|
| “ | What do you care about some leggy dame in nylons? Or did I just answer my own question? | „ |
| ~ Zatanna to Batman. |
| “ | You want guilt? My name's Zatanna Zatara. I'm a spellaholic. | „ |
| ~ Zatanna. |
| “ | I'm not saying you can't be anything you want to be but the whole superhero thing is much more than just wearing a cape and getting famous. | „ |
| ~ Zatanna. |
| “ | Easy, no. But possible. Because this is my territory. Spells, Hocus Pocus, demons. It's meat and drink to me. | „ |
| ~ Prime Earth Zatanna. |
Zatanna Zatara is a major character in the DC Universe.
Though she possesses superhuman-level training in magic, she prefers to pass as a stage magician and even trained magi have had trouble separating her real spells from her stage illusions.
She was created by writer Gardner Fox, artist Murphy Anderson, and Julius Schwartz, and first appeared in Hawkman Vol 1 #4 in November of 1964.
Biography[]
Backstory[]
Zatanna was born the daughter of the renowned magician Giovanni Zatara, and his wife Sindella, a member of the magically gifted Homo Magi, race. Her father performed for years as a stage magician and showman but in truth knew more than a little about actual magic; Zatanna, possessing her mother's gift for magic and her father's keen mind for applying it followed and performed with her father across the U.S. learning both real and fake magic.
Zatanna not only practiced spells back-stage but escape artistry, sleight-of-hand, and theatrics, allowing her to hide any real magic she wished to show behind illusions until no one would be able to call her on public displays of arcana. After her father's death, Zatanna continued his work and his tour. She was so sensational to audiences that she was easily able to be considered as an entertainer unto herself. She has performed at Paris, Hollywood, Metropolis, Gotham, and Bludhaven and helped various heroes in the DC world as her tours brought her to them.
Zatanna would eventually be recruited into the Justice League due to her powers, her expertise in advising members on real magical threats, and been a trusted ally of Batman, Hawkman, Nightwing, Raven, Superman, and Doctor Fate, Black Canary, Vixen and Wonder Woman. Zatanna keeps her membership, though not associated with the Justice League a secret so no one will ever suspect she is using magic publicly. Zatanna keeps her magic a secret not only to give her an excuse to spice up her act but also because she worries about modern-day witch hunters (she considers the politicians and religious leaders to be even more in need of the public limelight than magicians).
The New 52[]
Following the events of Flashpoint, Zatanna was made a main character for the Justice League Dark series. Though Zatanna still wears her old-school stage magician's costume from time to time she mainly wears a new updated classic sorceress look. In the first issue, she hears about the Justice League's run-in with the Enchantress and volunteers her services to the League. Though Batman tries to join in the fight, Zatanna uses her powers to tie him up, saying that Batman was too valuable to the world to die in battle.
Powers and Abilities[]
Zatanna displaying her magic.
- Magic: Zatanna is a member of the Homo Magi race and is genetically gifted with great magical talent. She can cast an incredible number of spells, which she usually does by speaking backwards as a tribute to her father. However, the backward speaking is not always necessary for her to cast spells. Speaking backwards is as easy for her as it is to speak forwards. Zatanna has shown great control of her magic ability, which extends to an ability to elemental sorcery. She is considered among the most powerful magic users in the DC Universe. She has been shown to dispel the magical spells of other strong magic users. Of all the magicians and sorcerers on the planet, the JLA always go to Zatanna when they need magical assistance. Zatanna is also a gifted stage magician and hypnotist who routinely enthralls audiences with her mystifying and entertaining performances. Though she usually has at least a couple hundred specific spells prepared at any given moment, she is adept at magical improvisation and can readily modify her spells to handle unpredictable situations. She often uses her magic to assist in performing everyday tasks, especially if she is too busy or fatigued to do them the mundane way. Zatanna is very adaptable magician. Winning against Zor, the Spectre rival by breaking the 4th wall, avoiding multiversal erasure by Pralaya, and forcing Upside Down Man to pay the cost of magic.
- Logomancy: Logomancy is also known as “Backwards Magic.” Zatanna typically casts her magic spells by uttering a simple command, which is seemingly only bound by her imagination, except each word is said backwards. For example, “cast curse” would be invoked by “tsac esruc.” Difficult as that sounds, it’s second nature to Zatanna. It should be noted that she doesn’t always need to speak for her powers to work. She has used sign language, writing, tapping, even just noises that sound like her voice or a text to speech toy before for the same effect. Zatanna speaks backwards in tribute to her father and previous ancestors in order to reduce the effect of the cost of magic.
- Elemental Control: Zatanna has been imbued with the four elements from birth, she is a big practitioner in elemental magic and therefore, has abilities such as weather control, pyrokinesis, hydrokinesis, cryokinesis, electrokinesis, geokinesis, aerokinesis, photokinesis, magnetism, and umbrakinesis. With these, she can respectively speak into existence the elements of fire, water, ice, lightning, earth, wind, light, and shadows. She can even control completely unique elements based in other dimensions.
- Reality-Warping: Zatanna can warp reality around her with her normal magic, as shown by her shutting down gravity, turning night into day, and turning rain into flowers, all before turning everything back to normal with just a backward word. However, when she is fighting at her fullest extent, she can warp reality to an even greater degree, as shown with her infamous fight against Zor where she was able to see an entire universe as dimensionally flat, and then warp reality through crumpling and tearing it up as if it was a piece of paper.
- Transmutation: One of Zatanna’s favorite tricks is to transmute others with her magic. She can turn monsters into harmless rabbits, Joker gas into oxygen, cloth into a snake then into flowers, a crowd of people into vampire bats, or even undo transmutation cast on others. Due to her continuous use, she has become potent enough to transmute objects without the use of her Logomancy.
- Illusion Casting: With a few simple words Zatanna can create various illusions, from seemingly duplicating herself to changing appearances. She is a talented illusionist, showgirl, and stage magician. She has honed her skills in sleight of hand and invented variations of card tricks.
- Telekinesis: Zatanna has showcased the ability to move heavy objects from a distance at numerous points, to the point of being capable of rebuilding the Rock of Eternity. She is even able to move objects with her mind without needing Logomancy.
- Levitation/Flight: Zatanna can fly or levitate however she says that this requires a lot of energy and concentration and therefore she chooses not to fly if possible.
- Force Field Generation: Zatanna can create magical shields to withstand bullets, blasts, blows and explosions. The greater the size or density of the shield the more effort it takes Zatanna to hold.
- Healing: Zatanna can completely heal a person of their physical injuries. An example of this is when she healed Batwoman after a traumatic fight with Azrael by simply saying "laeh".
- Resurrection: Zatanna is capable of reviving the dead, as shown during her past when she brought a bunny back to life. However, there is a cost: physical harm which Zatara takes upon himself.
- Probability Manipulation: Zatanna can manipulate luck as well as bad luck in order to make things go into her favor, or make things go poorly for whoever she wants. For example, making guns misfire, or robots malfunction.
- Time Manipulation: Zatanna can manipulate and bend time to her whim. She can do this through various ways: reversing time, slowing down time around herself, and even stopping time all together. She can even relive the past through simply touching objects.
- Telepathy: Zatanna has shown to be very proficient in telepathy, from reading people’s memories to communicating to others telepathically to erasing them. Her mental resistances are similarly impressive. Zatanna also has the ability to control minds to do whatever she tells them to do such as when she made some soldiers turn on each other despite being in a dimension that heavily weakens her magic.
- Sleep Manipulation: Zatanna can put any matter of foes to sleep near instantaneously, or do the opposite by waking people up. It is powerful enough to work on being such as Martian Manhunter, however, it can be resisted by people with strong enough mental defenses.
- Transformation: Zatanna is capable of transforming herself into various animals, such as a bird. She is also able to transform others as well, such as when she turned a successful investment broker into a female sex worker.
- Teleportation: She can teleport herself out of sticky situations but also multiple people with her as well. She can also create portals for similar effects. She also has been shown to teleport without her Backward Magic/Logomancy.
- Life Manipulation: Another one of Zatanna’s favorite tricks is to bring inanimate objects to life, such as brass railing, a suit of armor, a rug, and more.
- Dimensional Travel: Zatanna can travel through dimensions through portals she opened with magic.
- Size Alteration: Zatanna can increase or decrease her size or the size of others to any conceivable size.
- Spectral Sight: Zatanna can see spiritual entities to no other normal human can see.
- Mystical Invulnerability: After casting this specific spell, she is safe from any offensive magic that comes her way or others.
- Logomancy: Logomancy is also known as “Backwards Magic.” Zatanna typically casts her magic spells by uttering a simple command, which is seemingly only bound by her imagination, except each word is said backwards. For example, “cast curse” would be invoked by “tsac esruc.” Difficult as that sounds, it’s second nature to Zatanna. It should be noted that she doesn’t always need to speak for her powers to work. She has used sign language, writing, tapping, even just noises that sound like her voice or a text to speech toy before for the same effect. Zatanna speaks backwards in tribute to her father and previous ancestors in order to reduce the effect of the cost of magic.
- Black Magic: During her tutelage with Nick Necro, she along with John Constantine was taught black magic by the renown mage, a form of magic known for having a high cost to its practitioners.
- Rune Magic: Zatanna is capable of utilizing runes in order to project images as shown when Zatanna uses a rune to project an image of the Upside-Down Man in order to show the Justice League.
- Chaos Magic: While Zatanna possessed the Ruby of Life filled with chaos magic from Mordru, Zatanna was capable of performing Chaos Magic for a time; this type of magic required no use of any systems and was powered by imagination. While in usage of it, she was capable of matching Nabu and other Lords of Order in battle. Unlike her Logomancy spells, she instead casted effects by speakng anagrams. However, she can use this magic outside of the Ruby of Life, which, she does not due to a promise to Zatara.
Abilities[]
Zatanna showing the secret of magic to Batman
- Hand-to-Hand Combat (Advanced): Zatanna has received extensive training from her time with the Justice League of America and from her father who always told her to rely on her wits as well as her fists if her magic ever fails.
- Prestidigitation: Zatanna is a greatly skilled magician and an expert illusionist, therefore performing extraordinary (real)tricks and incredible illusions on stage is super simple to her.
- Escapology: In preparation for her role as a stage magician, Zatanna was taught how to escape from precarious situations without using magic. By the time she was in kindergarten Zatanna could already escape from a straitjacket while underwater.
- Occultism: Zatanna is an expert magician with knowledge of innumerable spells and was taught by notable magicians Zatara and Nick Necro.
- Meditation: Zatanna's father taught her a dozen meditation techniques by the time she was 6 years old: Buddhist, Tibetan, Kabbalistic, and Kundalini to name a few.
- Multilingualism: Zatanna is multi-lingual, being fluent in English, Spanish, and her trademark "backwards speech."
- Lock Picking: Zatanna was taught how to pick locks by her father.
Weaknesses[]
- Gagging: (Formerly) Zatanna casts her spells by saying the words of her incantations backwards. Zatanna must concentrate on her magic to make sure she is using the proper spell. It is at this point where she is most vulnerable. Mnemonic incantation is the most complicated of the mystic arts. On one occasion, Amazo used her own magical abilities to temporarily remove her mouth and later used a Green Lantern power ring to create a gag for her mouth that she is unable to remove, rendering her useless for much of the fight. On a separate occasion, Deathstroke delivered a direct blow to her liver, initiating a regurgitation reaction and the Joker in the neck to render her unable to speak. Despite this limitation, she is capable of performing magic via other means such as sign language and writing down her spells.
- High-Level Magic Users: If the magic power-level of her opponent is higher than hers, then it would be extremely difficult for her to win a battle. In addition, it is difficult to impossible to affect a spell that was set in motion with higher-level magics. Powerful enchantments against beings of magic, like gods, are able to restrict her as well, preventing her from accessing enchanted places or dispel the adverse charm.
Affiliations[]
- Justice League
- Justice League Dark
- Sentinels of Magic
- Seven Soldiers
Portrayals[]
Films[]
- In Justice League Dark and Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, she was voiced by Camilla Luddington, who also voiced Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy.
- In DC Comics Super Heroes: The Flash, she was voiced by Kate Micucci.
Television[]
- In the DC Animated Universe, she was voiced by Julie Brown, Stacie Randall and Jennifer Hale (who also voiced Naomi Hunter in the Metal Gear series, Sam in Totally Spies!, Satele Shan in Star Wars: The Old Republic, Bastila Shan in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect trilogy).
- Hale reprised her voiced for the character in Batman: The Brave and the Bold.
- In Smallville, she was portrayed by Serinda Swan.
- In Zatanna: Trial of the Crystal Wand, she was voiced by Tara Strong, who also voiced Harley Quinn in numerous media, Timmy Turner in The Fairly OddParents, Ben Tennyson in the Ben 10 series, Raven in Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go!, and Twilight Sparkle in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
- Strong also voiced the character in Mad.
- In Young Justice, she was voiced by Lacey Chabert, who also voiced Vitani in The Lion King II, Aleu in Balto 2, Meg Griffin in Family Guy, Eliza Thornberry in The Wild Thornberry's, and Princess Elise in Sonic the Hedgehog.
- Chabert reprised her voice for the character in Justice League Action and Injustice: Gods Among Us.
- In DC Super Hero Girls, she was voiced by Kari Walhgren, who also voiced Charmcaster in the Ben 10 series, Starfire in the DC Animated Movie Universe and Injustice 2, Chloe Carmichael in The Fairly OddParents and Mina Monroe in Bunnicula.
- Walhgren reprised her voice for the character in Justice League Heroes and Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham.
Quotes[]
| “ | Break for smoothies. | „ |
| ~ Zatanna during a clash in Injustice. |
Trivia[]
- Her cousin Zachary Zatara, is also a magician in the DCU.
- Her signature power is being able to cast spells by speaking backwards.
- Bruce Wayne trained as an escape artist along-side her during her father's tours.
- The heroine, Raven, originally tried to work as Zatanna's apprentice but was rejected when Zatanna became suspicious of it being a trick by Raven's father, the demon Trigon.
- Zatanna has had an on/off again crush on her childhood friend Bruce Wayne through-out her life.
- In the Post-Crisis continuity, after the villain Dr. Light rapes Sue Dibny, Zatanna would attempt to use a risky mind-altering spell on Dr. Light to make him less of a threat. However, Batman disagreed in using such a method which caused Zatanna to brainwashing Batman into agreeing to it. When Batman found out about this later on, it made him lose trust in Metahumans and contributed to his mental breakdown during Infinite Crisis. Although Batman would eventually go back to being on more friendly terms with Zatanna, it's unclear if he ever forgave her for the incident.
- Zatanna is trained in vocal activation of her powers. This means she cannot use her powers if she is gagged, underwater or for any other reason unable to speak.
- During the struggle against Upside Down Man, it was implied that she has to cast her spells backwards because they would be too powerful and too difficult to control if spoken normally.
- Zatanna frequently appears in stories written by Paul Dini, who also wrote for Batman: The Animated Series.
- Paul Dini himself made Zatanna: Trial of the Crystal Wand for Cartoon Monsoon.
- Upon DC's acquisition of Hellblazer characters, she has had a romantic relationship with John Constantine.
External Links[]
- Zatanna on the DC Database Wiki
- Zatanna on the VS Battles Wiki
[]
 Heroes
| ||
|
Insurgency Justice League Teen Titans Others Non-Injustice/Guest Star Heroes | ||
 Heroes
| ||
|
Aquaman | The Atom | Batman | Captain America | Justice League | The Avengers | Wonder Woman | Superman | Beast Boy | Teen Titans | Starfire | Raven | Iron Man | Kid Flash (Bart Allen) | Thor Odinson | Cyborg | Poison Ivy | Justice Society | Batgirl | The Flash (Barry Allen) | Shazam | Black Panther | Booster Gold | Captain Marvel | Nightwing | Firestorm | Green Arrow | Green Lantern (Guy Gardner) | Hawkeye | Hawkman (Carter Hall) | Hawkman (Katar Hol) | Hawkgirl (Shiera Sanders) | Quicksilver | Hulk | Jason Todd | Jimmy Olsen | Green Lantern (John Stewart) | Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) | Kon-El | Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner) | Lois Lane | Loki Laufeyson | Martian Manhunter | Roy Harper | Scarlet Witch | She-Hulk | Spider-Man | Star Sapphire | Terra | Vision | Plastic Man | Wasp | War Machine | Wolverine | Wonder Man | Zatanna | ||