Zatanna

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Zatanna Zatara first stepped onto a comic book page in Hawkman #4, dated November 1964. Writer Gardner Fox and artist Murphy Anderson created her for DC Comics. Today she is counted among the publisher's best-regarded supernatural heroes, and she is often named as one of its most powerful magic users. Yet her signature trick is almost absurdly simple. She casts spells by saying them backward. That raises a question the character's long history keeps testing. What happens to a sorceress whose power runs through her voice, and what does it cost her when she trusts that power with other people's minds? The answers lead through a family of ancient magicians, a long search across the DC universe, a betrayal among friends, and a collapse of nerve that took her powers away.

  11145

• 2. Magic in the Blood

  ›

  Her father, Giovanni Zatara, was a renowned stage magician and sorcerer, and Zatanna modeled her own career on his. Her mother, Sindella, belonged to Homo magi, a fictional branch of humanity born with a natural gift for magic. Six months after Zatanna was born, Sindella vanished and was presumed dead.

  The truth, revealed over time, centered on a "medula jewel" growing inside the brain of royals in her mother's clan, the Hidden Ones. It acts as a wellspring of power and appears in only one person per generation. Sindella carried it, and so did her daughter. Afraid the clan would hunt Zatanna down, Sindella faked her death. When she later warned her daughter by telepathy, the odd side effect was that Zatanna's costume changed to resemble her mother's.

  The family tree stretches much further back. On her father's side, Zatanna descends from Leonardo da Vinci and is related to Nostradamus, Alessandro Cagliostro, Nicolas Flamel and Evan Fulcanelli. The source describes her as of French and Italian descent. Later retellings made Giovanni himself a full Homo magi. Through her mother she links to ancient Atlantis and to the demigod and Lord of Order named Arion.

  That double inheritance also filled her home. The ancestral Zatara residence, Shadowcrest Manor, is sentient and moves from place to place, invisible to ordinary eyes. Only special magic keys or a recognized voice will open it. Inside are a private library, a bestiary, and magical servants, among them a guardian called Hassan the Mummy. The collection includes the Talisman of Atlantis, a staff that belonged to her father, and a book called the Demongraphy, which updates its entries on demons in real time. Most feared is the Gnosis Sphere, which answers any question put to it and is considered the most dangerous object the family protects. A 1993 limited series, Zatanna: Come Together, tied the Atlantean bloodline to a demon named Xaos, whom it blamed for sinking that lost city.

  14106422

• 3. The Missing Father

  ›

  Hawkman and Hawkgirl were the first heroes Zatanna met when she arrived on a quest to find Giovanni, who had dropped out of sight. Her search spilled across several DC titles and ended in issues of Justice League of America, also written by Fox. Along the way she crossed paths with Batman and Robin, during which she was disguised as a witch under the sway of a villain called the Outsider. She also teamed up with the Atom, Green Lantern and the Elongated Man.

  She finally found her father in a mystic dimension called Kharma. There she faced the sorceress Allura, who had cursed Giovanni so that seeing his daughter would kill them both. Allura's good counterpart forced her to lift the curse. Father and daughter were reunited after two decades.

  Zatanna was soon elected to the Justice League of America. For a time her powers were reduced, so that she could control only natural forces. Her mother's story came out in this period, and so did Sindella's sacrifice to save her family from captivity.

  Giovanni's own end came in a later storyline called "Murder of Crows." A seance was held at Wintersgate Manor, the Georgetown, Washington D.C. home of Baron Winters, whose house is a threshold to other planes of reality. John Constantine, Mento and Sargon the Sorcerer took part, along with Zatara and Zatanna. They gathered to fight an entity called the Great Evil Beast. After Sargon died, the Beast tried to burn Zatanna alive, and Giovanni took the flames in her place.

  Years afterward, during Blackest Night, she had to fight her father's undead form. The source implies that destroying him a second time left her psychologically scarred.

  1170631917

• 4. Words Spoken Backward

  ›

  When Zatanna says "spell" in a certain way, she actually says the letters in reverse, and that is the heart of her magic. The technique is called logomancy. It demands concentration, and it can also be written backward or signed backward in sign language. Beyond logomancy she knows black magic and reads tarot for insight. She also draws on mystic objects her family has collected. Away from spellcasting, she is a skilled stage magician, a trained hand-to-hand fighter and an escape artist, and she speaks several languages, including Spanish and American Sign Language.

  The weakness is obvious. Villains who tie and gag her can shut her power off. Over the years she has found workarounds: writing spells in her own blood, signing with her fingers, and using her escape skills to get free.

  In Detective Comics #833, dated August 2007, the Joker, disguised as a performer named Ivar Loxias, shot her in the throat. She healed herself by writing a curing spell in blood. In Justice League of America #22, from August 2008, her mouth was magically removed during a fight with a powerful new Amazo. Again she wrote the spell in blood to restore it.

  The cost of magic is physical as well. Her powers tend to grow when she leaves them alone, but heavy use drains them and strains her body. Only a long rest refills the supply. In 1993 she briefly gave up logomancy altogether, relying on her mother's artifacts and traditional spell-casting instead. In the animated series Justice League Unlimited, she can recite spells without speaking.

  14123157

• 5. Guilt and Recovery

  ›

  The 2004 storyline Identity Crisis opened with the murder of Sue Dibny, wife of the Elongated Man. It revealed that the villain Doctor Light had once committed a terrible crime against her. To stop him from endangering the families of other League members, Zatanna performed a magical lobotomy on him. When Batman walked in and tried to stop the process, she erased his memories too.

  Once Light's memories returned and the League hunted him, Zatanna's role in wiping minds came to light. Her reputation sank. Longtime friends, Batman above all, began to question whether she could be trusted. Follow-up stories such as Crisis of Conscience showed that Catwoman and the Secret Society of Super Villains had been wiped as well. In Catwoman's case, the aim had been to push her toward a more righteous path.

  The damage surfaces in a four-issue Zatanna limited series from 2005, published as part of Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers event. At a support group for superheroes, she describes a failed ritual meant to find her father's lost books. One of her old spells summoned a shapeshifter named Gwydion, who killed her companions. That trauma, added to her guilt over the mind-wipes, stripped away her powers.

  She recovered with the help of a new apprentice, Misty Kilgore. Together they captured Gwydion so that Zatanna could use him herself. She then defeated Zor, a rogue Time Tailor who had loosed a plague called the Sheeda on the universe. As a reward, the other Time Tailors allowed one last meeting with Giovanni. He told her his books were written for her and were his "greatest spell and gift to the world." In the closing battle, she cast a spell that moved time and space and put the Seven Soldiers in position to overthrow the Sheeda.

  2829999730

• 6. Allies and Entanglements

  ›

  Detective Comics #833 also confirmed that Giovanni had been a friend of Thomas Wayne. Zatara trained the young Bruce Wayne in escape artistry, and Bruce and Zatanna grew up as childhood friends. That history is oddly lopsided. In Justice League of America #51, Batman believes he has never met her, and her only memory of him comes from when she was disguised. After the memory wipes, Bruce eventually set the betrayal aside and the two renewed their friendship.

  Her longest romantic thread runs through John Constantine, whom she met shortly after reaching adulthood. Their relationship has often been turbulent. After the New 52 reboot, the story added Nick Necro, who dated Zatanna years before she knew Constantine. For a while the three were in a polyamorous relationship, until Necro's obsession with the Books of Magic split them apart. Her other partners over the decades include a detective, Dale Colton, and Doctor Thirteen, Cyborg and Batman. She has also flirted with Barry Allen, the Flash, and Blue Devil.

  Her team life has been equally varied. In 1999, in the "Days of Judgement" storyline, the Sentinels of Magic formed with Zatanna as a founding member. They faced the demon Asmodel, and later were entrusted with the Spear of Destiny as a safeguard against Hal Jordan's Spectre. During the "Obsidian Age" storyline, an ancient Atlantean sorceress named Gamemnae absorbed Zatanna in a quagmire spell. Jason Blood gave himself up to free her. She then cast the spell that let Aquaman command the entire ocean as his body.

  From 2011 to 2015, Zatanna belonged to Justice League Dark. John Constantine led that group, which was based in his House of Mystery. Its other members included Etrigan, Swamp Thing and Madame Xanadu.

  1277575524

• 7. Screens and Alternate Selves

  ›

  Julie Brown voiced Zatanna in her first animated appearance, in an episode of Batman: The Animated Series named for her. That version had befriended Batman as a youth, developed a crush on him while he trained under her father, and later reunited with him as a working magician. She foiled the plans of a magic debunker named Montague Kane.

  Other actors followed. Jennifer Hale and Juliet Landau voiced her in Justice League Unlimited. Serinda Swan played her on Smallville for the show's final three seasons. In Young Justice, Lacey Chabert voiced a teenage Zatanna who put on the Helmet of Fate to defeat Klarion the Witch Boy. Nabu refused to release her until Zatara offered to take her place, and she has worked to free him ever since. Kari Wahlgren voiced a version in DC Super Hero Girls, where she goes by "Zee" and attends Metropolis High as a fashion-minded student. Camilla Luddington took the role in the animated film Justice League Dark.

  A live-action Zatanna film, developed by Warner Bros. Discovery and Bad Robot with Emerald Fennell as writer, was in production before it was cancelled as of March 2021. Earlier, in 2005, screenwriter Hadley Davis announced an action-comedy about a teenage Zatanna.

  Comics keep reinventing her too. In DC Comics Bombshells, she is of Jewish and Romani descent and escapes after being forced to aid the Nazis. In the Amalgam Comics universe, she fuses with Marvel's Scarlet Witch to become Wanda Zatara, the White Witch. In the graphic novel Zatanna and the House of Secrets, she lives with her father and a rabbit named Pocus.

  In 2026, DC announced a new ongoing Zatanna series, written and drawn by Jamal Campbell. It will explore her role as "Prime Magus," an overseer and guide to the supernatural corners of the DC universe.

  8688899594