Back in the middle of 2021, DC did their first Round Robin, a tournament where fans would vote to decide which characters would receive a six-issue mini-series. One of the early matches was a pitch for a Zatanna book vs a Green Lantern book starring Kyle Rayner. And while both of them ultimately lost the Round Robin, the thought has stuck with me…what if that match-up was an actual fight? Who would win? I thought it might be fun to find out, and I’ve been reading Kyle Rayner stories for decades, so I took a look at a big pile of Zatanna stories, and now I’m pretty confidant that I know how this will go.
So let’s set the stage. We’ll say that the fight takes place in a training room in the Hall of Justice, where it’s shielded so they can cut loose if they want to. This is a friendly match between two colleagues, and the winner gets to decide what charity Batman donates a billion dollars to, so they each have a good incentive to try their best to win. This is not a Death Battle, nobody’s trying to kill anybody, and I absolutely refuse to do any math or science to figure this out. We’re just gonna take what we know about these characters and their powers, think about it all logically, and see where it ends up. And it should go without saying that both Kyle and Zatanna will be acting in-character the entire time, so it’s not just about what their powers are capable of, it’s about what these people would actually be willing to do with those powers.
Kyle Rayner’s got a regular Green Lantern ring made by the Guardians of Oa, which channels his willpower to create pretty much any object or effect that he imagines, and is an especially potent weapon in his hands because he’s an artist, so you can never predict what he’ll conjure into reality. He tends to approach most situations with a playful confidence, and his opening move is usually to attack or restrain his opponent with something silly…although, Green Lantern #152 shows us an encounter with a brainwashed Alan Scott, a powerful opponent who Kyle doesn’t want to hurt, and the first thing Kyle does is use the ring to gas Alan and knock him out. So how seriously Kyle takes his opening move will change depending on how he views the threat posed by the opponent. And while Kyle can sometimes be too cocky, it’s for good reason, he’s been one of the most powerful superheroes out there since the day he first put his ring on. In Green Lantern #0, Kyle fired a beam from his ring that blew up a planet…and more impressively, he was standing on that planet when it exploded, and was totally unharmed. In Green Lantern #135, it’s confirmed that Kyle can split atoms with his ring. And then during the DC One Million event, Kyle was able to hold back the force of a supernova for a short time, with nothing but the strength of his own willpower.
Then there’s Zatanna Zarara, a stage magician who loves performing feats of actual magic for an audience. She casts spells by speaking backwards, and in keeping with her overall theme, she likes to do the real version of classic stage illusions, like making objects disappear and transform things into other things. But while Zatanna loves the theatrical side of magic, she can very easily escalate into much larger displays of power. My personal favorite moment was in Justice League Dark #21, where she summoned lightning by reciting the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody, backwards. And as cool as that is, it’s just the tip of the ice berg. In Detective Comics #960, Zatanna explains how easy it is for her to turn the laws of nature on and off like a light switch, and she demonstrates it by getting rid of gravity, turning night into day, and then putting it all back to normal with just a few words. And let’s talk about words, because there’s more to Zatanna’s backwards talking than you might think. A popular belief is that if you can prevent Zatanna from speaking, she becomes powerless, but that’s not actually true. Both Justice League of America #24 and Detective Comics #834 show us instances of Zatanna being injured and unable to speak, and in both of these cases she’s able to write the words down and cast her spells that way. Then in Zatanna #9, we see a young Zatanna who can’t pronounce words correctly with her new braces, so she uses a Speak and Spell to cast her magic…this is an educational toy for young children that says words out loud once you type them in. So while speaking is easier and more convenient, it seems like any form of communication can be used by Zatanna to cast spells.
…so both of these people are absurdly powerful, and seem to only be limited by their imagination and creativity. But despite that, each of them still has a distinct advantage over the other. For Kyle, it’s the fact that he understands Zatanna’s powers better than most people, since he’s actually used her magic himself once before. In the pages of Green Lantern 80 Page Giant #2, Kyle and Zatanna were battling someone who merged Zatanna’s magic with Kyle’s ring, meaning that the only way either of them had any power at all was for Kyle to speak backwards to make constructs appear, and he knew how to do that because Zatanna was right there coaching him, and in some cases outright telling him what to say…so Zatanna herself taught Kyle how her magic works and how she fights, and gave him the kind of firsthand experience that most of her opponents never get. Zatanna’s advantage comes from the fact that Green Lantern rings aren’t very effective against magic. In Shadowpact #1, both Superman and Hal Jordan try to break through a magic barrier, and not only do they fail to make a dent, but Hal’s ring can’t even identify the energy that the barrier is made of. In Green Lantern #118, Kyle fought the Enchantress, and while he managed to hold his own through the variety and creativity of his constructs, Kyle was only able to land a single hit that didn’t do much damage, while the Enchantress got the better of him three times during their fight. What this shows us is that, even though fighting a powerful magic user isn’t ideal for a Green Lantern, Kyle still has a chance as long as he leans into the creative application of his power, which is already an area Kyle excels in, but it would still be an uphill battle.
When I look at everything, a truth that I can’t escape is the fact that Kyle is nowhere near as powerful as Zatanna. As powerful as Kyle is, he still has to function within the rules of reality, while Zatanna can re-write those rules anytime she wants. Hell, one of the earliest things she learned how to do was bring the dead back to life, and it only escalated from there. He could trade blows with her for a while, but as soon as she decided to get serious, he’d be out of his league. Does that mean Kyle automatically loses? No, because as powerful as Zatanna is, she’s still Human, and is still susceptible to all of his attacks. So the big question is, can Kyle neutralize Zatanna before she can cast her first spell? I think the answer is yes.
When Zatanna casts a spell, first she has to think of what she wants to happen, then she has to say it, and then the magic makes it happen. When Kyle uses his ring, he thinks of what he wants to do, and then the ring does it with no middle step. So if both of these people fired off their powers at the same time, Kyle’s would come out first…we’re only talking about a difference of a second or two, but that’s all it would take to attach a construct to Zatanna’s face, making it impossible for her to talk. And even though she’s gotten around muzzles and throat injuries before, it’s not like she carries a marker around with her at all times (even though she probably should)…she’s had to overcome these obstacles through extreme measures, like writing backwards words in her own blood. And not only do I not believe Kyle would stand there and let her do that, I also don’t believe that Zatanna would actually go that far when no lives are on the line. Kyle’s experience using backwards talking magic while Zatanna coached him, plus his willingness to nonviolently incapacitate a friend instead of hurting them in a fight, would lead to Kyle landing the first hit and taking away Zatanna’s ability to counterattack.
So, I think I’m ready to call it. The winner of this hypothetical fight between Green Lantern Kyle Rayner and Zatanna is…Zatanna.
…and you’re probably thinking…hey, that doesn’t make sense with what we just talked about. Here’s the thing, I believe that Kyle would make a very big, very understandable mistake. And it’s the same mistake that a lot of you probably made. You see, Zatanna is a stage magician, she knows the power of misdirection, and the greatest trick Zatanna ever performed was convincing the entire world that she needs language to cast her spells, when in fact she does not.
In Justice League Dark #3, we see a flashback to Zatanna’s childhood. Her father has been training her, all day every day, to be able to speak backwards as easily as she could speak forwards, and to form a strong bond between that speech the casting of her spells. One night, she finally asks him why she has to bother learning to talk backwards when she can already feel the magic in the world around her, and she knows that she could just reach out and touch it whenever she wants.
And what he admits to her is that things like backwards words, magic wands, enchanted artifacts, witches cauldrons, all of them serve the exact same purpose: to be a slight of hand, a diversion, a security measure. Mankind didn’t create magic, and magic doesn’t just exist naturally either…it comes from ancient, unknowable horrors that exist beyond concepts like time and what we think of as reality. And if these beings knew that Humanity had been stealing magic, if they ever noticed us, they would come here and nothing could ever hope to stop them. But because this is a Justice League comic, of course they came, and of course someone stopped them, even going so far as to seal away the threat, at least for a while. And what all of that means is that not only does Zatanna’s magic not actually require any kind of language to function, but she doesn’t actually even need to use that casting method anymore while the Lovecraftian horror is out of the picture. She’ll most likely still continue talking backwards, because not only is it her trademark gimmick, but at this point she’s been doing it for almost her entire life, and that’s not a habit you break easily…but it’s in no way necessary.
So Kyle would make the first move. He would cover her mouth, and maybe even restrain her hands if he thinks of it. And then, confidant that he’d won a quick and decisive victory, he wouldn’t even notice the twinkle in Zatanna’s eye as she makes one of the ceiling tiles fly into the back of Kyle’s head, knocking him out, dissolving the constructs. Based on the information he had, Kyle’s plan was solid. The problem is that Zatanna didn’t actually teach him how her magic works, she taught him her way of using magic safely, and those are two different things. Really, his only shot would be to land the first hit and knock Zatanna unconscious with it…but he’s really only ever done that once, so the likelihood of him trying to gas her is very low, especially since he has no reason to believe she’d still be a threat without the ability to speak.
…and in case you think I’m being unfair to Kyle, I’m really not, this sort of thing used to happen to him all the time. Kyle tends to drop his guard way too soon, and leave himself open to an attack that otherwise wouldn’t work on him. My favorite example comes in Green Lantern #93, when Kyle finds a dead body an an alley and goes to investigate. He doesn’t have his shield up, he hasn’t scanned the area, he hasn’t sent out any constructs, he doesn’t even light up the dark alley…he just walks right in, focuses on a single spot, and doesn’t even notice that the killer is still standing right there, ready to slam Kyle’s face into a brick wall before he even knows what’s happening. The only reason Kyle survived the night is because Deadman just happened to show up in time to save him.
So in the end, Kyle would lose. Not because she overpowers him (even though she absolutely does), but because the only information he has to go on is wrong, and he has no way to know that before it’s too late.
Comments
Post a Comment