ZATANNA : The Mistress of Magic

"Hey, pay attention to me! I'm fascinating." --ZATANNA Zatara

With Smallville ending, it is time to look back at the heroes they helped brought to life, and take a look at their comicbook roots.

Who is ZATANNA?
The daughter of a powerful golden age magician John Zatara. She is a homo magi, a sub-race of magic-using humans, ZATANNA followed her father's footsteps in using the magical arts. She cast her spells by saying or writing the words backwards.

ZATANNA Zatara is a fictional character in the DC Comics universe. Created by writer Gardner Fox and artist Murphy Anderson, ZATANNA first appeared in Hawkman vol. 1 #4

first appearance

In her first appearance ZATANNA is dressed in a traditional magician's outfit complete with a top hat, yellow cummerbund, coattails, and fishnets. This is the default costume of the character.

ZATANNA hides her magical abilities in plain sight by masquerading as a stage magician. Her audience thinks that she uses tricks to achieve the illusions she makes.

ZATANNA's early adventure is the search for his missing father. During this time she met several superheroes who helped her on her quest until she found his father.

In Justice League of America #161, she is welcomed to be a part of the league, but during this time her powers where limited only to controlling the four basic elements. She also wore a new costume, which was derived from the outfit of her mother.

Wanting to emerge from the shadows of both her parents, ZATANNA came up with a costume that is uniquely her own, a combination of flowing robes and thigh-high boots, which she would continue to wear throughout her tenure with the original JLA.

The costume is inspired by a magician's tux, with a unique red headress, red flares on the sides of her face, frisbee-sized earrings adorned with a "Z" and huge, billowy bell sleeves.

One controversial storyline that involves ZATANNA is in 2004's Identity Crisis, when she mind wipes the villainous Dr Light and altered his personality to becoming some sort of a buffoon. Batman, walked in while she and other league members where in the middle of the process, not wanting Batman to be involved in what they done, ZATANNA mindwiped that particular memory out of Batman.

In her mini-series which is part of th Seven Soldiers of Victory event, ZATANNA's past guilts haunt her, she begun suffering from a complete lack of confidence. With the help of her new apprentice, Misty Kilgore, she slowly regained it.

In the event called Blackest Night, ZATANNA faced off with a Black Lantern version of his father. She defeated his father, but this left her an emotianal wreck.

After years of guesting in other books, ZATANNA is finally rewarded with her own on-going series. She is seen wearing her classic outfit.

Now… ahem…a montage…

LIVE APPEARANCE
ZATANNA is a recurring character in the tv show Smallville, she is portrayed by actress Serinda Swan. The character first appeared late in season eight, in the episode "Hex". She is described as the daughter of the deceased John Zatara, "the world's greatest magician."

POWES & ABILITIES
Note: Due to the nature of comicbooks being an on-going tale, the character's powers along with his appearance, is in a constant state of flux.

Sorcery: ZATANNA is a homo magi, a human born with the affinity to manipulate magic. Her unique genetic structure allows her to use the magic she was born with as well as learned magic. As a tribute to her father, and as a focus for her spells, she casts spells by speaking backwards.

AbilitiesPrestidigitation: ZATANNA is skilled in stage magic, performing simple tricks and elaborate illusions.

Good Combatant: She has also been taught conventional fighting skills by the Justice League, but favors using magic in place of them.

Occultist: as Chronicler of Magic she possesses an extensive understanding of Occult lore due to her Mystic Background

Hypnotist

Improvisation: She prepares specific spells (a couple of hundred) but improvises a good bit for the unpredictable situations she encounters.

Multi-lingual: Able to speak English, Spanish, and "Backwards Speech". As noted throughout the comics, she doesn't show any difficulty in speaking backwards when performing spells. It seems she can speak backward speech without hesitation and with clarity. Backwards Speech is most commonly known as Mnemonic Incantations.

Sources : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zatanna : http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Zatanna_Zatara_(New_Earth) : http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Zatanna_Zatara_(New_Earth)/Quotes : http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Zatanna_Zatara_(New_Earth)/Gallery : http://smallville.wikia.com/wiki/Zatanna_Zatara : http://www.comicvine.com/zatanna/29-5691/ : http://www.comicvine.com/zatanna/29-5691/images/ : http://grimbor.50megs.com/z1.htm : http://sacomics.blogspot.com/2008/07/zatanna-and-zatara.html

This is the 58th article in my Know Your CBM Character series. Any requests and suggestions for an article for this series write it down in the comment section BELOW.

Question for the Übergeeks:
Who is this character?

Message to the CBM community:To those who are making requests, check first [here] because I might have done an article on the character already. If I have not please be patient, I will get on it as soon as possible (but consider the fact that I spend hours writing one of these articles). Try to limit your request to characters that already have been adapted to live media, so that the feature will at least be relevant to the site – Comic Book Movie(though I include TV characters). Characters in Manga or Anime’, I am not particularly familiar of, I am not discounting these characters but it will probably take some time before I write a feature on them because I have to read up on these characters. Thank you for reading these articles! If there are errors on the feature article above, blame it on my age, humanity and ignorance. Just be sure to check the comment section for the corrections, any error I made will surely be pointed out and corrected by much bigger geeks (because there will always be a bigger geek out there). -This has been PollMaster inviting you to the geekside. MABUHAY CBM and Godspeed!

P0llMaster
5/12/2011
DCMU

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