“Dream a Little Dream, Part 3”
Creative Staff:
Story: Preeti Chhibber
Art: Lalit Kumar Sharma
Colors: Wendy Broome
Letterer: Janice Chiang
What They Say:
Zatanna must find a way to defeat Doctor Destiny before she is trapped in his dreamworld forever!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
This storyline has been fun not just for its main character but introducing me to two talents I hadn’t come across before. Preeti Chhibber does a good job of closing out Zatanna’s story here and reminding why she’s so fun while. We also get some really great artwork from Lalit Kumar Sharma with this book that Wendy Broome colors. There’s a lot of pop on the color side because of the story but Sharma’s artwork is fantastic with a great design for Zatanna and some wonderful expressiveness in her face as she deals with this surreal situation.
With the reveal of Dr. Destiny at the end of the second issue, our villain is formally at play here and Zatanna’s at least able to know who she’s really up against. I did like the more curious exploration in the first two issues but this lets her try to get on the offensive instead of always being on defense. It works well as he blabs about looking for and finding a little-known herb that lets him connect their minds so he can be in control of things and he’s definitely working that power well since she’s without her magic. Or at least, that’s the belief for a while as she eventually is able to figure things out so that she can actually fight back against him.
Not that it takes much once she can because of the nature of her magic and the nature of how this mind meld thing all went down since it’s not a traditional thing. This plays out well enough as we get her whipping up her costume so that she can feel more ready to face things here and is able to draw out just a bit more information on him so she can put him back in Arkham and have enough to fill in the rest of the League with. Generally, Dr. Destiny is a bit more powerful than all of this but by using the whole dreamscape level to attack her, it’s actually minimized his powers in a way. But she’s crafty enough and delightful enough to get it all wrapped up – even though she doesn’t actually get all those involved in what happened to her.
In Summary:
This Truth & Justice storyline was a lot of fun overall even if it had some bumps in the second installment that slowed things down for me. I really like Chhibber’s overall design though I wish a little time touching on Dr. Destiny’s past could have been worked in for those of us less familiar with the character. Sharma’s artwork is fantastic throughout and just a lot of fun to take in as Zatanna takes care of the threats to her life. It’s a good three-part storyline overall with a good bit of whimsy at the start that it carries through to the end.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: July 23rd, 2021
MSRP: $0.99
