Zatanna in Hollywood
The Good: Adam Beechen seems to have just as good a grasp of Zatanna as Paul Dini does. All of the same little touches to her powers and inner monologue and you could close your eyes and almost imagine Paul Dini did write this issue.
Chad Hardin's art has a nice cartoony quality to it with a slight realistic touch to it that looks, for the most part, pretty nice. Especially in fight scenes.
Zatanna's monologues provide a lot of really nice insight into her character and moves a whole nice bit of development to her.
It's a great one-shot issue. It doesn't feel too short, it's nice and tight, and like each story arc thus far, easily accessible to new readers. Anyone can pick this issue up and not need any other. (Although why you'd want to miss out on more issues baffles me.)
The plot is really clever. There was a lot of normal life kind of stuff at the beginning and the conflict seemed to show up out of nowhere, and it was brilliantly comedic without being too blatantly silly.
The Bad: Hardin's art looks nice in action, but a bit off when static. Some faces look strange and Zatanna's legs look HUGE.
The resolution was bit cheesy and cliche. They took some obvious steps to try to avoid that but they didn't completely succeed. I mean, it wasn't terrible, they managed to get part of the way there, just not all the way.
In Conclusion: 4/5
I would not be against Adam Beechen writing more of these one-shot issues in the future to fill in gaps between some of Paul Dini's 3-issue arcs. I'm growing a lot of respect for this guy, and he seems to have a lot of Dini's spirit, considering each title I've seen him on has to be compared to Paul Dini before him (Zatanna and Batman Beyond.) This is a great jumping on point issue, which Zatanna as a series is great at, and it's a fun read. It's a little weaker than the previous issues, but it doesn't really weaken the fantastic integrity the title has as a whole. Zatanna is one of the most constantly great titles I've ever read. It doesn't blow minds, but it's flaws are incredibly minor and rare. This would be a great comic to give to a casual reader to ease them into comic fandom.
