Review by Karl Verhoven
Over Jewel of Gravesend’s opening chapter we learn a lot about Zatanna Starr. She attends film school where the theatre bears her family name, and is ridiculed by classmates for living in Brooklyn. It’s where her parents perform magic shows, where she’s seeing teenage boxer Alexei and where one bestie Izzy is becoming a gifted clairvoyant and Kenia, the other bestie, wants to join the magic act. Either her highlight or leaving her most open to teasing, is that Zatanna lives in an elephant shaped building.
Once life and situation are established Alys Arden begins introducing the mysteries. How can Zatanna read mirror script without a mirror? Why are accidents suddenly happening around her? And why is Alexei’s mother so keen he persist with boxing? Arden feeds these into convincingly ordinary scenes of everyday life as Zatanna hangs out with her friends, and the far from conventional boardwalk community. As The Jewel of Gravesend continues it becomes apparent that while this may be marketed as a Zatanna graphic novel, for a long time the connections between this character and her mainstream DC universe counterpart are little beyond use of the name and a theme of magic.
Arden is best known for young adult fiction, and produces a dialogue-heavy script, which limits artist Jacquelin De Leon. On set piece scenes where there’s little talking there’s a sense of freedom as she can break free from the disciplines of conversation. De Leon does illustrates those effectively, varying the viewpoints and frequently resorting to full figures. She’s not as strong when it comes to differentiating people. A lot of her women have basically the same face, and those well into middle age look the same as the teenagers. The colour scheme is going to be a matter of personal preference, but dark blue and purple being the predominant shades won’t appeal to everyone.
It’s about halfway through that a bigger plot kicks in. “It’s like an elaborate illusion, but I can’t figure it out”, explains Zatanna to her friends about constantly seeing mirror script. The way Arden has the rug pulled from Zatanna’s world ensuring she’s no longer sure who she can trust is well handled, but before Arden arrives at that point it becomes apparent too long has been spent on the background and on characters largely unnecessary. Besties Izzy and Kenia, for instance, are there as support, but each only has one big moment. Perhaps there’ll be a greater role for them in the sequel, but unless that’s packed with incident this really should have been one graphic novel, not two.
