>>134577179This is the first Zee that really made her a character. Yeah sure some anon and no one else will say she was good in 80's comics or something, but everyone else knows her from an episode and a half of JLU, being the rare 2 episode highlight of Justice League Action, then a rough start in Young Justice before becoming the bestgirl of some fucking terrible late stage cancer seasons.
>Then the "contentious" Justice League Dark portrayals that really do nothing new with her beyond a plunging neckline In most of these portrayals she's just Batman's ringer, called when some magical bullshit needs to be solved. Something she does well but an entirely structural role. It never builds into depth. YJ eventually did better, but too little too late because most people stopped watching long before (at least until the child
erotic memes dragged people back to watch the Zatanna-Zatarra-Dr.Fate-Klarion arc)
SHGs made her a tentpole of an ensemble cast and told real, endearing stories through her and the relationships around her. The postergirl for how damn well SHGs handled an episodic format with a forward chronology of time; characters that always had the same heart even as they grew, letting the series work out of order and sequentially. (If only CN had ever actually aired the fucking things, but if they'd let it succeed then they couldn't have justified their homegrown shovelware shows and gee billy 2 licensed DC IPs?)
That said, if they try to transpose her character traits into mainstream DC through some flashpoint retconned "new zatanna" for the core DCAU "inexplicably" it'll fail. In DC boilerplate hands they'll reduce her to some boss bitch and strip away all the femininity, deference to family, and playfulness that makes her work with her earned ego. Same applies the other way to why SHGs Babs is so markedly superior to the purple costume Nu-Babs of mainline DC despite being sampled heavy from contemporary Batgirl comics.
