In May 2010, Zatanna received her second ongoing solo series, written by Paul Dini with art by Stéphane Roux. The series works as a sequel to Dini's Zatanna: Everyday Magic one-shot, featuring some of the same ideas and supporting cast introduced there.
Zatanna is no longer an active member of the Justice League of America and now has the time focus on her career as a Stage Magician back in San Francisco, though she still works as an active superheroine when needed.
The series begins when local police detective Dale Colton asks for her help in investigating the brutal murders of the ranking members of the city's organized crime families, suspecting that magic was involved. These murders lead Zatanna to discover that the local mystical criminal organization, led by Brother Night, has decided it is time to muscle in on more mundane villainy. After she solves this initial crime, and deals with the repercussions, the series follows her as she combats other supernatural threats to herself and others as she tours across the country.
The series was cancelled with issue #16 due to the relaunch of the DC Universe as the "New 52" in September, 2011, leaving the series plot Left Hanging.
Tropes:
- All Psychology Is Freudian: When Zatanna is in therapy, trying to find some way to deal with her crippling unease and dislike of puppets, the focus is on finding the key incident in her childhood that spawned her lifelong distaste. This is played even more straight as Zatanna outright says she hadn't been afraid of them as a child before one specific night, which most likely meant that something traumatic had happened. It was her dad who had turned Oscar Hampel into one of his puppets when he took a child Zatanna hostage after she witnessed him standing over a dead body with a knife.
- All Therapists Are Muggles: Subverted. Zatanna attends a group therapy session for people who have experienced supernatural occurrences. It gets double-subverted when it's revealed her therapist is actually a demon that is connected to the Big Bad (though the comic was canceled before the sub-plot went anywhere).
- Aloof Big Brother: An Aloof Older Cousin version. Zatanna and her cousin Zachary were always close as children, but Zachary now is struggling to make it big as a performer and Zatanna has yet to see even one of his shows. This leads to resentment when it appears that Zatanna has skipped one appearance, what might have been his big break, not because of any sort of global catastrophe or emergency with the JLA, but because she had a date. Of course, not everything is as it seems... Zatanna finally gets to his show in the end, of course.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: An Annoying Younger Cousin version. Zach can be an irresponsible showboat off-stage, which aggravates Zatanna to no end - especially when such behavior leads him to fall for Honey Trap demons.
- Always Second Best:
- Zachary Zatara, Zatanna's cousin and fellow magician, is always in her shadow both as a stage performer and as a hero. However, Zatanna does point out that Zack's unprofessional manner such as missing cues in front of a live audience makes double-billing with him unpleasant—especially since he brushes her off to go to a club rather than take her criticism seriously.
- Zatanna herself is disappointed when it takes her a full twenty-eight seconds to escape from a straitjacket, because Scott Free could do it in twelve.
- Attractive Bent-Gender: Mikey used to look like a stereotypical burly teamster, but now is a beautiful young woman who even looks good in Zatanna's stage costume.
- And I Must Scream:
- Fuseli tries to trap Zatanna in his nightmare dimension, preventing her real body from ever waking up, even if she's still conscious.
- Hampel when he's turned into a puppet by Zatanna's father. Zatanna suffers the same fate for months when he reverses the spell and turns her into a puppet.
- Asshole Victim:
- The victims of Brother Night's massacre turn out to be ruthless gangsters, which is why neither Zatanna nor Cole are too horrified by their gruesome deaths.
- The only people that Sargon the Sorcerer manages to kill are a pair of drug dealers and a mugger.
- Bad Boss: Mammon, as a demon, is prone to disciplining his minions when they disappoint him, but will also punish them even when he never expected them to succeed in the first place.
- Arc Villain:
- Issue #1 to #3 has Brother Night trying to take control of San Francisco
- Issue #4 to #6 has Zatanna evading Mammon's plan to capture her soul in New Vegas.
- Issue #7 has the unstable spirit of Sargon the Sorcerer going on a rampage in Los Angeles.
- Issue #8 to #11 has Oscar Hampel, the evil puppeteer with a grudge against John Zatara.
- Issue #12 has Backslash, an evil lout who captured a fairy and is using her powers to cause trouble in San Francisco.
- Issue #14 has Yuki-onna, a seductive demoness who's targeting Zachary.
- Issue #15 has a group of witch hunters trying to assassinate Zatanna.
- Issue #16 has Uriah, a Croatoan who invades Shadowcrest to steal from Zatanna.
- Back-to-Back Badasses:
- Issue #2 starts with Zatanna, Vixen and Black Canary fighting back-to-back against a group of werehyenas.
- Issue #6 has Zatanna and Zachary blasting away at Mammon's minions while they stand back-to-back.
- Badass Bystander: A Superman cosplayer manages to push two people out of the way of a crashing car.
- Bathing Beauty: Zatanna's ideal relaxing activity is a "bubble bath and a glass of Merlot". And taking a bath is exactly what she does after her first fight with Brother Night's gang. When she gets to New Vegas, she also longs for a shower, but keeps getting interrupted by either her cousin or the villains.
- Batman Cold Open: Issue #2 begins with Zatanna finishing up an adventure with the JLA: putting down a gang of werehyenas alongside Vixen and Black Canary. This is also used to established Zatanna is exhausted for the rest of the issue, while she still has to deal with Fuseli bothering her in her dreams.
- Between My Legs: When Zatanna first teleports into Brother's Night hideout, we get a shot of Zatanna's legs framing Brother Night as he slouches in his couch.
- Bewitched Amphibians: Less played for laughs when she comes across a scene of mobsters who've been brutally killed via magic. One of the victims is someone who's been turned into a still human-sized frog.
- Bilingual Bonus: The Sole Survivor to Brother Night's massacre in the club is a latino server who only speaks in Spanish. While Zatanna translates the gist of his dialogue to Colton, someone fluent in Spanish will obviously understand all of his dialogue.
- Big Bad: Brother Night is the Arc Villain of the first story, but is set up as the overall antagonist of the series when his powers begin to return and he's revealed to be connected to Dale... but then the series got canceled and the plotline was Left Hanging.
- Body Horror: Brother Night opens his war on the mundane mobs by murdering the upper echelons in a horrific and twisted fashion, mutating them into bizarre shapes and animals before they die.
- Bondage Is Bad: A S&M club is shown to be frequented by demons, supernatural serial killers, and a psychotic mob boss who trades in human souls. However Paul Dini, the writer, included a bondage club in an issue of Detective Comics that was portrayed in a much more positive and tolerant light and Batman was even shown to be a friend (as much as Batman is ANYONE'S friend) of the owner, having helped her out during a riot at the club weeks before. So the club in Zatanna is probably more Author Appeal and possibly a homage to the kinky Cenobites of Hellraiser.
- Boobs-and-Butt Pose: In Issue #1, there's a gratuitous fanservice shot of a nude Zatanna as she's stepping into her bath while posing in a manner to show her breasts and buttocks to the viewer, only said buttocks and Sideboob are covered up by Scenery Censor instead.
- Bound and Gagged: Zatanna is bound and gagged around three times during the comic's run. In fact, his first issue of Zatanna opened with a splash page of the character bound and gagged while in her stage outfit
◊. - Brainwashed: The second arc of her series features Zatanna herself brainwashed into marrying a man so that he can substitute her soul for his when the demon Mammon comes to claim him. This is not the first time he has done this, either, as the previous women he plunged into hell serve as the bridesmaids at the wedding.
- Brainwashed Bride: Benjamin Raymond drugged and hypnotized Zatanna into marrying him as part of his scheme to give her soul to Mammon to pay off the debt that would otherwise cause his own soul to be forfeited. When the plan fails, he has the gall to beg Zatanna to save him; she takes pity on him by transforming him into a lump of gold and obliterating his soul before Mammon could claim it.
- Breather Episode: The backup story of issue #9 shows Zatanna getting braces and trying to deal with a thief in a mall when she can't even speak properly.
- Butter Face: The Yuki-onna true appearance is still having the body of a gorgeous Ms. Fanservice, but her head is just a giant Monster Mouth.
- Caught Monologuing: When the witch hunters finally corner Zatanna, instead of just killing her, their leaders goes on a spiel about their work and the evils of magic, and how their cause is righteous. This gives Zatanna enough time to finish healing her wound, thus getting her magic back and then easily dealing with them.
- Charm Person: Brother Night is easily able to get normal people under his control by just being near them, and they find themselves unable to resist his orders.
- Combat Tentacles: Yuki-onna can turn her fingers into tendrils and uses them to puppet Zachary and attack Zatanna.
- The Commissioner Gordon: Detective Colton becomes Zatanna's ally and Friend on the Force in San Francisco.
- Continuity Nod:
- When Fuseli is showing Zatanna her worst nightmare, we get some panels of traumatic moments from other stories, like her final encounter with her mother Sindella, her father Taking the Bullet for her in Swamp Thing and Batman, Catwoman and Dr. Light (the primary targets of her memory tampering incident in Identity Crisis (2004)) screaming at her.
- Ralph and Sue Dibny appear in the audience at Zatanna's "wedding," and she remarks how wonderful it is that they are not dead anymore.
- When it is revelated that John Zatara wiped Zatanna's memories of a tragic incident to calm her down, Fuseli remarks that such actions must run in her family.
- At the end of Captain Carrot and the Final Ark, the Zoo Crew had ended up in the main DC Universe, where they were normal animals. The Justice League found them and Zatanna said she could use another bunny in her act. The peculiar behavior of one of Zatanna's rabbits, the offspring of a brown stray she took in, is briefly mentioned in one issue.
- A lot of the characters introduced in the Zatanna: Everyday Magic one-shot story return for this series, like Zatanna's crew members Arnie and Andre, and the evil witch Nimue who shows up at Brother Night's bar.
- Cut Short: When the series was canceled in the lead-up to the Post-Flashpoint DC Universe, Paul Dini left the series and was replaced by other writers for the final issues. These issues did not follow the ongoing plot of the series, leaving several threads dangling, such as the entire Brother Night arc and Zatanna's predicted conflict with The Spectre.
- Deader than Dead: After finally being caught by his Deal with the Devil that he had managed to avoid for decades, Benjamin Raymond is only a few minutes away from being dragged down to Hell for eternity. He pleads for Zatanna's help but, as she rightly points out, this is a situation of his own making, and he had earlier tried to substitute her soul in his place, why should she fight a demon on his behalf? He becomes so desperate that, if she will not rescue him, then at least kill him; not just kill him, but rend his soul asunder and remove it forever from existence, since even not existing would be better than what will happen to him if Mammon should be able to claim him. Taking pity on him, Zatanna consents, and transforms him into a soulless, inanimate lump of gold. Luckily, Mammon appreciates the irony of a greedy man being turned into a symbol of greed.
- Deal with the Devil:
- Brother Night sacrificed the souls of thirteen children to the lords of Hell atop Mount Diablo in return for his power as an Evil Sorcerer and Necromancer. When Zatanna faces him atop Mount Diablo to save her friends, she defeats him by using her Sdrawkcab Speech to force him to renounce his power and his contract, freeing the souls of the kids to move on to their proper afterlife and depowering him so that he can be incarcerated by the regular authorities, but also dooming him to Hell when he dies.
- The second arc of the series revolves around a decades-old deal with the demon Mammon, who lays claim to the soul of Benjamin Ramond, the man who built Las Vegas. Raymond has kept himself out of hell by feeding Mammon the souls of innocent women in his stead.
- Demonic Dummy: Complete with a requisite kitchen knife and homicidal tendencies. Indeed it turned out to be a murderer named Oscar Hampel who was magically transformed into a puppet by Zatanna father decades earlier.
- Disproportionate Retribution:
- Zatanna turns some party girls that mistook her for a waitress into birds. Granted she's cranky that they're partying in her apartment without permission and she turns them back pretty quick.
- Backslash in issue 12 kills some merfolk simply because they failed to tell him where he could find a McDonald's.
- Distracted by the Sexy: One sidewalk cleaner gets distracted in the background while he stares at Zatanna as she walks past him, ending up flooding the sidewalk instead.
- The Don: Brother Night is already the top crime boss in the Mystic Underworld of San Francisco mystical realm, but he wants to expand to the mortal half. His first move towards doing this is by killing The Don of the mortal San Francisco.
- Due to the Dead: While Zatanna acnowdeledges they were all Asshole Victims, she still makes a point to reverse the humiliating Forced Transformation that Romalthi inflicted on the human gangsters before killing them. As Zatanna says, "The world needs to see that humans, not monsters, were killed tonight".
- Dream Spying: Before Fuseli attempts to attack Zatanna in her dreams, he spies on her neighbors first, as a way to establish his Dream Walker powers.
- El Cid Ploy: After Zatanna has freed her assistants and crew from Brother Night she has to remain and deal with him for good. However, she explains that somebody needs to perform at their scheduled show and she dresses Mikey in her outfit and sends them all back to the stage.
- Enfant Terrible: Out of every member of Brother Night's gang, Teddy is the one that bothers Zatanna the most, due to looking like an innocent child, but being a creepy mysticaç murderer.Zatanna: "Teddy. Don't get me started on Teddy."
- Entitled Bastard: After Benjamin Raymond tries and fails to sacrifice Zatanna to Mammon, and gets his own soul claimed instead, he has the gall to ask Zatanna to help him. She takes pity on him and transforms him into an inanimate lump of gold so he won't suffer.
- Erotic Dream: In #16 (the final issue of the 2011 series), a seriously sleep-deprived Zee is woken from a dream involving two hunky men and a tub of cocoa butter when Uriah breaks into her library. She spends the rest of the issue trying to deal with the pest as quickly as possible so she can get back to the dream.
- Evil Brit: Backslash, albeit a scrubby example, is a British thug.
- Evil Puppeteer: Oscar Hampel, a.k.a. Stringleshanks, was a murderous puppeteer transformed into a lifeless dummy that resembled Hampel's most famous marionette Stringleshanks by Zatanna's father John Zatara. However, the spell-bound Hampel's wooden existence to Zatara's bloodline. Hampel would later be awakened by Zatanna's presence and come back to plague her as a Demonic Dummy.
- Extremely Short Timespan: The first two arcs of the series takes place in less than twenty-four hours.
- Eye of Horus Means Egypt: When the Mummy Hassan speaks his Speech Bubbles are filled with Egyptian Hieroglyphs which include the "Eye" and even Ra's sun disk, with neither one actually being words in the Egyptian language just religious symbols.
- Fat Bastard: The demon Mammon is depicted as obese and sadistic.
- Flashy Teleportation: Most times Zatanna teleports throughout the series, it's accompanied by flashy smoke, similar to the kind a Stage Magician use.
- For the Evulz:
- Fuseli, the Lord of Nightmares, enjoys twisting people's psyches just for the hell of it.
- This is also Backslash's explicit motivation:Backslash: "What we doin' is I'm about to hack you up into tiny bits and listen to you scream. And why, always with why. Why is the same reason I nick beers from the shop, same reason I gutted them fish, same reason I do anything— 'cos I want to. 'Cos I can. No other reason necessary."
- Fun with Palindromes: Issue #12 has Zatanna (who, recall, pronounces the words in her spells backward) going up against a villain with time-reversal powers that allow him to negate her spells by having them sound like normal words. She gets around his powers by casting spells in palindromes (such as "Nurses Run" causing him to be stampeded by an army of running nurse mannequins).
- Gender Bender: Mikey is the result of an as-yet-unspecified application of the trope. We see her in a "three years ago" dream sequence as a burly male.note
Word of God from Paul Dini says "Zatanna didn't do it & can't reverse it; Mikey brought it on him/herself. Now Mikey's in an interesting place where she has to sort out her feelings about this." While there's a lot more to Mikey's story, with the book's cancellation, it doesn't seem likely that her story will be told any time soon, if ever. - Godiva Hair: One shot in issue #2 has Ember lying at Brother Night's couch nude save for her hair that is covering her breasts. Given Brother Night's disheveled clothes it's implied they just finished having off-screen sex.
- Good Is Not Dumb: When Oscar Hampel claims that he was turned into a puppet because of a tragic series of events almost out of his control, and that his actions were an isolated event, Zatanna accepts that her father, for all his wisdom and power, was only human. She gives Oscar the benefit of the doubt and agrees to help him become human again... After she runs him through a magic Lie Detector, that is. After all, just because her father was not perfect does not mean he was wrong this time, and she is going to make sure before she takes any action.
- Hellfire: The fire demons that attack Zatanna use hellfire, which can't be easily be put out. Zatanna then resorts to finding a priest and having him bless the water so she can use it to defeat the fire demon trio.
- Holy Water: In order to defeat the Hellfire demon trio Mammon sent to kill her, Zatanna finds a priest and has him bless the hotel pool, and is now able to destroy them by blasting them with the holy water.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Almost every villain of her series is defeated when Zatanna outdoes them in magic and trickery, often inflicting on them the very punishment they meant to do to her.
- Homage Shot: In Brother Night's nightclub, Morn is seated at the bar.
- Honey Trap:
- Mikey dresses up in a revealing outfit (daisy dukes and a tight blouse) in order to seduce Oscar Hampel to find out what happened to Zatanna.
- Yuki-onna (Who despite the name is a Succubus rather than a Yuki Onna) attempts to kill Zach by approaching him as a gorgeous woman and trying to lure him to an "intimate location". Zatanna manages to put a stop to her because she gets the chance.
- Humans Are Flawed: When Zatanna is faced with the results of her father's temper, the victim claims it was all a tragic misunderstanding that sprang out of desperation. Zatanna, despite the love and respect she has for her father, recognizes that he was only human. Just because he meant well did not mean he was infallible, and she is willing to investigate further. Okay, the guy did deserve it, but the point still stands.
- Human Sacrifice: Brother Night acquired his powers by filling graves with the bodies of children and offering them to the Lords of Hell.
- Hypocritical Humor: When Zatanna is lecturing Zach about using magic responsibly to restore the karmic balance he asks where was the karmic balance in turning the party girls into doves and dropping them into the pool. She just says that they pissed her off.
- I Have You Now, My Pretty: Raymond attempts to marry Zatanna after he has her captured, and she's forced to comply thanks to a magical roofie. She's rescued by that fate from Zachary.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: The Witch Hunters attempt to shoot down Zatanna with machine guns, but they somehow end up missing every shot despite all that she's doing to dodge them is swinging in a rope.
- Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Mammon is willing to grant Benjamin Raymond eternal life, youth, and freedom from hell in exchange for Zatanna's soul. It would be the prize of his entire soul collection.
- Instant Costume Change: Thanks to her magic, Zatanna is often just instantly changing between outfits throughout the story. This is also how she proves to Detective Dalton that she isn't just a mere stage magician. She also changes a towel-clad Bunny into her working outfit just so she can get her and Zachary out of her apartment as quickly as possible.
- Instant Sedation: Mikey drugs a piece of cloth and uses on Oscar Hampel, who passes out almost instantly as Mikey shoves the cloth into his face.
- I Was Having Such a Nice Dream: In the final issue of the run, Zatanna is awakened from a dream involving two hunky men and a tub of cocoa butter by an intruder in her library.
- Kung-Fu Wizard: The series has constant reminders that while Zatanna is an extremely powerful magician, she's also a trained martial artist and can still defeat some Mooks by herself with just hand-to-hand combat. This is especially evident in issue #15, where she has to fight off the witch hunters with only her martial arts, and she even has a flashback showing her dad trained her for just such occasions.
- Lady in Red: The seductress Yuki-onna that targets Zachary is wearing a striking skin-tight red dress.
- Left Hanging: The story was canceled before the plotlines involving Brother Night, Detective Colton and Mikey could be wrapped up.
- Lighter and Softer: Zatanna's solo series is basically the fantasy-comedy series of DC. Zatanna's crippling phobia of puppets, while treated as a serious problem which requires therapy to resolve, was discovered in the most hilarious way possible: performing on Sesame Street. She threw up in Oscar's trash can.
- Love Potion: The Roses Benjamin gives to Zatanna function as one when she smells them. The effect is even more potent when he slashes her with one of its thorns.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Upon interrogating his estranged birth mother, Colton discovers he is Brother Night's son.
- The Mafia: The first arc revolved around a supernatural Mob War, with the mystical criminal underworld attempting to wrest control of San Francisco from the traditional Mafia.
- Magic Feather: Averted in the ongoing series where speaking her spells backwards is an essential component of her magic. Some previous writers had claimed that the speaking spells backwards routine was just a focusing technique and that Zee could cast spells without it.
- Man of Kryptonite: Zatanna encounters a low-level thug named Backslash who has a magical sword that gives him the ability to rewind short bursts of time, turning her backwards speech into forwards speech and completely invalidating her powers. She is only able to stop him by speaking in palindromes which are the same back and forth, such as "Nurses, run!" and "Ogre, flog a golfer, go!".
- Mind Screw: In the second arc, when Zatanna is being brainwashed into an eternal torment in Hell, her perspective is of a joyous wedding ceremony attended by all her friends. Including Ralph and Sue Dibny.
- Mistaken for Servant: Zatanna arrives at her hotel room after an exhausting show she finds that her cousin, Zatarra, is throwing a wild party filled with people she does not know. When several women mistake her for a waitress due to her stage attire and ask for their drinks Zatanna, already extremely frustrated, turns them into birds and has them fly away.
- Modesty Towel:
- Played With near the end of the first issue. When Zatanna's naked climbing into her bath, a magically floating towel blocks the view of her lower body, preserving her modesty even if she's not actually wearing it.
- Zachary's assistant Bunny is caught wearing one in Zatanna's apartment. Zatanna is quick to use her magic to clothe her and kick then her and Zachary out.
- Monster Mouth: Yuki-onna's true form has her worm-like mouth taking up the entiry of her head, including a huge tendril-like tongue.
- Muggle: Detective Dale Colton had no prior experience with the supernatural before he came to Zatanna, and was not even sure if he really believed it existed. The only reason he came to her at all is that the mystical criminal underworld has decided it was time to move in on the Muggle underworld, which has no way of dealing with such otherworldly events.
- My Grandson, Myself: Benjamin Raymond, the villain of the Vegas arc, knew Zatanna's father several decades ago, and is now posing as his own son to strike up a "friendship" with Zatanna herself.
- Noodle Incident: The exact circumstances that led to Mikey now being a beautiful woman.
- "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: When Fuseli is Dream Spying on Zatanna's neighbors, one of them happens to be having a "naked in public" nightmare, which Fuseli dismisses as "kid's stuff".
- Offhand Backhand: While Zatanna's talking with Brother Night, a monster attempts to attack her from the back, but she casually disposes of him with a backhand magical blast that turns it into a harmless bunny.
- Organic Bra: The fire demons take the form of nearly naked women that are Wreathed in Flames, they curiously seem to have some kind of organic fire underwear on their bodies.
- Painful Transformation: Brother Night killed his targets with their transformations into horrific inhuman things.
- Paparazzi: Zatanna is not a fan of the media, and one of the reasons she hates traveling to Los Angeles is because there are paparazzi everywhere. When she stops a high-speed chase that happened to pass her by she is already dreading the countless pictures that will surface of the event, followed by articles, media theories (Primarily focused on if she has gained or lost weight), and videos uploaded to "Youface" that have been edited to make her look like the villain.
- Proscenium Reveal: The series begin with Zatanna being Bound and Gagged while Joker and Dr. Light and seemingly about to execute her with a drill. The very next page reveals it was just a part of her Stage Magician show, and the villains are actually just actors.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: When Zatanna arrives at her hotel room after an exhausting show she finds that her cousin, Zach, has thrown a wild party filled with people she does not know. When several women mistake her for a waitress and ask for their drinks Zatanna, already extremely frustrated, turns them into birds and has them fly away. Nothing bad happens to the women while they were birds, and Zatanna returns them to human form soon afterwards, but nobody sees any real problem with her mutating innocent bystanders just because she was incredibly annoyed.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: A officer that was guarding Brother Night suddenly committing suicide just as Night was attacking his doctor is implied to have been this, implying that Brother Night's powers are slowly returning even after being defeated and de-powered by Zatanna.
- Puppeteer Parasite: Yuki-onna shoves one of her tendril-tongue inside Zachary's mouth, and takes control of his body, magic powers included.
- Puppet Permutation: Zee's father once transformed the Serial Killer Oscar Hampel into a marionette. Decades later, Hampel took vengeance by turning Zatanna into a marionette: a form in which she was trapped for several months.
- Really 700 Years Old: Benjamin Raymond sold his soul to Mammon years ago in exchange for wealth and youth, and every few years he marries an innocent woman and gives Mammon her soul in order to extend his life. By the time he moves on to Zatanna he has been doing this for quite a while, and knew her father back when he was his own father.
- Revealing Reflection: Zatanna sees that Romanthi is about to attack her from behind when she sees his reflection on her wine glass and she uses Swap Teleportation on Nimue, making him attack her instead.
- Rogues Gallery: Zatanna refers to Brother Night's mooks as "a veritable rogues' gallery of the mystic underworld."
- Salem Is Witch Country: In "Witch Hunt" Zatanna sends some witch hunters that attacked her back to the Salem trials where they are ironically mistaken for witches by the Salemites who prepare to burn them at the stake. As Zatanna watches them from afar, her narration reveals she’ll save them before they actually die.
- Scenery Censor: When Zatanna uses her magic to strip off her clothes in order to take a bath, her strategically placed arms a the floating objects block any naughty bits from being seen.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: A more literal example than usual, as Oscar Hampel — in the form of his puppet, Stringleshanks — is sealed into a magician's milk can.
- Self-Made Orphan: Oscar Hampel implies that he murdered his parents when forced to explain his past to Zatanna.
- "Sesame Street" Cred: Zatanna tried to star in an episode of Sesame Street within the series, but her crippling phobia of puppets meant that she did not even get through her act before she wound up throwing up in Oscar's garbage can. This actually leads her to seek therapy to try and deal with her fear of puppets and instigates the third arc of the series.
- Series Continuity Error: In issue #14, by guest writer Adam Beechen, the resolution to the story hinges on Zatanna's power not being able to affect living things. Not only has she used her powers on living beings many times in her history, but in this series alone she has turned a guy into a rat, turned three women into birds, turned a guy into a lump of gold (destroying his soul in the process) and her father used the same magic she does to turn a man into a puppet. Zatanna did once have a limitation on her powers of only being able to manipulate elemental matter for several years, but that facet of her character was rewritten several years before this series came out.
- Ship Tease:
- There are some hints throught the story that Zatanna and Dale are attracted to each other, but this never goes anywhere.
- During Zatanna's "marriage" to Raymond, she has a vision of all of her JLA friends as guests to the wedding. When she sees Bruce she thinks she sees a "trace of regret" on his expression, implying she wants him to be attracted to her.
- Shotgun Wedding: Zatanna is drugged and brainwashed into walking down the aisle with a man she barely knows (though he did know her father pretty well). However, he only wants her soul so he can give it to the demon Mammon in lieu of his own.
- The Show Must Go On: After she frees them from Brother Night, Zatanna explains to her cast and crew that they still have a scheduled appearance, dresses Mikey in her costume, and sends them back to the stage to perform.
- Show Within a Show: Apart from Zatanna and Zatara's own magical performances, the beginning of the third arc of the series recounts when Zatanna tried to guest-star in an episode of Sesame Street, but could not perform because of her fear of puppets.
- Small Name, Big Ego:
- Fuseli likes to think of himself as the lord of all nightmares but to Brother Night he's just a goon, and as soon as Zatanna gets the upper hand in their fight he starts begging for his life.
- Brother Night himself seems to think he's an elite among the forces of hell, but Zatanna says his powers are nothing more than palor tricks on a cosmic level.
- Zatanna herself gets a taste of this during her discussion with The Spectre:The Spectre: I don't tell you how to use a thumb tip, don't tell me how to administer God's wrath.
Zatanna: Wow, that makes me feel like I'm completely nonexistent on a cosmic scale.
The Spectre: Mission accomplished, then.
- Slashed Throat: The witch hunters who ambush Zatanna manages to slash her throat with an arrow. It's not enough to be lethal, but she's unable to speak (thus no Sdrawkcab Speech based spellcasting) and will bleed out soon if she doesn't deal with it. She staunches the bleeding with a cloth and later heals the wound via a magical oilment.
- Slasher Smile: Brother Night, the villain of the first arc, bears a sickeningly wide grin that is inhuman (Literally) and highly disturbing.
- Slave to PR: Mammon will punish his assassins for failing in a mission, even though he never expected them to succeed, because to let them slide would set a bad precedent.
- Slipping a Mickey: Benjamin Raymond convinces women to marry him by using a magical roofie on them, which is made by Mammon.
- Slouch of Villainy: Brother Nigh is often seen slouching is his extravagant sofa at his mystical club, usually with Ember right beside him.
- Star-Spangled Spandex: Zatanna creates a star-spangled gala dress to go to an event. Mikey is convinced the stars are actually real.Mickey: [regarding Zatanna's dress] Are those stars?!
Zatanna: Maybe.
Mickey: Those are real %&$#ing stars! - Succubi and Incubi: Zatanna identifies Yuki-onna as a succubus, despite the name is a clear reference to a Yuki Onna. But Yuki-onna's gorgeous appearance and Honey Trap modus operandi do indeed fit the bill for a succubus.
- Superheroes Wear Capes: The actor that plays Dr. Light for Zatanna's show complains about how hard it is to wear capes and is in disbelief that superheroes and villains often wear them.
- Supernatural Floating Hair: When Yuki-onna reveals her supernatural nature, her long hair starts floating above her.
- Swap Teleportation: To escape from being grabbed by Romalthi and suffer from his Forced Transformation powers, Zatanna uses her magic to switch places with Nimue at the last second, and Nimue is the one who ends up getting turned into a slug.
- There Are No Therapists: Averted. It turns out Zatanna has a crippling phobia of puppets, which has gotten so bad that she could not even guest-star on an episode of Sesame Street without vomiting on-set before her scene was through. However, she is currently undergoing therapy to help deal with this issue and has discovered the source of her unease in an unpleasant incident from her childhood. Sure, with a mystical therapist, but still.
- This Is a Drill: The first issue begins is a crucified Zatanna about to be pierced by a drill, but we find out soon after it's just part of her stage magician show and she easily escape the situation with her magic. The drill was' actually real though.
- Time Rewind Mechanic: Backslash, a British chav that inexplicably acquired a fairy-enchanted sword (modeled after clock hands) that allowed him to rewind short periods of time. Along with allowing him to avert blows, reversing time completely nullified Zatanna's Sdrawkcab Speech based spellcasting. She had to improvise palindrome spells to work around this.
- Transferable Memory: Zatanna uses her magic to delve into the mind of the Sole Survivor of Brother's Night massacre, thus being able to "remember" his memories of the event.
- True Companions: Zatanna's cast and crew are closer to friends than employees, and after she frees them from Brother Night they refuse to run away and leave her to face him alone. It is only by explaining that they have a show to do and assuring them of her safety that she gets them to leave.
- Undignified Death: Brother Night does this to the local mafia in San Francisco in order to impose his rule there, killing them after transforming them into animals. Zatanna ruins his message by undoing the Forced Transformation.
- Villains Want Mercy:
- Fuseli begs for mercy after being defeated by Zatanna, and she settles for sparing him for a favor, though she still seals him in her hat in the meantime, to his humiliation.
- Benjamin Raymond, having made a deal with Mammon to help him collect souls in exchange for extended life, tries and fails to sacrifice Zatanna. This causes his own soul to be forfeit to Mammon, and he has the nerve to ask Zatanna to help him. She can't stop Mammon from claiming him, but takes pity on him and transforms him into an inanimate lump of gold so he won't suffer.
- Viva Las Vegas!: The Vegas arc takes place in Las Vegas. Zatanna is there performing her world-famous stage act, and her cousin Zachary is trying to break into the big time himself with his own show. Ultimately, Zatanna comes into conflict with the demon Mammon, the personification of greed and wealth, who bought the soul of the man who helped build Las Vegas decades ago as a monument to greed.
- Weirdness Censor: Dale Colton explains that most normal people have a lot of trouble accepting the truth about magic and such, even when they hear about it on TV and have to deal with the aftereffects, which is why magic is still a "secret" in the DCU, despite Zatanna herself being a world-famous Stage Magician with actual magical powers who is a member of the Justice League of America. This is particularly frustrating, even to Zatanna herself, because here there is no Masquerade, the supernatural world wants to be recognized, but the people are not listening.
- Weirdness Censor: In the first arc, detective Dale Colton explains to Zatanna that people have a lot of trouble accepting the truth about magic, even though Zatanna herself is a world-famous Stage Magician with actual magical powers who is a member of the Justice League of America. No matter how often there is verifiable documentation of legitimate supernatural affairs people prefer to look the other way and hum really loudly, which explains why magic is still a "secret" in The DCU. This is particularly frustrating, even to Zatanna herself, because here there is no Masquerade, the supernatural world wants to be recognized, but the people are not listening. The alternate argument would be that in a world populated by aliens who can fly and shoot lasers out their eyes and gets invaded once a month, most people probably don't really see much difference between natural and supernatural as one could easily be used to mimic the other.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Zatanna, it turns out, has a serious and crippling phobia with regards to puppets. Not voodoo dolls or wax effigies, those she can handle with no problems, but with actual puppets with their hanging strings and painted-on eyes. Her fears extend back to her childhood and a traumatic incident she experienced with her father. When she tried to guest-star on an episode of Sesame Street, reasoning that helping educate and entertain children was worth any sort of personal discomfort, she did not even make it through her scene before she vomited into an on-set trash can. She is currently in therapy to help her deal with this issue, averting There Are No Therapists.
- The Witch Hunter: A group of generic witch hunters attempt to assassinate Zatanna in issue #15, under the belief that all magic is evil.
- Wreathed in Flames: The fire demons Mammon sends after Zatanna look like middle-aged women whose bodies are completely clad in flame, including Flaming Hair.
- You Don't Want to Know: Zatanna regrets bringing up The Spectre to Cole.Zatanna: [Observing the results of Brother Night's massacre] It's like The Spectre went on a bender.
Detective Dale Colton: The Spectre?
Zatanna: Better you don't know. - You Have Failed Me: Mammon plunges his elemental assassins into the fires of perdition for failing to kill Zatanna, even though he never really expected them to succeed in the first place. Letting them slide would set a bad precedent.
- You Monster!: In issue 12, Backslash is called a monster by his fairy companion for murdering some merfolk all because they failed to tell him where he could find a McDonald's.
- Yuki Onna: In issue #14, Zatanna faces off against a creature who is a yuki-onna In Name Only: she is more of a cross between a gorgon and a succubus (Zatanna in fact explicitly refers to her as a succubus at one point) who controls Z's cousin Zachary (who got attracted to her in one of his many instances of thinking with his "bottom head") to make him fighting her.
