Balck Canary and Zatanna: Bloodspell by Paul Dini

Balck Canary and Zatanna: Bloodspell

I’m not going to lie to you, Black Canary and Zatanna are two of the hottest characters in the DC Universe. What guy wouldn’t want a woman screaming at him and able to make him just disappear (Sarcasm). Wait, that sounds like the beginning of a murder mystery or horror novel. I like these characters; I like Black Canary and her relationship with the Green Arrow. They make a really good superhero duo, and Zatanna has had some really cool story lines in the Batman books. You can see I haven’t really read these characters on their own, but I have enjoyed the stories they have been in. I still really liked the Wedding of Green Arrow and Black Canary, that was a great story line.  

When I saw Black Canary and Zatanna paired in a book while browsing Edelweiss I had to request it. Thank you to the publisher for allowing me to read the ARC of this book. I really enjoyed it. In this book Black Canary infiltrates a group of female thieves to stop the leader from committing a Heist. This wasn’t a big part of the story so the details have slipped my mind as I write this. While pretending to be someone else Black Canary is unknowingly the victim of a bloodspell. The leader practices Black Magic and has bound everyone to never tell about this or suffer consequences. When everyone turns on the leader and she is killed when the heist goes wrong she vows to take her revenge with her dying breath. So the plot behind this book is a little on the hokey side, but I liked it.

A year later the other members of the group start committing Suicide mysteriously. Up against some serious evil magic, Canary turns to her JLA friend Zatanna to help her protect the remaining members and herself. This book doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the New 52 timeline otherwise I’m sure this would have been labeled as such. I can’t be 100% sure because I haven’t read anything these characters have been in since the New 52 began. This book reminds me more of how things where when I was a kid (Yes I just used an old man phrase). Graphic novels used to be stories that were separate from the series. It was one full story in a large book with a beginning and an end. The Killing Joke is a great example. This was a story that came out in a single edition. I liked being able to start this book without having read a bunch of other series prior and have everything wrapped up giving this a clear end.  I still love being able to catch up on my favorite series in graphic novel form but I enjoyed this single story.

My only complaint was with the artwork. I’m not a fan of Joe Quinones’s style. All of his characters have faces that remind me of the dwarves from Snow White. They all have these fat round noses and flush red cheeks. The artwork in this isn’t by far the worse I have seen but I just didn’t care for it all that much. The story however, was well written and very interesting. I flew through this book and really enjoyed it. I will give this 4 out of 5 stars and kind of hope to see a pairing of these two characters again.