I very much enjoyed the Fred Hembeck cartoons done both before and after the fans were polled on who the newest member of the League should be. The first had Superman interviewing potential members such as Firestorm, B'Wana Beast, Black Lightning ("Hey! I know this guy! He lives in my city! We could go to meetings together! Besides, it's time we loosened up a little. This is the JLA, not the KKK.") and Man-Bat ("Yechh! Things haven't loosened up that much! Monsters are for Marvel groups! Get that disgusting freak out of here!") before settling on Brother Power, the Geek ("Love, Brother Superman. Love.")

The cartoon afterwards asked the question that I'm certain the fans who participated were asking at the time. "Why didn't we get what we paid for??" Taking Zatanna out of her trademark fishnets and putting her in a "super-hero costume" was a classic bait-and-switch scenario.

Perez' later modification was an attempt to bridge the gap between the two outfits, but again, without the fishnets, what was the point? The same can be said of Black Canary's Olivia-Newton-John XanaDon't costume. Esteban Maroto later designed a near-topless punk sorceress outfit for a Zee mini-series (color-corrected to appear as a really, really tight t-shirt) and then Tom Artis, I believe, came up with a straight-leg trouser variation on the stage magician theme that she wore for a short while. Had they come up with that last redesign first, the backlash against the change might not have been so severe. At least she still resembled a stage magician, rather than a sultry, wannabe Disney villainess.

Editors & companies often seem clueless as to how tightly a character's visual is tied to their appeal. Superman is popular. Electric Blue Superman was not. How popular the character will remain with his new "ceremonial armor" is yet to be known, but even this latest redesign hews fairly closely to his classic appearance, as opposed to the radical change seen above with Zatanna.

By the way, I did that Cosmic Boy with fishnets visual some years back for an LSH parody entitled the  "Rokk Krin Horror Picture Show"... They really do help tie the whole outfit together :-)

Always a good thing, when you may find yourself drawing the character a hundred or more times in an issue!!

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Of all the monkeying with Zatanna's outfit, those boots are one (or is that two?) of the changes that have actually worked for me. Except for the platform soles. Those make no sense to me in ANY context!!

A great advantage to the boots artistically, is that the stockings don't have to "turn a corner" at the knee.