Zatanna's Search!

Once upon a time comic books were isolated islands in a vast ocean. Once in a great while the hero of this comic would cross over into the the title of another and even create teams, but for the most part the heroes battled their own villains in worlds remarkably similar but rarely connected. Marvel changed all that when they created the singular "Marvel Universe" in which the sum was far grander than the sum of its parts. DC trying to catch a sniff of that struggled mightily to find a way forward. "Zatanna's Search" is one such experiment.

Zatanna is the daughter of Zatara the Magician, one of DC's most venerable heroes from the heady Golden Age and the pages of Action Comics. Modeled on Lee Falk's Mandrake the Magician (as were dozens of others) Zatara had  the advantage of the sleek artwork of  creatorFred Guardineer to set him above his occult peers. But by the end of the Golden Age Zatara had vanished for the most part, as had nearly all the Mandrake dopplegangers.

In the early 60's DC was reviving its glorious past with hits like The Flash, Green Lantern, Justice League of America and more. And it came time eventually to dust off the stylish tuxedo of Zatara they went a different way indeed. They did it by giving him a daughter, the gorgeous Zatanna and further they made his current whereabouts a mystery his daughter was trying to solve. She had a quest and that search would take her across the landscape of Silver Age DC.

The story begins in the pages of Hawkman in a story titled "The Girl Who Split in Two!" by Gardner Fox and Murphy Anderson.

Though not rating a cover appearance, there was no doubt that Zatanna with her backwards incantations and fish-netted gams was the centerpiece of this singular issue of Hawkman. As rendered by Murphy Anderson she's totally pretty, if not quite as thoroughly sexy as she will come to be. In this story we meet Zatanna for the first time as she uses some surprise museum pieces to lure Hawkman and Hawkwoman to her aide and to help her find her lost father Zatara.

The story weaves into the pages of Detective Comics as Batman fights a witch. To be honest this installment of the quest by "Bob Kane" is pretty limited and has all the earmarks of a retro-continuity patch in order to wedge the highly popular Batman into the finale adventure. Zatanna, as such does not actually appear in this story.

Her search continues some months later in The Atom by Gardner Fox and Gil Kane and inker Sid Greene. She convinces The Atom to help invade a sub-atomic world inside a book where she suspects her father might be. Instead the duo find an old enemy named The Druid.

This time Gil Kane and Sid Greene get a gorgeous go at drawing the beautiful magician in her stylish fishnets and his version becomes rather the standard for some years, at least in my mind.

Because it was Kane and Greene who also drew her in Green Lantern as her quest continued months later still in another story by Gardner Fox.

 The pattern is now established. In this story Zatanna and Green Lantern go to another dimension and confronted the scarlet-hued Warlock of Ys.

By now it was normal that very few months Zatanna would surface in some comic and we'd learn a tiny mote more about the ultimate location of the missing Zatara.

It's not in the headliner Batman story when Zatanna  makes her return to Detective Comics.

But rather in the back-up feature starring Elongated Man by Fox and artist Carmine Infantino. Ralph Didny helps the magic girl find some more magic objects which aide her search for her father.

Her saga while continuous has a weird, nearly stealth quality to it. Fans of any one comic miss out on the total yarn which spins across several titles, often unannounced.

Finally the search is concluded in the pages of the Justice League of America by Fox and artists Mike Sekowsky and Sid Greene, and the heroes who have aided her along the way join forces to finally reveal the secret which has eluded them for nearly two years. Batman gets a starring role because he always did during these "Batmania" years.

The elments of the story which have been building are brought together and finally at long last.

The quest is ended as Zatanna and the assembled Leaguers plus Elongated Man (not then a League member) finally penetrate another dimension called Kharma to combat a sorceress named Allura and release the long-lost Zatanna.

DC was kind enough to collect these rare gems together in a delicious trade over a decade ago. I heartily recommend it to any and all fans of the Silver Age of comics. You will rarely find a package which offers a heartier glimpse of the style of stories told at DC during those glorious years. The cover is outstanding (see below) with great Boland artwork and a vintage JLA logo and even those memorable DC checks. 

The editors included also a later for both Zatara and Zatanna which were produced new for one of those highly entertaining digests DC offered up in the Bronze Age. This one is in actuality a secret origin of sorts by Gerry Conway with art by Romeo Tanghal and Vinnie Colletta, which over decade later reveals how Zatanna first learned of her father's disappearance and how she began her quest. Again alas, it seems DC was always working overtime to make sure that Zatanna's story reached as limited an audience as possible.

And just because it's so lovely here's a better glimpse at Brian Bolland's evocative cover art for the trade. Not everyone can make this costume work, but Bolland has cracked the code with gusto and panache.

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Bats!

I've been reading about the silent movie The Bat for a very long time. It supposedly was one of the influences on Bob Kane who went on to gain credit for creating Batman (though we all know Bill Finger was also very much responsible). The movie has a good reputation and I've long wanted to see it. Well I found it of all places in my local Wal-Mart buried (pun intended) in a Mills Creek collection of public domain items all featuring the "Undead".

The story is a classic Scooby Doo-style mystery with an infamous burglar and murderer named "The Bat" and who slinks around the city wearing an over-sized bat-head terrorizing the locality. The action switches to an estate outside of town which apparently contains a hidden room and in that room is a valise filled with stolen loot. The Bat needs to get the old lady and her maid who have just moved into the house out, so he can ransack the place. There are other mysterious characters lurking and the movie begins with a plea from the producers for moviegoers not to reveal the Bat's identity.

The action is pretty neat, as the Bat slithers around in the dark, leaping and whatnot. There's plenty of humor, mostly from the maid and a bumbling detective who cavort out of all proportion to the dangers they see. Though I must confess the maid manages to see things almost all the others miss. There is young couple trying to clear the young man's name who is accused of having stolen the money hidden in the house. There is a mysterious man who shows up all tattered and beaten. But amidst all the action, the old lady keeps on knitting, her face implacable as she confronts the menace with composure and clear thinking.


This movie got remade in 1931 by the same director, Roland West, as The Bat Whispers. That one I haven't seen yet. It was remade again in 1959 as just The Bat, this time starring Vincent Price and Agnes Morehead. This one is on this collection too. This remake has pretty much the same basic plot though the Bat is more a murderer than a thief. It's not a bad movie by any stretch, but it is a bit talky. Having been adapted from a play that's logical enough, but the action such as it is, is too sparse to really hold the attention in the way the original did. The red herrings are easier to spot in this one too I think, but that might be the familiarity with the plot. It's not identical to the original, but it does nicely play off its expectations.

One thing though about this remake is the Bat's costume. Not bat-head here. I swear it's like a Steve Ditko character came to life and trotted across the screen. The character wears a slim dark suit, a fedora, and a full-face mask that looks like he has no face most of the time. He's nimble and spends a lot of the movie racing around the house. Every time I saw him, I noted how much like the classic Ditko hero he looked. The Question, Mr.A, The Mocker, they all look pretty much alike and this Bat looks like 'em too.

All in all The Bat is a pretty good movie. The remake less so, but both can be diverting. I can see why Bob Kane might've been inspired to want to do something similar.

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