DC’s Zatannic Panic! #1 is an anthology of eight short stories about DC’s supernatural superheroes. The 80-page comic opens with a short but sweet Zatanna story by writer Lyndon Radchenka and artist John McCrea. A little light on horror, it explores Zatanna’s father teaching her the storytelling structure of magic, in the style of The Prestige, and how it influences her present disposition.
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The next story sees Gigi Cavenago return to Batman after his excellent Batman/Dylan Dog miniseries. Titled “Ouroboros”, its restrained use of speech bubbles is a welcome change of pace; however, the story’s gimmick of being a palindrome, which can be read both backwards and forwards, doesn’t live up to its full potential. Nonetheless, his art retains its distinctive charm.
What comes after is my personal highlight: a Riley Rossmo-drawn and Daniel Warren Johnson-penned story about Plastic Man on a suburban Halloween night. It has all the elements of a good horror, tackling existential anxieties made physical through grotesque terror.
Following that, there’s the Warlord, a forgotten DC character getting his 15 minutes of fame, the Demon Etrigan, Raven, an adorable Swamp Thing story by Head Lopper mastermind Andrew MacLean, and last but not least, a fourth wall-breaking Ambush Bug epilogue.
The concluding chapter in this collection connects the previous seven into a webbed thread that’s more whimsy than horror. It goes to show that adding demons and their accompanying supernatural elements doesn’t automatically make a story scary. But Ambush Bug’s meta commentary ends this series of unrelated stories with a satisfying enough bang. Like Zatara says to his daughter at the beginning of this issue, what an audience wants from a magic show is a memorable takeaway, and they’re left satisfied if the closing act wows them.
What makes a good horror story? Is it the detailed faces of screaming children? Is it vengeful spirits or rabid werewolves? Maybe it is a lingering feeling, unassuming, creeping up long after you’ve put down a book. Not every story sticks in DC’s Zatannic Panic!. Most are traditional narratives with few surprises. But as a whole, it’s an easily digestible Halloween appetizer.
DC’s Zatannic Panic! #1 is like a Halloween night haul. You go back home with your bag of collected candies. Some you like more than others, some your sweet tooth is sick of, but what you’ll find reminds you of childhood. That time when you didn’t know any better, when you believed rumors that your school used to be an old war hospital, or when you and your friends ran away after hours because you thought you heard an urban legend coming true.
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