him because that’s what he does… but in fear of what Joker will do if there’s no Batman around, he closes his hand and the Joker plummets to his death, leaving Batman to die of his wounds.

This was Batman’s figurative fall. His moment of embracing fear, breaking his deal with Enchantress and allowing her to try and take his soul, was what caused all of this. He chose weakness and all of Gotham suffered for it, but Heaven was watching too. A drawer with an unknown body is opened and Batman is told that he will be judged as he has judged others and after peeking under the white sheet over the body, he laments that he wishes the Joker were still alive before his soul is sucked into the drawer and presumably the body.

The next scene we see if the fall from the start of the series and a Joker with much shorter hair rising from the water and laughing. I believe that this is a reincarnated Joker with Bruce’s now tortured soul at the helm of it as we see a final shot of Joker running his hands through his hir much like in The Killing Joke as in the final page, the heart from the opening is paid off as the final bits of panel bordering resembles a heartbeat monitor as they form the laugh “Ha” over and over.

This book was a stellar package of amazing. Bermejo’s art and his photorealistic style continues to amaze in his representations of our favorite characters. Constantine looks like a lithe snarky prick as he always should. Swamp Thing looks imposing and terrifying as more of a formless creature of The Green with a face that occasionally forms fists and his wooded, mossy appearance almost makes you feel like you touch him. As previously stated, Enchantress was horrifying and made to feel like more of a threat than she ever has. Zatanna was more beautiful than her first appearance, if only because she was in her classic costume.

Everything had an unsettling tinge of horror to it. The bat in the beginning as he opens to form the heart was very creepy. Swamp Thing, while being a good guy, still came off as terrifying with his glowing red eyes and lack of mouth. Zatanna’s spirit summoning aroused more thoughts of possession than anything else has either her face or the faces of the spirits were superimposed over hers. Bruce, as he was entering his memories slumped over, looks like he’s died, especially with the page being colored red.

Brian Azzarello crafted a great horror mystery that tied in so much of the magical community that Batman does his best to avoid and what circumstances would cause him to fall from grace. Batman comes off as heroic still, but he’s unfocused, something is in his head. He’s uncertain, especially because he doesn’t want to acknowledge what he did, so much so that it’s blocked from his memories. It’s a head trip to read because by the end you feel an unfortunate feeling of disappointment in the Dark Knight.

He’s supposed to be a hero, standing for justice and never giving in to his fears, but watching him close his fist and seeing the Joker’s fingers disappear from the ledge just sends a shock to the senses. Watching him take this journey, as Constantine keeps him from the Morgue as he was originally supposed to go to first, seems like he’s suffering through trials or stages of grief after what he’s done.

This story is truly the quality of what I expect from DC Black Label. With this stellar debut and it’s amazing ending, I only hope that future releases are this good. Batman: Last Knight and Superman: Year One have had amazing first issues and as long as they remain consistently good like Batman: Damned then this imprint will go down in history as one of the greats in prestige books. High recommend.