Zatanna #1 (2010)

Zatanna has been bound and gagged by the Joker and Doctor Light. They have rigged a giant drill to kill her, but before the drill can touch her, Zatanna teleports to safety and magically binds the villains with the ropes. It all turns out to be a magic show Zatanna had been performing. In the backstage, Zatanna's crew is dismantling their equipment until a man asks for Zatanna's help. He introduces himself as Detective Dale Colton, and he is aware of Zatanna's connections to the Justice League. He drives her to a crime scene at the Nob Hill Chop House. There, they find several people magically transformed into animals and murdered. Zatanna deduces one of the victims to be Alfred De Cecco, a local drug lord. Then, she finds a Spanish-speaking waiter who survived the assault. Calming the waiter down, Zatanna searches his memories to see what happened. She sees several crime lords have been summoned by another party. When the ringleader reveals himself, Zatanna says that in the '60s, he was known as Eldon Peck, a fake hippie mystic who discovered a way to perform dark magic by trafficking human souls. Peck acquired extended life and is currently known as Brother Night. According to Zatanna, both the police and the F.B.I. have no records of him. Brother Night is the leader of a small band of magical thugs: Romalthi the Shaper, Ember and Teddy. Brother Night's thugs kill everyone in the place, and Zatanna believes that he organized the party not to make an alliance, but to kill the competition. Apparently, Brother Night is planning to expand his crime empire to include the human world. Afterwards, Zatanna turns the corpses back into their human shapes to show the world that humans, not monsters, died tonight. Putting on her working clothes, Zatanna telports to Brother Night's den. She easily dispatches Brother Night's thugs, and comes face to face with Brother Night. He tells Zatanna that he was an old friend of her father's, but Zatanna said that her father did not consider him a friend. Brother Night expresses his intention to take over the mortal underworld of San Francisco, claiming to already own its magical part. He then asks Zatanna why is she fighting for a world that will never understand magic, and Zatanna replies that she fights to that people can see the good in magic. Then, Romalthi tries to transform Zatanna into a slug, but Zatanna switches places with another girl, who becomes a slug instead. Zatanna gives Brother Night a warning: if he attacks the human world again, she will stop him in a way he won't like. Then, she returns to Shadowcrest. As she takes her clothes off and prepares to take a bath, Zatanna wonders what will Brother Night's next move be. Brother Night goes to sleep and enters a nightmarish realm, where he has an audience with nightmare lord Fuseli. Although Fuseli is reluctant in leaving his realm, Brother Night persuades him to strike at a common foe: Zatanna.