Justice League Dark #1-4 + Justice League Dark and Wonder Woman: Witching Hour #1
Originally released in 2018
Written by James Tynion IV
Art by Alvaro Martinez Bueno
Team books seem like a good way to learn about characters that I'm not familiar with, while seeing new sides of characters that I already know. I don't know much about the magic side of DC, so I decided to read Justice League Dark today. I went with the 2018 version because Wonder Woman was involved; I think there's a version of the team that has Batman on it (unless that's only for the animated movie version), but I felt like Wonder Woman made more sense on a magic-based team.
Something is going horribly wrong with magic in the DC universe - Zatanna casting a simple spell to pull a rabbit out of a hat unleashes a monstrosity made up of tentacles and far too many mouths. Wonder Woman has been trying to recruit members for a Justice League team that deals with magical threats, but it's not going well. (not helping matters is that experienced magicians/sorcerers think she's too inexperienced)
The only member that she recruited before the start of the series was a reformed Kirk Langstrom, also known as the former Batman villain Man-Bat. However, circumstances cause Detective Chimp (who inherited a magical bar, and the title of Nightmaster that came with it, from a deceased friend), Zatanna, and Swamp Thing to join them.
The series shows that magic can be beautiful, filling the viewer with a sense of wonder and awe, but it can also be dark and gruesome, violating natural laws and producing grotesque monstrosities. While this series has some of the former (a flashback to Zatanna's father transforming a doll into fireflies and back again), it's mainly the latter - deformed corpses attacking the team, women fusing together in disturbing ways in a flashback to Wonder Woman's childhood, and so on.
The first three issues are a self-contained storyline, while the fourth issue crosses over with Wonder Woman's solo book as the goddess Hecate tries to bend the entire concept of magic to her will. Unfortunately, this is part three of the storyline, which makes it a bit jarring to jump into when reading this series in order. The previous issues had a flashback to Wonder Woman's childhood, where Hecate was summoned and marked Wonder Woman, though missing the first two parts of this story still made it a little tough to follow.
The brand that Hecate put on Wonder Woman causes her to reach absurd levels of power even by her ordinary standards (Constantine later says that she could blink him and Zatanna out of existence), though it opens her up to being controlled by Hecate.
A character that's seemingly introduced here is the Upside-Down Man, the embodiment of the dark side of magic. He's unsettling to look at, and he reminds me of the Pale Man from the movie Pan's Labyrinth (though minus the eyes on his hands, as far as I know) or the Regenerator from the game Resident Evil 4.
Circe, a Wonder Woman villain, also plays a role, sending the various magic users that she could gather (including the remains of the team) to fight Wonder Woman because she thinks that they'll have to kill Diana. I'm familiar with Circe by reputation, though I don't have much exposure to her as a character; she makes for an interesting wildcard in the brief screentime that she has, though.
The art in the book does a good job at showing the beauty and monstrosity of magic. While it mainly sticks to the grotesque side, there was a shot of the Collective Unconscious when Wonder Woman was trapped in it, and the shift from vivid colours to shades of grey caught me off-guard in a good way.
By the end of this storyline, Wonder Woman's perspective on magic has changed, though thankfully, this isn't one of those series that lasts a handful of issues and gets cancelled; it ran for almost thirty issues. Man-Bat was a fun inclusion, though Zatanna wasn't as light-hearted as what I'm used to. (the tone of the series as a whole might have made a difference, though she seemed much more serious in general here) It was a good start to the series, and I'm curious to read more about Swamp Thing and Constantine as a result, along with more Wonder Woman to see what Circe's like. (I haven't read anything with Constantine, and I've only read a bit of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing)
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