There is no DC character quite like Zatanna Zatara. Fishnet stockings, a top hat, a tuxedo jacket, and a voice that bends reality itself — she is showbiz and sorcery in perfect, improbable harmony. With Zatanna #1, writer and artist Jamal Campbell doesn’t just reintroduce her; he hands her a throne, a mission map, and an entire cosmos of magical realms to protect. This debut issue is dense, gorgeous, and propulsive — a 22-page spell that leaves you breathless and hungry for the next act. Here is every moment, page by page, told in full.
A Magic Without a Guardian
The issue opens on a stage bathed in warm light and swirling sparks. Zatanna floats above the spotlight, conjuring a glowing orb in her gloved hand, as her inner monologue begins: “I love magic. Magic is boundless wonder. Magic is unfathomable horror. Magic is unfettered knowledge.” But the third caption is a gut punch: “Yet, magic has LOST something.”
Below her, half-submerged in an otherworldly landscape, a mysterious ancient entity — shadowy, massive, attended by a raven-like ibis bird and cradling a thick arcane tome — reflects on the long silence of the magical world. Its exposition is chilling in its simplicity: in ages past, magic chose singular individuals called Overseers of the Realms, the greatest of mages, to guide and protect it. They were known as the Prime Magus. And there hasn’t been one in over a millennium.
Zatanna’s jaw is set. Her blue eyes sharp with resolve. “I think it’s long past time I changed that,” she says — and with that declaration, the issue is off to the races.
The very next page drops us into action without ceremony. An abandoned greenhouse-like structure, somewhere in the magical realms, is strewn with bodies. Government agents communicate frantically over comms: “Repeat, Delta Team, what is your status?” The grim reply comes: “Ehh, pretty sure they’re all dead.” The agents belong to a surveillance unit, watching from a distance, and they have a new variable on their scope — a third party approaching the target. A woman in a top hat. Heels clicking on broken glass. Magic crackling in her palm as she whispers THGIL (Light, backwards). Zatanna has arrived, and she is not here to ask questions before she acts.
“The Greatest Tour” — A World Introduced
The story’s title splash is one of the most ambitious opening spreads in recent DC memory. We see Zatanna’s face in gorgeous close-up — eyes closed, lips hovering near a glowing sphere she holds like the world in her palm — while the Shadowcrest Theater blazes in neon behind her. Framed around her face like portraits in a gallery are vignette windows into other realms and other adventures: Zatanna fighting a monstrous entity in a fire-lit realm; Zatanna surrounded by strange creatures in a purple wilderness; Zatanna in an elegant pose before a crowd of beings unlike any human.
Story Title
Writer, Artist, and Cover Artist: Jamal Campbell · Letterer: Ariana Maher · Senior Editor: Brittany Holzherr
The narration captions around the spread form a kind of proclamation — an advertisement for this new era of magical heroism. The Prime Magus vows that “no realm is too small” to receive her protection, that “no mortal is too ill-fated” to receive her aid, that “no god-thing is too proud to hear her words”, and that “no monster is too damned” to face her as a sword. It reads as both a mission statement and a theatrical handbill — perfectly in character for a woman who is simultaneously DC’s greatest sorceress and a stage magician who believes in the power of performance.
The Plague Spirit of Llatiren Na Sio
Our first real adventure takes place in Llatiren Na Sio, the Verdant City of Elves — a breathtaking realm of curved architecture, floating lanterns, and silver moonlight. Zatanna has tracked a roving supernatural entity called a Plague Spirit across multiple realms and multiple host bodies, and it has taken root inside a young elven woman named Va’irra. The possession has twisted her into a monstrous, feral creature — claws extended, eyes blank, screaming inhuman sounds that echo across the elfin skyline.
Zatanna approaches the thrashing Va’irra with careful deliberateness, hands raised in a gesture of peace. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay. I’m here to help, not hurt. Do you understand—” The creature’s answer is a shriek: “REEE~MIIIIIIII!!” — and a slash of claws that sends Zatanna skidding backward. Campbell’s art here is extraordinary; the possessed Va’irra is simultaneously pitiable and genuinely terrifying, her body contorted and her face obliterated by the spirit’s hunger.
Zatanna steadies herself and begins to work. She calls on her familiar companion Allura — a small, cat-like creature of pure magical energy — and commands in her trademark backwards-speech: A REGGIB EGATS (“A bigger stage!”). She gives Allura the task of keeping the host body immobilized and safe while she performs the genuinely difficult magic of separating a spirit from its host without harming the person inside. The spells flow rapid-fire as Campbell’s panels cascade across double-page spreads like a magic show in full performance: EB DNUOR, DNA PEEK LITS (“Be around and keep still”), TEL EM NI (“Let me in”), and a triumphant SQUISSSSSS as she plunges her consciousness into the mindscape.
For a plague spirit, I was expecting to see more corruption than this. Instead, this mindscape is almost peaceful. Strange…
Inside Va’irra’s mindscape, Campbell shifts the palette entirely — from the warm golds and deep purples of the elven city to a hushed, washed-out blue-white world populated by ghostly silhouettes. The mindscape is a courtyard of sorts, inhabitants wandering through it like a snow-globe memory. Zatanna had steeled herself for corruption and horror, and instead finds something almost serene — which only deepens the mystery. Before she can investigate, the screaming begins again from outside.
Back in the physical world, the plague spirit has shed enough of its host’s control to go fully berserk. It grows, manifests wings and antlers made of shadow and feathers, and begins throwing itself through the elven architecture in a storm of crimson hair-like tendrils and shrieking sound effects that Campbell renders with unmistakable energy. Allura — tiny but fierce — tags the spirit repeatedly, staying airborne and agile. And above it all, from a drone-equipped military surveillance unit, a government spotter radios a laconic update: “And there they go…”
The Art of the Exorcism
Back inside the mindscape, Zatanna locates the real Va’irra — locked in a red-ribbed birdcage, her wrists bound, her eyes wide with terror and exhaustion. “Hey there, you’re Va’irra, right? Can you hear me? I’m here to get you out.” Va’irra’s fragmented mind can barely form words — she speaks in Zatanna’s backwards register, too frightened and confused to communicate clearly. But before Zatanna can free her, the mindscape convulses. The plague spirit knows she’s here and it fights back. Zatanna is blown free of the inner world just as the physical battle intensifies.
Outside, the government agents grow restless. Agent Rhodes — a broad-shouldered man in a dark suit projecting practiced authority — keeps his team on a tight leash. Orders are orders: no action unless the magician goes down. But he hedges, eyeing the plague-spirit entity now careening toward a residential district. “Maybe we get lucky?” One of his operatives positions for a clear shot. The surveillance imagery is rendered through sniper scopes and drone cameras — a deliberate visual contrast to Zatanna’s wide-angle magical spectacle. These people see the world through crosshairs. Zatanna sees it through wonder.
Zatanna, riding a playing card like a magic carpet with the plague spirit swiping at her from below, has a proposition. She’s chased this thing “from body to body all across the realms.” She’s tired. It’s tired. So let’s settle this the classic way.
“I’ll play you for her. Ready? Rock, paper…”
And then — with a grin and a flash of backward magic — SROSSICS. Scissors. Giant magical scissors manifest from the air and snip clean through the plague spirit’s grip on Va’irra’s body. The separation is violent and immediate. The spirit screams. Va’irra falls. The crash landing rattles the elven neighbourhood like a thunderclap — CRASH. DOOOH-REEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHH~!
The battle isn’t over. The plague spirit, severed from its host, mutates into something new and overwhelming — a vast, flower-coated creature with a gaping, tooth-ringed maw and dozens of blood-red tendrils lashing in every direction. “LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!” it screams as it engulfs the space around Zatanna. The top hat flies off her head. She shouts ROODPART — Trapdoor — but even that buys only a moment.
The resolution is one of the most delightfully theatrical moments in recent superhero comics. Zatanna picks up her fallen top hat. She looks at the screaming, flailing plague spirit. “Don’t be so shy,” she says — and then casts EMOC OTNI YM ECIFFO: “Come into my office.” The plague spirit is sucked — spiralling, shrinking, wailing — directly into the top hat. The hat twitches. Falls still. Zatanna places it back on her head with a satisfied air. Done.
What Ails the Spirit
With the plague spirit contained, Zatanna takes a moment to speak with it. This sequence is one of the issue’s most quietly complex. She kneels before the sealed entity — now a glowing pink cube she holds in both hands — and identifies herself formally: “My name is Zatanna Zatara! I am the Prime Magus. She who is seen by all magic.” Her voice is not angry. It’s almost gentle. She has tracked this spirit across hundreds of hosts, witnessed the bodies it left behind — all musicians, all singers — their voices silenced before their time. She wants to know why.
The spirit’s response is fractured, contradictory, and heartbreaking. A dissonant chorus of voices answers through the containment: one calls Va’irra’s voice “so sad” and says it wants to help. Another, darker voice purrs that “its terror tastes so delicious.” And then, from somewhere inside the thing: a revelation. The plague doesn’t know it’s a plague. The spirit has forgotten itself. It knows not the harm it spreads.
Zatanna’s face in this moment — as drawn by Campbell in a gorgeous full-page spread of swirling violet and magenta — is extraordinarily nuanced. She is not triumphant. She is moved. Troubled. She makes a promise: she will find and fix what ails this spirit. Just give her time. She seals it formally: TIRIPS. EB DELAES DNA EFAS — “Spirit. Be sealed and safe.” Then she releases Va’irra from the remnants of the possession: ERYOU EERF NOW, ARRAV — “You’re free now, Va’irra.”
Va’irra wakes in her parents’ arms. The reunion is tender and wordless — Campbell communicates everything through posture and gesture, the father’s hands cupping his daughter’s face, the mother’s body curved protectively around them both. Zatanna watches from a short distance, Allura purring quietly nearby. “Look at you all tuckered out,” she tells her familiar warmly. “Good work, Allura.”
The elven family turns to Zatanna with profound gratitude — “Thank you, Prime Magus, O four-time greatest—” — and Zatanna waves it off. “Please, just Zatanna is fine. And it’s been my pleasure.” Because for all her power, all her new title, all the weight of the magical realms she’s chosen to carry — she is still a performer at heart. She is most herself when she has helped someone and can move on to the next show.
High above in the surveillance drone, Agent Rhodes watches through his scope with professional disappointment. “Bummer. No fun for us, I guess. Unless…” A pause. A wicked thought. “You think the great Zatanna Zatara would grace us with a bullet catch?”
“Oh, $#!%.” The spotter already knows this is a terrible idea.
Agent Di Manes and the Department of Extranormal Operations
The bullet catch goes about as well as you’d expect when you try to shoot Zatanna Zatara. A massive BOOM — “Ta-daa~” — as Zatanna spins through the air, magic playing cards scattering every DEO operative who had the misfortune of getting close. She plucks the bullet from the air between two gloved fingers, examines it, and levels her gaze at the surviving agents with the patience of someone who has seen considerably worse than this tonight. “So, care to tell me what the D.E.O. is doing in the Realms of Magic?”
Agent Rhodes — now considerably less composed than before — snarls back: “Nope. I’m paid to shoot, not talk. That’s boss-man’s job.” And right on cue, the boss-man arrives.
He enters behind a polite cough and an even more polite apology: “Ahem~ Ms. Zatara, I must apologize for Agent Rhodes’s impertinence, as well as for my tardiness.” He wears a long coat, dark glasses, and the kind of carefully measured calm that marks a truly dangerous intelligence operative. He introduces himself as the Special Agent Chief of Occult Affairs at the Department of Extranormal Operations, his real name deliberately redacted in every panel, going only by the alias: Agent Di Manes.
Director Bones felt the department needed a proactive answer to the more… supernatural threats to our country. That answer is us.
Agent Di Manes is smooth, prepared, and disarmingly reasonable. Twenty-two United States citizens, he explains, have already died from contact with the plague spirit Zatanna just contained. Hundreds more across other countries and realms. Director Bones — head of the DEO — decided that answer was a new division: Occult Affairs. And he’s here, in the elven city, at the tail end of Zatanna’s exorcism, because he anticipated exactly this outcome. Zatanna pushes back on the DEO operating in magical realms that are decidedly not US territory. Di Manes acknowledges this cleanly — and then points out that magic is changing. The threat Zatanna just neutralised is only the beginning. He anticipates, he says with practiced warmth, a “fruitful and enduring partnership” between them.
Zatanna’s face in the closing panel of this exchange is a masterclass of guarded intelligence. “Riiiight,” she says. And we know, even as she plays it diplomatic, that she trusts this man approximately as far as she can throw him — which, being Zatanna, is actually quite far.
Why Magic Needs a Champion
The final pages of the main story are the most reflective — a walking meditation as Zatanna strolls through the Shadowcrest Theater, her home base of operations, rendered by Campbell in warm art-deco amber tones that feel like the inside of a dream. She narrates the reason she does all of this.
It isn’t power. It isn’t duty — not in the grinding, obligatory sense. It’s the stage. It’s the moment an audience’s expression shifts from skepticism to shock, from confusion to wonder, to elation. That transformation, she says, “is the greatest feeling in the world.” And it is also why she chose to take on the role of Prime Magus — not because magic demanded it, but because she believes in what the job can do.
Agent Di Manes was right. Magic is changing. The exchange between magic and its practitioners flows both ways — humanity draws wonder from magic, but magic draws from humanity too. It learns. And what it has been learning from — fear, anger, hurt — has made it more fearsome, more cruel. The magical realms are suffering for it.
Zatanna frames the problem with cosmic clarity. The Earth has the Justice League. Space has the Green Lanterns. The future has the Legion of Super-Heroes. But who, she asks, is looking out for magic itself? Who can protect the realms from what magic is becoming?
Someone who can grab reality and mold it into something better. Someone who looks horror in the face not with fear, but with defiance. Someone willing to understand what ails the magical world and steer it, deliberately and tenderly, away from chaos and toward the light.
The final splash page is the issue’s most beautiful: Zatanna sits cross-legged in mid-air, arms spread wide, her top hat and the sealed pink cube (containing the plague spirit) floating around her, as she projects a glowing cosmological map of all the magical realms into the air above her palms. Seven regions, shown as nested rings and spokes on an illuminated wheel:
- The Light
- The Sea of Dreams
- The Sea of Skylands
- The Sea of Underworlds
- The Crossroads
- The Mundane (Earth)
- The Pale Road
“So, let us partake in this GREATEST TOUR across these realms of magic,” she says with a grin that is pure showmanship and pure sincerity at once, “and let’s see if we can’t inspire it for the better.”
The closing narration boxes are an elegant curtain call. Zatanna’s stop in the Verdant City of the Elves is concluded. The mysterious plague spirit is in hand. The newly-formed DEO Division of Occult Affairs is watching over her shoulder. And the Prime Magus is already moving on to her next stop — because the Greatest Tour has only just begun.
Threats on the Horizon
The issue closes not on a quiet final page but on a teaser of the darkness gathering around Zatanna’s new tour. Four stark horizontal panels, each introducing a different threat category waiting in the wings — a preview of the trials ahead, delivered in the form of a theatrical programme. The final panel locks eyes with us through Zatanna herself: glowing white irises, mouth open in a scream of power, surrounded by crackling shadow, as a caption box reads with the formal politeness of a theatre announcement:
“We eagerly await your next performance, Prime Magus Zatanna Zatara.”
Coming in Future Issues: Threats Identified
Threat One“A cunning puppeteer who willfully dances between ally and adversary.” — A grinning, gold-toothed entity whose allegiances are deliberately, dangerously unclear.
Threat Two“The prelude to war cultivated in the flames of broken histories.” — Something older than the plague spirit, rooted in wounds that have never properly healed.
Threat Three“Past failures returning to haunt and slaughter.” — A white-haired figure and a dark, fast-moving assassin — echoes of battles Zatanna thought were over.
Threat Four“A venomous shadow that sleeps in too-shallow peace.” — A cloaked, resting danger. Patient. Waiting. For exactly the right moment.
