The Funny Things I Notice

In last week's issue of Countdown (# 37), one of the plotlines has Mary Marvel and Zatanna heading off to Zatanna's home-away-from-home, Shadowcrest. There, Z hopes to slowly train Mary on how to use her new magical powers, but things of course go horribly awry.

But what made me laugh was a screw-up by the writer (and by extension, I guess, the editor) regarding Zatanna's spells. As any long-time DC fan - or fan of this blog - knows, Zatanna performs magic by saying her commands backwards. Or, more specifically, she says the words backwards. And within that tiny distinction lies this issue's admittedly minor error. (And if it's still not clear what I'm talking about, then consider the spell that I'd written about earlier, where Z wishes to issue the command, "Batman stop!" in order to freeze the Caped Crusader in his place. She speaks it as "NAMTAB POTS!" She does not utter it as "POTS NAMTAB!" which would more likely be used if she wanted someone else to stop the Dark Knight. Clear as mud?)

Anyway, the spell that's backwards-wrong is the first one she casts in Countdown # 37, where she says, "EMOH SU EKAT." Which translates to "home us take," and doesn't make much sense. I figured, when I saw that line of dialogue, that the writer simply didn't know how her magic worked; but then, later in the same issue, he has her say, "FFATS EKAT A KAERB" in order to dismiss the magical butlers she's conjured up. And that one, of course, is correctly written.

When Vicki read this, she'll roll her eyes... and just think: "EHS SAH OT EVIL HTIW EM!"