Zatanna: Bring Down The House #1 (2024)

In a flashback scene Zatanna as a child is attempting to entertain some fellow kids with a magic trick show but has yet to master the trick and messes it up, prompting the kids to mock her. Zatanna knocks on the door of her father's study at home and asks him to teach her magic. Back with the other kids Zatanna tries again to perform a trick for them but as she's about to cast a spell, a kid who is teasing her excessively amps up his bullying even more to which she responds by squaring up with him and appears to be about to make a retaliatory move when the flashback scene ends. In current day, Zatanna lives in Las Vegas and wakes up early to get ready for her day as a performing show illusionist. On this day her performing bunnies seem rattled about something as they are cowering in their cage and one of them bites Zatanna as she tries to handle them. Zatanna goes for a morning run and notices a literal shadow of a person running behind her own shadow, but no person appears to be casting it. The shadow disappears and she dismisses it, but a panel shows the strange shadow taking three dimensional, globular form on the ground as Zatanna continues her run. Arriving at the casino-hotel she performs at, Zatanna is approached by a Miss Perkins of the Millennium Hotel Group who is trying to get her to join with them. Zatanna declines and indicates it's not the first time she has been approached as such. Zatanna enters the hotel and crosses the casino floor, past slot machine players, and seems to get creeped out by something (perhaps glancing slot machine players), noting "I'm as bad as the bunnies". Hanging out with a colleague before work she mentions feeling stalked and they briefly banter about it before Zatanna gets ready to go on for her matinee show. Just prior to curtain up Zatanna peeks out at the audience and nervously observes a woman audience member who has appeared at her show seven times prior, always wearing sunglasses and costume-like outfits. Zatanna then performs her show which appears to go well. Afterwards. a grandmother and granddaughter who attended the show visit Zatanna for autographs and ask out of curiosity why she never refers to herself as a magician or uses the word magic, and asks if she does not like magic. We see a brief flashback of what appears to be Zatanna as a child again using real magic in retaliation against the lead bully who was mocking her at her magic trick show. During her evening show Zatanna confronts the woman audience member who keeps returning to every show. As they're conversing huge, monsterous creatures that appear to be mythological or alien in nature appear from behind the stage curtain and begin to breathe fire, alighting the auditorium which prompts the audience to bolt for the exits. During the chaos the strange audience member tells Zatanna she knows who she, and that what's currently happening involves "him", the bully she hurt, killed, or made disappear as a child (it's unclear so far what exactly happened to him). The woman then tells Zatanna that she, Zatanna, is responsible for her father's death.