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Characters / Zatanna

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Title Character

    Zatanna Zatara 

Zatanna

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/zatanna_by_john_keaveney_4.jpeg

Alter Ego: Zatanna Zatara

Abilities: Magic, Escapology

First Appearance: Hawkman #4 (November 1964)

"Easy, no. But possible. Because this is my territory. Spells, Hocus Pocus, demons. It's meat and drink to me."
— Zatanna Zatara

Zatanna Zatara, Mistress of Magic, is a Stage Magician with actual magical powers who also works as a superhero and is a frequent member of the Justice League.

  • Action Girl: She is a proactive hero who seeks out and combats metaphysical criminals, demons, and the normal supervillains of the DCU, using her mystical abilities to combat foes at every turn, and she has the hand-to-hand capability to protect herself when the need arises.
  • Adaptational Modesty: Zatanna, in the New 52, briefly ditched her trademark fishnets for a pair of leather pants. This new design was quickly ditched for one closer to her classic look, fishnets and all.
  • Adaptational Mundanity: In her first DC Animated Universe appearance (the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Zatanna"), she is depicted (with the possible exception of her final Stealth Hi/Bye) as a mundane Stage Magician. Later, in Justice League Unlimited, she shows her usual range of magical abilities.
  • Addictive Magic: Zatanna has a great degree of addiction towards using and abusing her magic to try to solve her personal problems or petty issues. While this often just manifests via Mundane Utility, it sometimes can have disastrous results. She even admitted to being a self-proclaimed "spellaholic" after going to a support group for magic abusers. In the "Secret Files" storyline, it's shown Zatanna can't go one night without using her powers to selfishly inconvenience other people who happen to annoy her.
  • Affectionate Nickname: She's called "Zee" by her closest friends, such as Dinah, Barbara, Bruce and Diana.
  • Age Lift: Originally, Zatanna was a teenager starting out after Bruce Wayne had been Batman for a while. Starting with Batman: The Animated Series and going through most later incarnations, including getting Ret-Canon to the comics, Zee was presented as around Bruce's age, even becoming his Childhood Friend. In fact, the only incarnations to keep the original age gap are Young Justice (2010) and DC Super Hero Girls 2019.
  • Alliterative Name: Zatanna Zatara.
  • Amicable Exes: Zig-Zagged in her relationship with Constantine. How much she likes him or is willing to work with him is often a case Depending on the Writer, as their relationship can vary between Belligerent Sexual Tension to The Masochism Tango.
  • Astral Projection: She is able to create a magical projection of herself with her magic powers.
  • All Girls Want Bad Boys: She's not attracted to bad men and malcontents per se, but it's been shown and lampshaded that Zatanna's favorite type of lover/love interest is the troubled loners. Notable since her past interests include the most troubled of loner figures like John Constantine and Batman of all people.
  • Aloof Big Sister An Aloof Older Cousin version. Zatanna and her cousin Zachary were always close as children, but Zachary now is struggling to make it big as a Stage Magician performer. This becomes a plot point in Zatanna (2010) when it's revealed that Zatanna has yet to see even one of his shows. This leads to resentment when it appears that Zatanna has skipped one appearance, what might have been his big break, not because of any sort of of global catastrophe or emergency with the JLA, but because she had a date. Of course, not everything is as it seems. Zatanna finally gets to his show in the end and they patch up, of course.
  • The Archmage: Depending on the portrayal, but Zatanna's magical prowess often makes her one of the most powerful members of the Justice League, being able to flip the laws of physics and reality on their head and back with a few backwards phrases. As a result, she's the League's go-to-gal for magical mayhem next to Wonder Woman and Shazam!, who specializes in the mythological aspect. As of the DC Rebirth continuity, Zatanna is considered DC's equivalent to Sorceress Supreme.
  • Astral Projection: Via her mystic powers, she can project an astral version of herself while meditating, which she does to contact magical beings in different planes of existence, such as the Nightmare Weaver Fuseli.
  • Author Appeal: Paul Dini has a penchant for using Zatanna. When Dini's writing her, she tends to be a Bathing Beauty who takes a lot of bubble baths, and boasts an Impossibly-Low Neckline. Also, in Real Life he's married to a dark-haired stage magician with a tendency to wear top hats and fishnets◊ and first hooked up with his (heretofore non-comics fan) wife because she was given a copy of a Zatanna comic he'd written and she contacted him about her resemblance to the character. He even wrote her 2010 solo series for a time.
  • Badass Cape: The superhero costume she wore in her early JLA days features a traditional superhero cape.
  • Badass in a Nice Suit: Her stage outfit is essentially a modified tuxedo with a top hat, which is also her default uniform when engaging in hero work. The biggest changes that have been made are the replacement of pants with black panties and fishnet stockings and the presence of an Impossibly-Low Neckline (sometimes).
  • Bathing Beauty: Zatanna is shown to enjoy or talk about baths a lot and has had a number of Bathtub or Shower Scenes. It's something of a Running Gag that she keeps getting interrupted during them, though given she can dry and clothe herself in an instant with her magic, it's much less of a bother to her than to most people.
  • Battle Couple: With John Constantine, especially when they're both part of Justice League Dark. Though both are worlds (or versions) apart, both makeup for a Badass Magical Couple. Then John Constantine is put back into the DC Universe and the two get back on their relationship.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: She might be a Nice Girl with a Thou Shall Not Kill rule, but getting on her bad side can have you end up with a creative punishment.
  • Beware the Superman: Identity Crisis (2004) involving Zatanna's using 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 Broken Pedestal to many of her colleagues for a while.
  • Bewitched Amphibians: Zatanna is a magic-user who loves punishing people with forced transformations, once casually and (half-) jokingly threatening to turn Batgirl into a toad once she didn't go on girls night out with her.
  • Bigger on the Inside: Her Home Base Shadowcrest (the Zatara family's mansion she inherited from her father) already looks big on the outside, but as Mary Marvel notes is even larger on the inside due to the many spells woven into the place. The mansion is physically located on the outskirts of Gotham, but the interior of the mansion seems to exist in an entirely separate magical dimension.
  • Black Mage: While she also knows a lot of utilitarian and defensive spells, most of the time she uses her magic it's offensive in nature, such as her mastery of Elemental Powers and telekinesis.
  • Blood Magic: She can resort to if needed especially when her Sdrawkcab Speech gets impeded in some manner, one of the easiest ways to still activate her magic is by writing backward, and in a bind her blood is always available. In one Detective Comics storyline, Zatanna had been shot in the throat and nearly drowned in a death trap courtesy of the Joker. She avoided bleeding to death by using her blood to write out a healing incantation, made extra-strong by its medium.
  • Blue-Collar Warlock: She's a Stage Magician superheroine who lives in contemporary times, using her magic to fight off supernatural threats, and often having to rely on quick thinking to deal with threats when her magic inevitably fails her.
  • Bifauxnen: No other superheroine can rock a tuxedo, bowtie, and tophat like her.
  • Bound and Gagged: Zatanna's reliance on her voice to use her magic leads to getting her bound and gagged as one of the most effective measures to rendering her powerless (although Depending on the Writer she can use her magic without speaking, thought she's still much weaker). To counter this, Zatanna trained herself to be a skilled Escape Artist, having basic hand-to-hand combat skills, and has developed other ways to channel her magic such as fingerspell, blood writing, or enchanted items and weapons to aid her in battle.
  • Brainwashed: The second arc of her comic features Zatanna herself brainwashed into marrying a man so that he can substitute her soul for his when the demon Mammon comes to claim him. This is not the first time he has done this, either, as the previous women he plunged into hell serve as the bridesmaids at the wedding.
  • Braids of Action: Some of her Justice League Dark designs have her hair in a braided ponytail.
  • Broken Pedestal: Her role in Identity Crisis (2004) as the one who tampered with villains' and heroes' memories for the benefit of the Justice League via Laser-Guided Amnesia 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 Detective Comics storyline where they both team up to defeat The Joker.
  • Brought Down to Badass: While her magic is always her most powerful tool, she specifically trained so as not to be rendered useless if her magic is disabled somehow, having some martial arts skills as well as being a Guile Heroine who relies on or her wits and agility to trick her opponents. In the first arc of the second Justice League Dark series, she can't use her backwards magic because of how - thanks to the Otherkind - it's going badly wrong. She's still a capable fighter, very knowledgeable, and finds ways around her limitations, such as stealing the power of the Demons Three.
  • Buxom Beauty Standard: Like most major comic book superheroines, she has a very impressive bust, which is appreciated by other characters In-Universe.
  • By the Power of Grayskull!: Zatanna and her father Zatara speak their spells backwards. (Remember: words backwards, sentences forwards!) However, Zatanna has sometimes explained away the need to do this as being merely a focus exercise.
  • Care-Bear Stare:
    • Zatanna once used this in order to Mind Rape someone in the Identity Crisis (2004) 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 Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain we know and love is the result of attempted Heel–Face Brainwashing.)
    • Depending on your interpretation she either had slightly more success or much greater failure when she attempted the same thing on the pages of The Flash. Barry Allen asked her to try to make The Top, a recurring villain of his, an actual hero. It worked, at first. But Top now had a conscience and couldn't deal with the horrible things he had done. He went nuts and started trying to do the same to other Flash villains. It didn't end well.
  • Celebrity Superhero: She's a world-famous Stage Magician outside of being an actual magician superhero. She notably doesn't even have a superhero Codename and just goes by her first name.
  • Childhood Friends:
    • She meet Bruce Wayne when they were both children, as he sought out her father in order to learn about being a master Escape Artist, making her one of the few heroes who actually is aware of Bruce's Secret Identity as Batman. This is actually a case of Ret-Canon, as the connection didn't originally exist in the comics, but it was used when Zatanna was introduced in Batman: The Animated Series and eventually was incorporated into the comics.
    • Black Canary and Zatanna: Bloodspell reveals that Zatanna 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.
  • Code Name: Notably Averted. She's one of the few Justice Leaguers and overall DC superheroes who does not have one, she is addressed publicly and privately only as "Zatanna," her legal proper first name.
  • Combat Stilettos: Almost always fights in heels, not that it's a problem for her.
  • Commuting on a Bus: The month after her 2010 solo series was cancelled, Zatanna was made into one of the lead characters in the high profile Justice League Dark book.
  • Compelling Voice: In addition to casting spells with her Sdrawkcab Speech, Zatanna can also use it to compel people to obey single commands. She uses it in her solo series to compel Brother Night to renounce his contract with Hell, freeing the souls of those he sacrificed to gain his power.
  • Cross Through: One of the earliest examples is The DCU as her origin storyline collected in the Zatanna's Search trade paperback, told through Hawkman (Vol 1) #4, The Atom (Vol 1) #19, Green Lantern (Vol 2) #42 and Detective Comics (Vol 1) #355.
  • Cunning Linguist: She has some linguistic skills thanks to her Sdrawkcab Speech gimmick, being fluent in multiple languages, including some related to the occult.
  • Daddy's Girl: Since her mother was gone when she was young, she was raised solely by her father for most of her life, and grew to be incredibly close to him, even choosing to follow in his footsteps and taking up his mantle as a Stage Magician and a magical super-hero, becoming his Legacy Character. His death weighs heavily on her, though she still contacts him to be her Spirit Advisor from time to time.
  • Deadpan Snarker: She's prone to sarcastic and witty one-liners.
  • Disappeared Dad: Shortly after her eighteenth birthday, her father Zatara disappeared from her life without explanation, prompting her to search for him, which led to her origin story where she meets several heroes, as well as the Justice League. She eventually found out he was under a curse by the evil sorceress Allura that left him unable to contact any of his kin, or else it would result in their death, but she manages to defeat Allura, break the curse and retrieve her father. (Though he ended up dying some years later while fighting the Great Darkness).
  • Depending on the Artist: The color of her Stage Magician outfit varies between different shades of blue to being completely black.
  • Depending on the Writer: Zatanna speaking backwards to cast her spells. Sometimes she has to do it, to the point that she's effectively powerless if rendered mute. Other times, it's merely a focusing technique and she can very much cast magic without speaking backwards, or in some cases, speaking at all.
  • Drama-Preserving Handicap:
    • She is a powerful magician whose spells work only if she speaks backwards, stating whatever she wants her spells to do. Because of this, her enemies naturally try to find ways to stop her from speaking. Even though Zatanna's been defeated many times by someone shutting her mouth, although Depending on the Writer, the backwards speaking isn't her actual superpower rather than just a tool she uses to focus her magic. This was Averted at one point when The Joker thought this about her so he gagged her and shot her in the throat for good measure, thinking that would neutralize the threat she posed. She managed to avoid death by scrawling "Heal Me" backwards in her own blood.
    • There was a period in The '80s where her powers were seriously weakened after she overexerted herself one time too many, which meant she now merely had control over the elements of fire, air, water, and earth.
    • It's also been established that there are nebulous limits on her power. During Final Night, a civilian asked why she couldn't just turn the sun back on with her magic. She demonstrated that it was way outside her ability.
    • In Dwayne McDuffie's Justice League of America run, it was shown that her spells take a physical toll on her body, and that particularly powerful ones eat away at her stamina and can render her physically exhausted.
  • The Dreaded: To the magical community who think of her as an all-powerful magical icon and sorceress supreme. As one of the most powerful magic users around, she often polices the malevolent elements of the magical world and earned herself a form of dangerous sheriff reputation because of it.
  • Elemental Powers: With her magic she's able to control or manifest several elements, such as fire, earth, wind, water, lightning, ice, and more.
  • Escape Artist: One of the DCU's greatest, which is no surprise considering her profession as a Stage Magician and her lineage as the daughter of the great wizard Zatara, a skilled escape artist himself. She can use her magical powers to escape, but can also easily do so without them as she trained hard under her father, having learned how to get out of a straightjacket underwater in Kindergarten and between her magic show acts. Her dad even taught another superhero the trade: Batman. Zatanna also had a relationship with John Constantine the Hellblazer and John is also a escape artist second to none. Apparently, John has taught Zatanna some spells from time to time.
  • Even the Girls Want Her: Since the DC Rebirth, it's become a Running Gag for at least one woman to be in love with Zatanna in each comic she appears in. Both Kate Kane and Cassandra Cain entertain the idea of marrying her in Detective Comics (Rebirth), and Stephanie Brown proclaims out loud how hot she is upon seeing her in Young Justice (2019).
  • Famous Ancestor: She's not only a legacy hero who took up the mantle from her father who was a famous Golden Age hero and member of the Justice Society of America, but their entire family are also famous Homo Magi that are direct descendants of Leonardo da Vinci (who is a Homo Magi himself in the DC Universe. The Zatara family is also related to Nostradamus, Alessandro Cagliostro, the noted alchemists Nicholas Flamel and Evan Fulcanelli, and Arion of Atlantis.
  • The Fashionista: She enjoys her tuxedos, fancy suits, and costumes and has a massive room as a wardrobe.
  • Fatal Attractor: She's remarkably unlucky in her romances. John Constantine is her most regular love interest, but they have a tumultuous relationship at best, if not downright bad enough to be considered a Destructive Romance. Most of her solo books has her getting a Temporary Love Interest (Joshua, Hal, Dale Colton) that is gone by the end of said book, implying they didn't work out. She has also been Ship Teased with other characters like Bruce Wayne, Barry Allen and Dale Gunn, but nothing came out of it. As she admits in Seven Soldiers, she has a fatal flaw in falling for "losers" and "totally incompatible guys" and often struggles with loneliness and sexual frustration.
  • Feminist Fantasy: She is a gifted magician who solves occult problems either on her own or with a team. She is noted to be brave, mature, and likable.
  • Flashy Teleportation: When she uses magic to teleport, it's usually accompanied by a puff of smoke, as a nod to her Stage Magician theme.
  • Flight: Using her magic, she can grant the ability to levitate to herself or others. It usually isn't very fast, so she still uses vehicles or other methods when she needs to travel long distances.
  • Forced Transformation: One of Zatanna's favorite ways of dealing with her opponents is to transform them into some animal or another. She's rivaled only by Circe in how often she does it. Best not to cross her when she considers this as an option. Some examples include:
    • Threatening to turn a man into a toad if he doesn't back down from an argument. He does just that, knowing she can and will do it.
    • She turned an entire audience into bats to attack The Joker.
    • Turning a scary ogre-man into a fluffy bunny.
    • Turning three girls into doves for annoying her, mentioning she's good with frogs as well.
    • The Vertigo novel Zatanna: Everyday Magic highlights this. She mentions turning hecklers into warthogs, telling kids that if they sell her autograph it'll turn them to pumpkins, and when facing off against a witch who turns her one-night stands into toads (including Constantine), she retorts by saying that Zatanna has filled ponds with her ex-boyfriends, which doesn't sound that far-fetched. Then Zatanna turns her into a sloth to achieve victory.
    • When Harley Quinn was annoying her, she stated that it only takes a simple spell to turn her into a worm and feed her to a seagull. Harley backed out from there.
    • On a girls night out, she tells Batgirl that she's going with her and Wonder Woman whether she likes it or not. Batgirl asks if she will turn her into a toad if she refuses, and Zatanna says she's keeping her options open.
  • Friend to All Children: It's more implied, but Zatanna definitely has a soft spot for children (barring evil ones like Teddy). She agreed to perform on Sesame Street despite not liking film or television in general, and only stopped due to her crippling phobia of puppets. She was also led into a near-assassination attempt by agreeing to do shows supporting children's charities.
  • Functional Magic: The exact specifics on how her magic works can vary from writer to writer, but the most common rule she abides by is having to cast her spells by pronouncing (or writing) them via Sdrawkcab Speech.
  • Funny Animal: Two instances here:
  • Gender Flip: She is a gender-flipped version of her father Zatara, who like her was a Stage Magician superhero in The Golden Age of Comic Books. She ended up becoming much more popular than him, to the point he's now considered a supporting character in her stories.
  • The Gimmick: The fact she's a magical Stage Magician superhero that cast spells via Sdrawkcab Speech.
  • Good Is Not Dumb: When Oscar Hampel claims that he was turned into a puppet because of a tragic series of events almost out of his control, and that his actions were an isolated event, Zatanna accepts that her father, for all his wisdom and power, was only human. She gives Oscar the benefit of the doubt and agrees to help him become human again...after she runs him through a magic Lie Detector, that is. After all, just because her father was not perfect does not mean he was wrong this time, and she is going to make sure before she takes any actions.
  • Has a Type: Mikey notes that she's into troubled loners, which is how she knows Zatanna likes Detective Colton.
  • Hat of Power: Her Stage Magician top hat is often more than just a Signature Headgear, being also magically enhanced to have a Hammerspace, allowing her to magically store or pull out things she wants from inside of it whenever she pleases, just like a Pull a Rabbit out of My Hat gag. On some rare occasions, she has even used it to trap some of her enemies inside it, such as the demon Fuseli.
  • The Heart: In the first Justice League Dark series. Being the most well-adjusted member of the group, Zatanna tends to act as a buffer between John and the rest, and the others trust her most. She trades off the Leader role with Constantine and Xanadu.
  • Heroic Build: She's typically drawn about as athletic as more physically-oriented superheroines, despite not usually being associated with physical strength.
  • Heroism Won't Pay the Bills: Zatanna works as a Stage Magician in between superheroing. Though since she doesn't maintain a Secret Identity she uses real magic in her acts. She also makes her own merchandising.
  • History Repeats: When John Constantine held a séance in Wintersgate Manor to combat the Great Darkness, this resulted in Sargon's death and would have killed Zatanna too, if Zatara didn't sacrifice himself for her. Zatanna conducts a similar séance in the same manor to look for her father's books. This time, everyone except for her dies.
  • Home Base: She uses her family mansion Shadowcrest as her personal sanctuary and base of operations, similar to Batman's Bat-Cave or Superman's Fortress of Solitude. The mansion is enormous, being supernaturally Bigger on the Inside, and is used to store an arsenal of magical and occult relics as well as a huge library. Zatanna herself claims the mansion is alive somehow, though she doesn't understand it fully herself. The place is also filled with protective wards to keep intruders out.
  • Hot Witch: She is a very beautiful and powerful female magician, though she's usually dressed as a Stage Magician, which is the "modern" witch look.
  • Hypocrite:
    • 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 Identity Crisis. 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.
    • She chided her cousin Zachary for using magic to show off and said it should only be used defensively and for restoring cosmic balance, but he mentioned he and nearly the whole city they were in witnessed Zatanna actively attacking criminals the night before on live TV. She justifies this by saying crooks causing innocents undue grief are fair game, but she also turned a group of annoying girls into doves for pissing her off right before telling Zachary he shouldn't use his powers for personal gain. Zach calls her out on it and says she just makes up her rules as she goes along.
  • Iconic Outfit: Her most iconic outfit is her Stage Magician look with a tuxedo and bustier combined with a top hat, fishnets and thigh-high boots.
  • I Just Want to Be Normal: Downplayed. While she very much enjoys her magic powers, she hates that it renders her unable to have a normal relationship.
  • Impossible Hourglass Figure: Zatanna wears a tight-fitting tuxedo jacket with tails and a white bustier that highlights her impressive hourglass figure as well as her very voluptuous yet toned body and buxom breasts.
  • Impossibly Awesome Magic Trick: She's a master Stage Magician even without resorting to her magical skills, and often leaves her audience wondering whether or not she actually used magic or not when performing some of her most impressive show tricks.
  • Impossibly-Low Neckline: Not always, but often her costume (Which is a variance on her standard outfit when performing on stage) is cut low to reveal a large amount of her cleavage.
  • Improvised Weapon: Zatanna is a logomancer. That is, despite having been shown in the past using simple spell without employing her trademark Backwards speech she needs to have a clear voice to focus her powers with. As previously stated, this forces her rogues to silence her in few occasions. Also, even when she has still her charmcasting abilities intact, some villains may exploit some loopholes to protect themselves from her magic. Zatanna in both cases mostly improvises.
    • In a story taken from her childhood a temporarily muted Zatanna (due to really uncomfortable dental braces) choose to use a Speak'n Spell toy as an artificial voice box of some sort. She also turned her braces into a cage, trapping her foe.
    • Unable to harm directly an iteration of Amazo based on her own magic, she mystically recalled Red Tornado's soul, rich in mystical might, to use it as a weapon.
    • In few instances where her opponent decided for something more permanent and less fetishistic than a gag (as landing a crippling injury to Zatanna's throat) Zee has been shown to use Blood Magic. Incantations written in blood are somewhat stronger, more dangerous and more powerful even than her average logomancy.
    • One opponent had the ability to cause Zatanna to move backwards through time for a few seconds, causing her 'backwards' spells to come out of her mouth as non-backwards words, and thus useless. She got around that by casting palindromes, such as "Nurses run!" or "Ogre flog a golfer, go!"
  • In the Hood: Her outfit in DC Future State switches her top hat for a hooded outfit.
  • Instant Costume Change: She's able to do this easily thanks to her powers, to herself and to others. She similarly can also create clothes out of nothing or take them off, though sometimes she's been shown to use telekinesis magic to do it, rather than doing it instantly.
  • Kung-Fu Wizard: She's a powerful magician who trained in some hand-to-hand combat to defend herself in case her magic fails to do the trick. Her magic is still by far her most useful ability as she's not strong enough to take out more than a Mook.
  • Lady of Black Magic: Zatanna has the magical power to defy the laws of physics and reality with a few backwards Magical Incantations, and is often depicted as composed, mature and graceful.
  • Language of Magic: She's a logomancer, meaning she focuses to cast her spells by speaking them backwards. More specifically, the individual words are spoken backwards, but the sentence structure is still spoken forward.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia:
    • In the miniseries Identity Crisis, it is revealed that one of the reasons the JLA has been able to keep their 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.
    • It is revealed in her 2010 solo series that, when she was a child and saw her father transform a man into a puppet when he tried to kill her, John Zatara wiped Zatanna's memories of the incident to calm her down. Zatanna herself is shocked when she discovers this as an adult, but Fuseli remarks that such actions must run in her family.
  • The Leader: She gets promoted to the leadership of the Supernatural Team Justice League Dark in the 2021 version, following Wonder Woman's disappearance in the Dark Nights: Death Metal.
  • Legacy Character: Become one for her father, becoming a Stage Magician superheroine. Funny enough, she doesn't inherit his heroic codename, but rather his lack of one, as they both simply go by their first names and have no Secret Identity.
  • Leg Focus: Her legs are frequently the part of her that gets the most attention whenever she's played as a Ms. Fanservice, such as the fishnet stockings she customarily wears that accentuate them or the Fanservice Covers she gets that put a clear Male Gaze emphasis on her legs. Even In-Universe characters tend to comment or ogle her legs.
  • Leotard of Power: Her classic costume is a shirt and jacket over the top half of a leotard. That's because it's a classic Stage Magician look, it's her shtick.
  • Logical Weakness: Since she's a Logomancer (a magic user who specializes in Magical Incantations that have to verbalized), preventing her to speak is the easiest way to neutralize her (or at least weaken her severely, since Depending on the Writer she can still use magic without talking).
  • Mage Species: She is a Homo Magi, a Human Subspecies of naturally magic-wielding humans in The DCU, which is part of the reason why she's one of the most powerful magicians in the world.
  • Magical Girl Warrior: Her powers are often at the forefront of cosmic conflicts for the fate of the universe.
  • Magical Incantation: Most of her magic is used by speaking her spells in a Sdrawkcab Speech. (Remember: words backwards, sentences forwards!) However, Zatanna has sometimes explained away the need to do this as being merely a focus exercise.
  • Magical Romani: She is of both Italian and Romani descent, being a Homo Magi from the same lineage as Leonardo da Vinci.
  • Magic Feather: Some writers have stated that Zatanna's speaking spells backwards routine is just a focusing technique and that she can cast spells without using it (she uses this justification when she takes down the supervillain Magenta while gagged in an issue of Wonder Woman, for instance). However, current canon says the backwards words are necessary, but they need not be spoken (writing them will work, for instance).
  • Magician Detective: She uses her magical skills and master of normal sleight-of-hand to deal with demons, goblins, ghosts and also traditional human riff-raff.
  • Magicians Are Wizards: She is a famous and wealthy stage magician with a successful show in Las Vegas, but she is also a powerful master of the mystic arts that often serves as our worlds best defense against intrusions from beyond. She has admitted to using both real and stage magic to give her act flair yet also give it Plausible Deniability to her Impossibly Awesome Magic Trick. She even implies that she actually finds stage magic more difficult since it requires actual practice.
  • Magic Is Feminine: The most iconic magician superheroine in the DC Universe, who just so happens to be female.
  • Magic Wand: Carries a traditional black-with-white-ends wand as part of her superhero arsenal, which she usually used to aim her spells. It's unclear if they actually help her with spellcasting in any way or if it is merely a normal stage prop, and she can use magic without them just fine.
  • Master of Illusion: While she can cast some illusion spells, her true skill with illusionism comes from practical effects in her Stage Magician shows.
  • The Mentor: Takes Misty under her wing, and does a pretty good job at it, despite earlier reservations.
  • Missing Mom: Sindella, Zatanna's mother, was presumed dead since Zatanna was a child so Zatara raised her on his own. Turns out she was enslaved by her own people, the Hidden Ones, a race of natural magic-users. She dies shortly after Zatanna meets her.
  • Morality Pet: Is often portrayed as one to John Constantine, being one of the few people he truly cares about and who can bring out his kinder side. Although at times, she's shown to resent him for always expecting her to act in this manner for him.
  • Most Common Superpower: Has the Buxom Beauty Standard figure expected of superheroines.
  • Ms. Fanservice: She is a very beautiful, long dark-haired woman who has a very voluptuous yet toned body with buxom breasts an impressive hourglass figure, and long toned legs and wears an outfit comprised of a tight-fitting tuxedo jacket that has tails, a white busier, black panties, fishnet stockings, and a top hat. Nobody has ever found reason to complain over Paul Dini's appreciation of the character.
  • Mundane Utility: Uses her magic constantly for mundane day-to-day tasks, like moving objects, changing her clothes, cleaning things, etc.
  • My Greatest Failure: She considers her memory tampering incidents in the Identity Crisis 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.
  • Nice Girl: Often depicted as being approachable, friendly, and considerate. She cares a lot about her friends, although she loves to poke fun at and flirt with them. Constantine is often the only person she tends to be curt with, due to their messed up relationship.
  • Number Two: Is often in the role of second-in-command in Justice League Dark, either to Constantine, Xanadu or Wonder Woman. On rare occasions, she does actually become The Leader.
  • Occult Detective: As a person with legitimate supernatural powers and no Secret Identity, she is one of the few characters in The DCU that can be casually approached to deal with issues beyond the ken of mortal authorities. The Zatanna (2010) series starts in San Francisco with a local detective hopping backstage after a show to ask for her input on a batch of grisly other-worldly murders.
  • Of Corsets Sexy: Depending on the Artist, she is depicted as wearing one, usually done to enhance her sex appeal. This is the route Grant Morrison went with in Seven Soldiers.
  • Parental Abandonment: She was abandoned by both of her parents, by her mother when she was six and by her father when she was eighteenth, though both of them still loved her and only left her to protect her from their enemies. Both also ended up dead shortly after she managed to track them down.
  • Personality Swap: In Justice League Dark, when everyone's natures are reversed on Epoch, Zatanna appears to be unchanged... until she nearly kills someone, and the only remorse she shows is at Timothy's distress. She also mentions that she doesn't trust people claiming Timothy is their "Chosen One", because that would be the first thing she'd say to manipulate a lonely child. Basically, she and John switch personalities.
  • Plucky Girl: She's had a hard life and tends to be the first one whose powers stop working, but remains a compassionate and well-humored person.
  • Power at a Price: Zatanna acknowledged that using magic in selfish or careless ways has a nasty habit of striking back at the user eventually and as such decides to use magic defensively and for stage tricks for her shows. Unfortunately, she still tends to use magic selfishly at times and suffers for it in various ways, even attributing her doomed-to-failure love life to this.
  • Power Perversion Potential: According to Constantine, she knows a thing or two about tantric magic and its many uses.
  • Proud Beauty: She's very aware of her good looks and enjoys dressing up in fancy and luxurious clothing. As she admits in Seven Soldiers, she "likes to look good".
  • Psychosomatic Superpower Outage: Her magical powers are tied to her emotions and can be rendered powerless if she's emotionally or psychologically impaired, such as in her Seven Soldiers story arc, where she was powerless due to Survivor Guilt and low self-confidence after a incident caused by her led to several of her friends dying.
  • Put on a Bus: When the House of Mystery is stolen in the Horror City arc of the first Justice League Dark series, John does not call Zatanna in.
  • Quirky Girl, Quirky Tux: She wears the variant that calls for fishnets and heels as a take on the stage magician dressed in evening wear. Since she's a magician, she naturally needs a top hat to pull a rabbit out of as well.
  • Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Her raven black hair contrasting with her pale white skin is one of her most distinguishable features (although how pale she is can be a case of Depending on the Artist). The fact she also frequently wears black and white clothing only makes the contrast more striking.
  • Really Gets Around: Admitted in her Seven Soldiers solo series, Zatanna has quite a history of casual one-night stands, and unsuccessful or casual couplings with "totally incompatible guys" while on the road as a Stage Magician. She's not really proud of it, and longs to have an actually stable relationship with someone.
  • Really Moves Around: She and her father tended to travel a lot due to their Stage Magician moving from town to town.
  • The Reliable One: While she shares the role of magical expert in the superhero community with Constantine, most people usually prefer getting her help, since she's far more reliable and professional than he is. This also applied to the Justice League Dark Supernatural Team that she's often part of. While most of the team disliked or distrusted each other they all got along or had some degree of trust and respect for Zatanna thanks to her reputation as a reliable Nice Girl.
  • Repetitive Name: Her first name and surname are almost identical, down to the Added Alliterative Appeal. It's a family quirk of the Zatara family.
  • Ret-Canon: Like many DC characters, her adaptation in the DC Animated Universe made several retroactive changes to her character in the comics:
  • Retroactive Legacy: Zatanna's very first appearance was in Hawkman #4, but a retcon in Justice League of America #51 established that an unnamed witch Batman and Robin had fought in Detective Comics #336 had actually been Zatanna in disguise.
  • Rogues Gallery: As one of the most recognizable magic-using heroes in the DCU, Zatanna tends to fight enemies who either have a supernatural background or are otherwise mystically empowered, including in her own limited series. Her recurring foes include the likes of Allura, Brother Night, Fuseli, Oscar Hampel, Zor, Ember, Uriah, The Tempter, Romalthi the Shaper, and Nimue Ravensong.
  • Secret Identity: She does not have one, and is publicly recognized as a practicing magician and former member of the Justice League. She doesn't even have a Codename.
  • Sdrawkcab Speech: Her spells work by her saying, or writing them backwards. Occasionally she can use her magic without speaking especially for simple magic. She also uses enchanted magician wands, smoke bombs and daggers to supplement her backwards speech.
  • Signature Headgear: The top hat in her Stage Magician-inspired "work clothes". It's almost always part of her hero outfits and she can even pull one out of thin air to complete her look when she's not.
  • Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Zatanna wants to find someone to be with, but most men she gravitates toward end up hurting her.
  • Sleight of Handiness: As a Stage Magician and showgirl by profession, Zatanna is very skilled at sleight-of-hand tricks, even without any assistance of her magical abilities. She even invented a variation of the three-card monte called the "Zatara shuffle", which is so fast and precise that is almost impossible to follow the movements of her hands.
  • Spoiled Sweet: She's a wealthy celebrity that enjoys a lavish lifestyle, but is still a genuinely Nice Girl that enjoys working as both a Stage Magician and as a superhero to both bring entertainment to the world and make it a safer place.
  • Squishy Wizard: Depending on the Writer her magic can be extremely powerful but she's normally just as vulnerable to attacks as a normal human being, and she generally has to be able to speak her incantations to cast them. She has trained in hand-to-hand combat to avoid this, but in a universe filled with Badass Normal characters, she's not good enough to take out anyone stronger than a Mook.
  • Stage Magician: Zatanna and her deceased father, Zatara. Both are real sorcerers pretending to be stage magicians. Zatanna in particular has considerable skill in standard sleight of hand in addition to her authentic mystical abilities, and she has quite a bit of fame and fortune stemming from her traditional performances in theaters and stadiums around the world.
  • Status Quo Is God:
    • The 1993 miniseries gave her a new costume, a new Love Interest, and had her learn more about the magic she'd inherited from her mother, with the editorial column saying that they intended to get rid of the backward speech forever. The boyfriend never appears again, and her new outfit and abilities make one appearance in a Spectre storyline (with Etrigan complaining about them) before a major role in Adventures of Superman #522 shows her back in the fishnets and using backwards spells, and that was the end of that.
    Etrigan: No backwards spells? No fishnet hose? I hate it when a tradition goes!
    • Her New 52 incarnation in Justice League Dark was given a much more conservative outfit. The fans complained so DC gave her a new costume that was more in line with her original, iconic Stage Magician look.
  • Stepford Smiler: In the first issue of Justice League Dark, Batman tells Zatanna that she is not stable, and most later references imply that she still hasn't gotten over watching her father burn to death because of John's actions. It haunts her right through the second series, especially after finding out that he's trapped in the Other-Place - she spends a good chunk of the next series obsessed with trying to save him.
  • Sticky Fingers: As a master Escape Artist, she's learned to be quick and dexterous with her hands, as such she is able to steal a small MacGuffin from a villain with ease, even without resorting to her magic, if the situation requires it.
  • Stocking Filler: Her Stage Magician costume usually includes fishnet stockings.
  • Story-Breaker Power: Zatanna is one of the most powerful sorcerers in the DC Universe, with the sheer utility of her magic can make it difficult for writers to put her or her team in a dangerous situation that she can't easily solve and thus generally falls victim to some sort of Drama-Preserving Handicap or Deus Exit Machina at least once per story. She notoriously has a Weaksauce Weakness that leaves her powerless if she is Bound and Gagged, which is usually exploited in team-ups just so that she can't solve the problem before the rest of the JLA get out of bed.
  • Straw Vegetarian: Averted. Zatanna mentions once that she is a vegetarian. While she spoils the bunny she works with on stage, it's more because she's nice. It doesn't really fuel her character beyond that.
  • Super Hero Origin: Her origin story came to be when her father suddenly disappeared, and she took up his mantle as a superhero and travel the world in search of him. The story has been collected in the "JLA: Zatanna's Search" book.
  • Superhero Sobriquets: Often referred to as "The Mistress of Magic".
  • Survivor Guilt: In Swamp Thing, her father Zatara sacrificed his life to save her. She struggled with the guilt of it ever since.
  • Teleportation: She can use her magic to teleport herself and sometimes others to another place. The exact way it works and if it has any limitations is a case of Depending on the Writer.
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: During the second Justice League Dark series, she progressively becomes more of a jerk after getting sick of being led around by the nose by her father's plan from beyond the grave, and Constantine's involvement in it - which she takes out on him, despite the fact that Zatara exploited a post-Newcastle Constantine in a way befitting Constantine himself. She gets better later on.
  • Token White: For a few issues of Justice League around 2009, the team consisted of Vixen, Firestorm (Jason Rusch), Green Lantern (John Stewart), Doctor Light (Kimiyo Hoshi), and Zatanna, thus making her the Token White.
  • Token Wizard: Zatanna often serves as this for the Justice League of America, being the most consistent spellcaster and magic expert on the team. While Wonder Woman and Aquaman have some understanding of magic due to their origins and powers, neither of them actually specializes in sorcery like Zatanna.
  • Underwear of Power: A rare case of actual underwear instead of something similar like trunks or shorts. Her fishnets often leave her black panties fully exposed.
  • Unlimited Wardrobe: Not unlimited, but certainly VERY large. Uriah stumbles into a massive room filled with nothing but clothes, and it shows.
  • Unusual Pets for Unusual People: Black Canary and Zatanna: Bloodspell reveals that, in addition to the rabbits and doves she uses in her act as a magician, she also owns a white Bengal tiger named Sasha.
  • Vanity Is Feminine: One of the girliest superheroines in the Justice League, and one of the most appearance-conscious as well.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Her mind-wiping Batman for protesting against mind-wiping Doctor Light got her this reaction from many of her colleagues and it's occasionally brought up whenever she gets into a conflict with other heroes.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Zatanna, it turns out, has a serious and crippling phobia with regards to puppets. Not voodoo dolls or wax effigies, those she can handle with no problems, but with actual puppets with their hanging strings and painted-on eyes. Her fears extend back to her childhood and a traumatic incident she experienced with her father. When she tried to guest-star on an episode of Sesame Street, reasoning that helping educate and entertain children was worth any sort of personal discomfort, she did not even make it through her scene before she vomited into an on-set trash can. She even went to therapy to help her deal with this issue, averting There Are No Therapists.
  • Wide-Eyed Idealist: Why she became a stage magician and chooses to help protect people with the Justice League and other superheroes. In her own words, she views the world as a scary place and because of that she wants to show people a friendlier aspect of magic to benefit everyone, mystic and mortal alike.
  • Woman Of Wealth And Taste: She is a rich woman who enjoys basking in the comforts and luxury her wealth can provide her when she has the time to do it. She's also fond of being well-dressed and is The Fashionista.
  • Words Can Break My Bones: Zatanna can do just about anything by reciting words and sentences backwards. Her cousin Zachary can also do this although he can't directly affect living things.
  • Worf Had the Flu: There's always a reason she can't solve the entire problem with a single sentence.
  • Working with the Ex: She often has to work with her ex John Constantine when they're both in Justice League Dark.
  • You Can't Fight Fate: She has some precognition abilities, but they're not much use to her since any attempt at changing the future will only make things worse. A The Brave and the Bold reveals that Zatanne knew something bad is going to happen to Barbara (the events of The Killing Joke which left her paralyzed). Knowing she couldn't do anything drastic to prevent it, Zatanna simply insisted on having a Girl's Night Out Episode to give Barbara some happy memories before tragedy struck.

Allies

    John Constantine 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/john_constantine.png

Constantine is one of Zatanna's friend and occasional Love Interests and they occasionally team up against the mystical forces of the world.

See the John Constantine character page for more info.

    Bruce Wayne 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bruce_wayne_0.jpg

The Dark Knight himself, Bruce is Zatanna's Childhood Friend, sometimes romantic interest and fellow superhero.

See the Batman character page for more info.

    John Zatara 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/john_zatara_004.jpg

Giovanni "John" Zatara is Zatanna's father and mentor. He was killed during a cosmic battle against a primordial force of evil while fighting alongside his daughter and John Constantine.

  • Brainwashing for the Greater Good: Erased Zatanna's memories of her encounter with Hampel so she wouldn't be traumatized. It backfired years later.
  • Came Back Wrong: Came back from being Deader than Dead as an evil ghost by Brother Night no less. Zatanna frees him from his thrall.
  • Captain Ersatz: Zatara started out as one of the many formalwear-clad magician heroes who debuted when Mandrake the Magician was at the height of his popularity, but he's had more staying power than most of the others. The most obvious difference is that Zatara has a wide variety of magical powers, while Mandrake is usually portrayed as strictly an illusion-caster and telepath.
  • Escape Artist: Was particularly skilled at this.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: In the battle with the creature known as "The Dark" (depicted in Swamp Thing vol. 2, #50), Zatanna is almost burned to death by an energy surge. Zatara quickly casts a spell commanding the Dark to kill him in her stead.
  • Magicians Are Wizards: The original one in the DC universe.
  • Papa Wolf: Is furious when he finds Hempel threating his daughter with a knife, giving him A Fate Worse Than Death by turning him into a puppet.
  • Parents as People: The situation with Hempel and realizing her dad erased her memories makes Zatanna realize he was this. However, when Hempel tries to use this to convince Zatanna to turn him back into a human she puts him through a lie detecting test first. As she puts it, her dad was capable of making mistakes but that doesn't mean he made a mistake this time.
  • Sdrawkcab Speech: Just like his daughter.

    Zachary Zatara 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/zachary_zatara.png

Zatanna's younger cousin, with magical powers similar to hers. Was briefly a member of the Teen Titans.

    Det. Dale Colton 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dale_colton_new_earth.jpg

A detective with the San Francisco Police Department. First meets Zatanna when he asks for her help investigating the deaths of gangsters.

    Mikey Dowling 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mikey_dowling_01.jpg

Zatanna's friend and stage manager.

  • Anti-Magic: Becomes immune to magic thanks to whatever turned her into a woman.
  • El Cid Ploy: After Zatanna frees her and the rest of her crew from Brother Night, Zatanna has to remain and deal with him for good. However, she explains that somebody needs to perform at their scheduled show and she dresses Mikey in her outfit and and sends her as a replacement.
  • Gender Bender: Used to be a man but was turned into a woman at some point in the past. The details are unclear but all that's known is that Zatanna didn't do it and can't change her back. We briefly see her as a man in one of Zatanna's dreams. Mikey herself seems to have no issue with it for the most part; although she isn't much of a fan of being made up, Zatanna does note that she seems to be down with "girly bonding" when the opportunity arises.
  • Guile Hero: When Zatanna is captured and turned into a puppet, she manages to find her.
  • Honey Trap: Does this to Hempel in order to rescue Puppet!Zatanna.
  • Muggle Best Friend: To Zatanna.
  • Tomboy and Girly Girl: Not really much of a debate that she's the Tomboy to Zatanna's Girly Girl. Despite living as a woman for what is implied to be a long stretch of time, Mikey still thinks of herself as a man and it shows often; aside from her speech patterns being very much boyish, her default attire most of the time is not remotely feminine in the slightest. The times she does end up having to adopt a more girly look - whether it's forcibly made to look like Zatanna, having her cap and suit being changed to a gown and make-up or dressing up like a seductive make-up artist, she can be heard audibly complaining.

    Arnie 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/arniezatanna.JPG

Zatanna's friend and manager of her show

    Misty Kilgore 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/misty_kilgore_3.jpg

A troubled, young mage who Zatanna takes on as her apprentice.

Enemies

Brother Night's Organization

    Brother Night 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/brother_night.jpg

Formerly known as Eldon Peck. A charlatan cult-leader who started dabbling in real magic and eventually came to control San Francisco's magical underworld.

  • Arch-Enemy: The cover of Issue 2 lists him as Zatanna's "Arch Foe."
  • Bad Guy Bar: Zatanna first confronts him in a bar full of magical supervillains.
  • Bondage Is Bad: BDSM is openly practiced in his bar.
  • Deal with the Devil: Sacrificed thirteen kids as offerings to the lords of Hell in return for his evil necromantic power. Zatanna forces him to renounce his power and his contract, freeing the souls of the kids he sacrificed and depowering him so that he can be arrested and incarcerated by the regular authorities, but also dooming him to Hell when he dies.
  • The Don: To a magical criminal organization.
  • Evil Sorcerer: A Serial Killer turned necromancer who controls San Francisco's underworld.
  • Luke, I Am Your Father: He's Detective Colton's father.
  • New-Age Retro Hippie: He was one before becoming Brother Night.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Before becoming Brother Night, he was a hippy who was also a serial killer and cult leader. Sounds a lot like Charles Manson.
  • Slasher Smile: Constantly sports one of these.

    Romalthi the Shaper 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/romalthi_the_shaper_new_earth_0001.jpg

His touch turns his victims into whatever his mask depicts.

    Ember 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/zatanna_ember.jpg
An unborn dragon gestating in the form of a human girl

    Teddy 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/teddy_8.jpg

Appears to be a young boy who attacks people with a magic box of flesh-eating bugs.

Other Villains

    Nimue Ravensong 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nimue_ravensong.jpg

The main villainess of the Zatanna: Everyday Magic oneshot, a petty novice magician that marks Contantine for sacrifice to a demon. Has a one sided rivalry with Zatanna.

  • The Cameo: Briefly fights Zatanna in the first issue of her Solo series.
  • Energy Absorption: Stabs Zatanna with a needle that absorbs her magical power.
  • Evil Redhead: She has short red hair and is very much evil.
  • Evil Sorcerer: A low-level magician and an annoying thorn in Zatanna's side. Cannot cast spells without making a sacrifice.
  • Forced Transformation: Enjoys transforming the men she sleeps with. Zatanna does it to her in return, turning her into a sloth.
  • Hot Witch: An attractive young magic user. Unlike Zatanna, she isn’t a Homo Magi, and has to resort to rituals for magic power.
  • Human Sacrifice: Tries doing this to Constantine.
  • Humiliation Conga:
    • Gets turned into a sloth by Zatanna and when she's turned back she's naked and is chased off her apartment by all the victims Zatanna restored.
    • In Zatanna's Solo series, she gets her ass kicked by Zatanna without magic and then falls victim to a spell meant to turn Zatanna into a slug.
  • I Know Your True Name: Subverted when it applies to herself. She goes by Nimue Ravensong, but her real name is Mary Ann Hoyt.
  • Immodest Orgasm: When she absorbs Zatanna's magical energy, who is so powerful that the feeling overwhelms her with pleasure.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Wears very skimpy outfits and is rendered naked by Zatanna near the end of her storyline.
  • Naked People Are Funny: As part of her Humiliation Conga she's chased off of her apartment naked by her previous victims.
  • Really Gets Around: According to Zatanna. We get proof when we see her frog collection, since she turns all the men she seduces into one.
  • The Rival: Considers herself one for Zatanna.

    Fuseli 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fuseli.jpg

An imp that enters people's dreams and turns them into nightmares.

  • Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When he's defeated by Zatanna.
  • The Imp: A green imp.
  • Nightmare Weaver: He travels from dream to dream, turning them into nightmares.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Zatanna imprisons him inside her hat and releases him after he helps free her father's spirit from Brother Night's control.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Forseti likes to think of himself as the lord of all nightmares but To Brother Night he's just a goon, and as soon as Zatanna get's the upper hand on their fight he begs for his life.

    Benjamin Raymond 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/benjamin_raymond.jpg

A casino owner who hires Zatanna.

    Mammon 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mammon_dc.jpg

The wealthiest demon in Hell.

  • Fat Bastard: He's quite fat and, well, a demon.
  • Greed: The self proclaimed demon lord of avarice.
  • You Have Failed Me: Does this to his minions even if he expected them to fail.

    Oscar Hampel 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/oscar_hampel.jpg

A children's entertainer turned into a puppet by Zatanna's father.

  • And I Must Scream: While he was a puppet. He "awakened" when he came into contact with Zatanna.
  • Evil Puppeteer: Hampel was a murderous puppeteer transformed into a lifeless dummy that resembled Hampel's most famous marionette Stringleshanks by Zatanna's father John Zatara. However, the spell bound Hampel's wooden existence to Zatara's bloodline. Hampel would later be awakened by Zatanna's presence and come back to plague her as a Perverse Puppet.
  • False Innocence Trick: Pretends to be innocent victim that Zatanna's father mistakenly turned into a puppet. Zatanna gives him the beneft of the doubt, but when she put's him on a Truth Serum he shows his true colors.
  • Forced Transformation: Zatanna's dad turned him into a marionette. He later manages to reverse the spell and does this to Zatanna.
  • Perverse Puppet: What he was turned into.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Zatanna traps him in a barrel.
  • White-Dwarf Starlet: When his puppet shows started going out of style.

    Backslash 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/backslash.jpg

An evil man who trapped a fairy, giving him powers to briefly rewind time.

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