DC Speechless! #4 // Review
Writer/Artist Gustavo Duarte’s all-silent DC Speechless! e-book series continues into its fourth issue with “Mr. Crowley”--a hopelessly adorable eight-page adventure involving the magician, an iconic white rabbit, and a whole bunch of cute little demons. Duarte’s storytelling glides gracefully across the page with more impact than most multi-issue mini-series manage. The silent story feels remarkably well-defined throughout another deeply satisfying monthly short that lingers in the mind long after it’s filtered through the digital. Duarte’s series continues to carve out a very clever space in and within the DC Universe in a series that’s shaping up to be one of the more distinctive new offerings by the company.
Zatanna is walking home when she runs into a man on the street looking to unload a white bunny. Zatanna is naturally drawn to the little creature and instantly adopts it, naming it after a certain highly influential early 20th-century member of the O.T.O. The bunny instantly takes to Zatanna as well. (It loves the carrots she keeps conjuring up.) The rabbit’s curiosity might complicate things for Zatanna as she enters a portal to a dark dimension populated by a small civilization of cute little demons.
Duarte walks a fine line with the issue. He has allowed himself less than ten pages in which to deliver a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end without the aid of any dialogue at all. It would be all too easy to work on a very small canvas with a very simple idea to fill the space, but Duarte’s story of Zatanna and Crowley actually manages a degree of sophistication and intricacy in a fun series of mini-scenes that all come together quite gracefully. There’s a grand sense of depth to it all that embraces much more than mere cuteness. It’s a tightly-scripted story.
Duarte has a brilliant sense of economy in his action. A breezy, adorable mood bounces from panel to panel as Zatanna goes through a crisply-moving series of moments. A great degree of emotional complexity is carefully crafted into every panel. The reality of the stylishly cartoony, little world that Duarte is bringing to the page has a cuddliness to it that feels narratively...cozy. Zatanna radiates personality from the page without so much as a single word spoken backwards throughout the whole issue. The silence amplifies the impact of the visuals beautifully in Duarte’s work.
The fourth issue of the series is the best so far. Duarte carves out a perfect space for himself in the DC Universe that finds an appealingly unique frame through which to view some of the weirdness that goes on there. It’s a fresh enough perspective that Duarte could easily spend years working his way through the DC Universe, giving every character his own spin. It’s been great fun so far. There’s really no reason for him to stop at this stage. There’s so much potential in Duarte’s vision.
