The Justice League, like Marvel’s Avengers, has its own sorceress, Zatanna Zatara, who is the counterpart of the Scarlet Witch. Gardner Fox created the character with artist Murphy Anderson, who made her initial appearance in the comic book Hawkman #4, released in 1964.
She was the daughter of Giovanni “John” Zatara, and she, like her father, was a skilled Mystic Art manipulator. She was also a member of the Justice League Dark and the Justice League. She was also John Constantine’s love interest. She was killed by Paradooms during the Justice League Dark Apokalips War, while John escaped to rescue himself. Apart from that, Zatanna has had a number of interesting appearances in animated programs and comic books, so without further ado, let us plunge into our movie and investigate the character Zatanna.
THE ORIGINS AND POWERS OF THIS MAGICIAN!
Zatanna Zatara is a strong Homo Magi who goes by her first name and could perform charms by pronouncing what she desires backward. Zatanna Zatara is the daughter of the magician Giovanni “John” Zatara and Sindella, a Homo Magi race member. Zatanna was reared in a modest cottage near her father’s famed Arkham Asylum in New York. Zatanna’s mother appeared to have died shortly after her birth, but she later discovered that Sindella had staged her death to return to her people.
Zatanna is a direct continuation of the artist and magician Leonardo da Vinci and a relative of Nostradamus, Alessandro Cagliostro, the renowned alchemists Nicholas Flamel and Evan Fulcanelli, and Lord Arion of Atlantis. Zachary Zatara, her cousin, is a magician, as well. With a name like Zatanna Zatara, it almost seems like being a professional-level magician is an inevitable career option. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the tricks and spells she concocts to amaze the audience are genuine.
Zatanna combines her time as a brilliant stage illusionist with combating the dark arts with some of the world’s greatest superheroes. She is intelligent, confident, and self-assured, and she can control reality with her immense magical skills. Zatanna is a Homo Magi, a magically gifted person. Her unusual genetic makeup enables her to employ her innate and trained magic. She casts magic by speaking backward, or “Logomancy,” as a memorial to her father and focuses on her spells.
Saying “pots,” for example, would force the target of the spell to come to a halt. She is feared and revered as one of the planet’s and mortal plane’s most formidable magic users. Zatanna has the ability to control mystical elements. Zatanna’s abilities allow her to move/obtain stuff from a distance. Zatanna can also read people’s thoughts and examine and wipe their memories, with or without their permission.
Zatanna can travel between dimensions by opening portals with her magic. She has the ability to change reality at will in order to cause bewilderment and mental agony to her victim. Zatanna has the ability to reverse physical trauma, causing any harm directed at her to strike her target instead.
She may channel her magical energy into the creation of inanimate items such as traps or gadgets to suit her goals. Most injuries can be healed by Zatanna or anybody she chooses. Zatanna’s mind can leave her physical body and travel to many levels of reality. Because of her magical background, she thoroughly understands esoteric lore as a historian of magic. Her resourcefulness often brought out answers in critical times.
THE MAGICIAN ZATANNA – IN BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES
“Zatanna” is the fifty-first episode of Batman: The Animated Series, first aired on February 2, 1993. It introduces magician Zatanna, the DC Animated Universe’s first heroic guest star. The Plot starts with Bruce Wayne and Alfred in the crowd waiting to see Zatanna’s magic act. She dazzles the crowd with a few basic stunts, but Bruce’s main attention is on Zatanna herself. Alfred reminds Bruce of his previous acquaintances with Zatanna and her father, and Bruce starts to reflect on his days of training with the two.
A youthful Zatanna watches with bated breath as a young Bruce fights to free himself from a straitjacket and shackles while hanging upside down. He completes the feat in under a minute, and her father, Zatara, joyfully informs him that he has smashed his previous record by many seconds. However, she is dismayed to learn that “John” would be departing shortly.
Zatara marvels at why he is so desperate to become an escape artist but has no interest in appearing on stage, and even more amazing, Zatara chuckles, the senior magician ended up divulging the deepest secrets of his craft, detecting something of the young man’s painful history. Zatara kicks Zatanna out of her eavesdropping location and walks away gracefully. Zatanna is disappointed that John will not be joining them for the remainder of the trip since she has developed feelings for him.
John adds that he needs to go to the next step of his training and will be departing the next day for Japan. She coaxes him into a nice hug and urges him to relax a little. He vows to write to her before she escapes his grasp and reveals that she has chained his wrist to the wall. She predicts that he’ll miss his flight with a chuckle, then looks away, teasing that even a halfway skilled escape artist should be able to slip out of the shackles and be gone by the time she’s through speaking, then turns and finds that “John” has done just that.
Back in the present, Zatanna prepares for her great finale and invites two special visitors onto the stage, Dr. Montague Kane, a rich explorer whose passion is discrediting magicians’ performances, and Irving Fauncewater, the manager of the Gotham Mint. Zatanna declares for her finale that she intends to make $10 million in cash, recently placed inside the Mint, vanish without a trace, and dares Kane to discover how she accomplished it. She shoots a bolt of electricity from her staff, and not only the money but the Mint also vanishes.
Kane gently concedes defeat, stating that he has no idea how she did it. She summons the Mint with another bolt, but to her surprise, the money has vanished. Zatanna begs her innocence, but Fauncewater orders her arrest. Bruce is convinced that Zatanna has been framed and that if the police waste their time questioning her, the real criminal will escape. Batman hops aboard the paddy truck, releasing her, Zatanna is questioning him whether her escape was a wise choice now that she is a fugitive from the authorities.
Batman promises her that he can assist her in proving her innocence. The two return to the Mint, where Zatanna is disappointed to see that Batman has already figured out how her ruse worked, a hologram of the Mint was switched on and off to appear to disappear and then reappear. However, someone interfered with her trick; the money had been taken the night before, and a holographic image was projected to make it appear as though it was still there.
Batman swiftly deduces that Kane is the most probable culprit, and he must have anticipated how Zatanna intended to perform her deception. While traveling to Kane’s estate, Batman softly inquires whether she has any loved ones who are concerned about her. Zatanna claims she is too busy for a romance since it is her obligation to keep the family act running now that Zatara has died. Batman expresses his sympathy but immediately backtracks by claiming to have seen Zatara perform as a youngster.
As they approach Kane’s house, Zatanna says she has a hunch they’ve met before, and Batman dodges the question. Kane, on the other hand, has been anticipating them and has left a mannequin in the room. When Batman and Zatanna discover it’s a trap, they try to flee, but they tumble through a trapdoor into a room with spiked walls rushing in on them. Batman disables the trap by extracting a spike and sticking it into the gears, delaying the movement of the walls just long enough for them to climb the spikes and escape via the trap door. When Batman discovers a photograph of a big aircraft, he guesses where Kane has gone and pursues him.
Kane is confronted by Batman and Zatanna aboard the plane. Kane, unfazed, sends his two men after them. Batman comfortably holds his own against the goons, but Kane kidnaps Zatanna, compelling Batman to capitulate. Kane, taken by Zatanna’s beauty, sardonically offers to spare her life for the proper price to which she answers by grinding her stiletto heel into his foot. Kane’s goons bind her and Batman and prepare to throw them down the cargo ramp into the sky. “Trust me, Zanna,” Batman says as he motions her to reach into his glove.
She stealthily pulls a lock pick from his glove and starts working on the chains. They are both pushed out of the plane before she is completed. With his foot, Batman clutches a length of webbing, forcing it to dangle in midair. Kane starts cutting the webbing with his sword cane, but Batman lassos him with the chains and drags him out of the door. Kane, anxiously clinging to the net, orders his men to cease shooting their weapons and climbs back inside the plane, closing the cargo door before Batman and Zatanna arrive.
Kane gets into the pilot’s seat and begins tilting and juking the jet to shake off Batman and Zatanna as they ascend up the outside side of the hull. They manage to hold on, and Kane dispatches his men to pursue them. Batman quickly overcomes both of them and throws them off the plane. Kane relaxes, believing that the falling cries he heard were from his opponents, only to turn and discover Zatanna standing there, decking him with a right cross. Kane and his men are apprehended by the police on the ground.
Batman and Zatanna are catching up. Batman apologizes for not writing as promised, but she forgives him since she understands how busy he’s been. She adds some encouraging remarks, such as how her father would have been very proud of his job that night. Batman returns the compliment, turning to the Batmobile to give her a ride home, but she vanishes behind his back in a cloud of smoke, leaving only a flyer with her image on it and a message from her wishing him well and holding him to his word to write to her.
The Magical Lineage of Zatanna
Gardner Fox, the brilliant comic book writer who co-invented the Flash, Doctor Fate, and Hawkman, created her. He was also the one who proposed teaming together DC’s heroes, first with the Justice Society and then with the Justice League. In addition, he invented the Multiverse, a notion that has proven to be a perpetual gift for DC. One of his final big additions to DC mythos was Zatanna. Zatanna’s narrative truly begins with the character of Zatara, the Master Magician, back in the Golden Age of comics. Giovanni “John” Zatara made his debut in the backup feature of Action Comics, the 1938 issue that introduced the world to Superman.
Needless to say, his narrative was not as well-liked as the main character’s. Zatara was a knockoff of the iconic comic strip hero Mandrake the Magician. Both were crime fighters who donned classic magician garbs like a suit and top hat and utilized their talents to stop crooks. There isn’t much of a distinction. In Zatara’s instance, access to magical spells was gained through incantations activated by speaking backward. He’d merely say something like, “You’ll drop your firearms” as “Our lliw port ruby snug,” and it’d miraculously happen.
This power seemed to have no bounds. Despite her amazing magical skills, Zatara’s adventures were just a few years long. By the conclusion of the Golden Age, he appeared to be done for good. Until Gardner Fox came up with the idea of providing him with a magical daughter to pick up the wand 20 years later. Zara s adult daughter Zatanna initially appears in “Zatanna’s Search,” DC Comics’ first line-wide crossover event. This occurred during a time when comic book tales did not carry over from one title to the next.
Zatanna sought Hawkman’s assistance in locating her absent father; she possessed magical talents equal to his, speaking all her charms and invocations backward. Zatanna also donned a variant of his magician’s outfit, but with fishnets and heels rather than pants. Her search for her missing father continued in the pages of Batman, Green Lantern, and The Flash, ending in a Justice League of America climax. Zatanna made infrequent appearances around the DC Universe after her big debut. She also has her own backup storylines in comic books such as Supergirl.
But it wasn’t until 1978 that she made it to the big leagues. Literally. In 1978’s Justice League of America, she made her formal debut as a member of the JLA. She ditched the fishnets and top hat in favor of a more traditional superhero outfit, complete with a red cape. She remained a JLA member in good standing for another eight years, and she even received a funky new outfit from famed artist George Perez.
Zatanna, like her father, pretended to be a well-known stage magician to the rest of the world. Despite her mastery in the art of deception, she frequently employed her own magical talents during her live performances, which her audience was unaware of. Zatanna’s father was from a mystical branch of humanity known as homo magi. Sindella, her long-lost mother, was a full-blooded homo magi, and Zatanna inherited all of her mystical skills.
Zatanna grew increasingly involved in the DCU’s magical side after her tenure as a Leaguer. This included cameos in supernatural-themed comics like Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, and Neil Gaiman’s The Books of Magic. Although she didn’t see the light of day for a while, her cameos maintained her in the DCU’s good graces.
In the 2004 event series Identity Crisis, Zatanna used her power to erase numerous villains’ memories. When Batman found out about it and expressed his displeasure, she mind-wiped him as well. When he found out what she had done, it produced a schism between the two longtime friends that took a long time to reconcile. After years of one-shots and mini-series, creator Paul Dini decided to give the character her own regular comic book. It barely lasted 16 issues, but it demonstrated Zee’s ability to hold her own regular book.
She has now joined several iterations of the supernatural squad known as the Justice League Dark, where her exploits may still be found. Zatanna’s incarnations in different mediums are most fondly remembered by many admirers. Her first significant appearance outside of comic books was in a 1992 episode of Batman: The Animated Series. We learned in the episode “Zatanna” that Zee’s father Zatara tutored young Bruce Wayne in the art of deception and escape artistry. They had an innocent romance when she was younger. Years later, she emerged on Justice League Unlimited, revealing that she, too, has strong magical talents. Young Justice has also made extensive use of Zatanna.
Smallville on The CW helped propel Zatanna to popular stardom; she was played in live-action for the first time by actress Serinda Swan. She originally appeared in season three and remained until the series’ final season. This Zatanna, like her comic book counterpart, was a stage magician with legitimate magical talents.
Smallville’s Zatanna always wore her “fishnets and tails” costume from her initial comic book appearances, which was inspired by her original comics outfit. Hopefully, with a film on the coming, the backward-talking enchantress will finally become an A-list hero. We’d love to see her head a cinematic Justice League Dark in the future.