History Characters / Zatanna

* LegacyCharacter: Become one for her father, becoming a StageMagician superheroine. Funny enough, she doesn't inherit his hero, but rather his lack of one, as they both simply go by their first names and have no SecretIdentity.

** ''Black Canary and Zatanna: Bloodspell'' reveals has been friends with Black Canary since they were teens due to a chance meeting in the Everest mountains when they both were training there.

* BewareTheSuperman: ComicBook/IdentityCrisis involving Zatanna's using [[LaserGuidedAmnesia memory erasing]] and {{brainwashing}} magic on super-powered criminals, following Doctor Light's rape of Sue Dibny. When Batman discovered this, he vehemently opposed it, but Zatanna and the other Leaguers decided to erase ''his'' memories of the event, which he naturally found out later. This caused her to be a BrokenPedestal to many of her colleagues for a while.

* BrokenPedestal: Her role in ''ComicBook/IdentityCrisis'' as the one who tampered with villains' and heroes' memories for the benefit of the Justice League via LaserGuidedAmnesia caused her to be unpopular with some of her colleagues, especially Batman, who started to regard her as untrustworthy. She later managed to rebuild her relationship with him during a ''ComicBook/DetectiveComics'' storyline where they both team up to defeat The Joker.

** Zatanna once used this in order to ''MindRape'' someone in the ComicBook/IdentityCrisis storyline. She "reprogrammed" Doctor Light, a vicious rapist, trying to pull out a good side that wasn't really there. What she succeeded in doing was creating an inept villain, but the idea was there. (This is the RetCon to ''try'' to make Doctor Light a threat: he ''used'' to actually be one, and the IneffectualSympatheticVillain we know and love is the result of attempted HeelFaceBrainwashing.)

** She turned the Titans against Raven moments before Trigon's first arrival, based on the grounds that Raven through her powers, manipulated Kid Flash's emotions to make him join the team. That would have been a fair assessment had Zatanna not only used her powers to wipe Doctor Light's mind, but also Batman's for trying to intervene as stated in Comicbook/IdentityCrisis. It should be noted, though, that this is a {{Retcon}} twenty years after the fact; Trigon's first appearance was in the 80's, and "Identity Crisis" came out in the mid 2000's.

** In the miniseries ''ComicBook/IdentityCrisis'', it is revealed that one of the reasons the JLA has been able to keep their [[SecretIdentity identities secret]] over the years is by having Zatanna strategically erase the knowledge from the minds of any villains who find out. The story was set into motion years before when they attempted to forcibly reform Dr. Light via this method, and it went horribly wrong.

* MyGreatestFailure: She considers her [[LaserGuidedAmnesia memory tampering incidents]] in the ''ComicBook/IdentityCrisis'' storyline to be one of her lowest points, and something that has soured her relationship with several of her friends and allies, such as Batman and Catwoman, to the point she quit the Justice League out of guilt and she had to go to a support group because of it.

* MostCommonSuperpower: Has the BuxomBeautyStandard figure expected of superheroines. But unlike most superheroines she doesn't qualify for BoobsOfSteel, since while she's often considered a magical powerhouse, physically she's [[SquishyWizard nowhere near as formidable]].