Biography of Zatara, 1938-1939

The following is a **biography of Zatara from 1938 to 1939**.

## Biography

### 1938

In mid-1938, Zatara and Tong began working on a case wherein multiple railroad employees were killed and $200,000 in goods were stolen. With his crystal ball, Zatara saw that another such robbery was about to occur, and assembled a group of detectives to intercept it. One man, Brady, ran ahead of everyone else. In the darkness, a gunshot came from far ahead on the train, striking another detective. Zatara saved him by conjuring a first-aid kit, but the other detectives assumed Brady had shot him. Zatara later witnessed a dead Brady fall from the train, and was pushed from the train himself by his suddenly appearing nemesis, the Tigress. This robbery was a success, but it allowed Zatara to formulate a plan for the thieves' next attempt. Zatara and Tong foiled their plans, though Tigress herself was able to escape, and revealed that the train station's inspector was in on the scheme to get a cut of the bounty—Brady had had nothing to do with it. The inspector and his cohorts were brought to justice.

As Zatara and Tong were eating in a hotel, they were approached by a man named Adam Springer who claimed that his farm was haunted. He was trying to sell it, but a ghost he believed to belong to his great-grandfather was angrily preventing him from doing so. The three went to the farm to investigate—in a barn, they found a recent prospective buyer, Jim Hendrix, dead, with a note attached to him that read, "This man came too close," signed "The Ghost." Zatara and Tong spoke to Hendrix's adult daughter, who informed them that the farm actually belonged to her father—Springer, his brother, wanted it for himself. Zatara further discovered that there was oil on the land, a clear motivation for Springer's ambition. Springer and his small gang of cohorts had set up the farm's appearance of being haunted in an apparent attempt to cover for Hendrix's death and allow Springer to quietly seize control of it. Zatara used his magical powers to easily overwhelm Springer and his men and bring them to justice.

Zatara was hired to investigate a series of murders committed by men in airplanes shooting down on their victims. Investigating one such crime scene, Zatara spotted Tigress walking away from it, and invisibly followed her in spirit. He uncovered that she was getting close to certain wealthy men, convincing them to put her in their wills, and getting her cohorts to shoot them down from above. Further tracking Tigress to a hideout in the woods, Zatara and Tong cornered the group of criminals. Tigress was again able to escape, but the others were brought to justice. Shortly afterward, Zatara protected a woman from a group of thugs who had murdered her club-owner lover and tried to get the code to his safe out of her. In Egypt, Zatara and Tong defeated a powerful spiritual entity that had attacked a group of explorers. While in Egypt, the two further prevented Tigress and a series of locals from stealing a priceless, mystical emerald. Tigress was captured and threatened by a sheik, and Zatara took it upon himself to rescue her. Tigress traveled to the other side of the continent, trying to make away with diamonds from a mine in South Africa, but Zatara and Tong stopped her and her cohorts once again.

### 1939

Traveling to Ceylon from South Africa at the start of 1939, Zatara and Tong investigated the kidnapping of prince Ahdar Singh, son of maharaja Rajput Singh, by revolutionary forces. Zatara used his virtually unstoppable magical powers to quell the rebellion and bring Ahdar to safety. A plane carrying Zatara and Tong to China was magically forced down over Tibet, and Zatara soon met a malicious lama who mistook him for a British major he had been expecting. The lama, named Jerbel, had assembled a large group of allies bent on taking over the world, including Tigress, who had apparently gotten in over her head and soon regretted her actions. Zatara defeated Jerbel and rescued Tigress, bringing an end to the council's plans. Zatara and Tong next traveled to Inner Mongolia to seek out the fabled treasure of Genghis Khan. A group led by Tigress trailed them and eventually stole their map, and the two groups arrived at the same time. They faced a series of mystical and perilous threats in Khan's tomb, and found a bounty of jewels at the end. Zatara willingly split the treasure among the various explorers. On the ship back from China to the U.S., Zatara brought down a rival magician's attempt, in conjunction with some international thieves, to steal plans for an important canal. After many months exploring the world, Zatara and Tong landed in San Francisco. He was approached by a scientist friend of his, he showed him his astonishing new invention, a portal to what he called the "fourth dimension." He asked for Zatara to explore it, too frightened to go in himself. Zatara passed through the portal, finding a world that was strange but not entirely unlike Earth. He found himself in the midst of a conflict between two kingdoms, but managed to forge unity between them, creating a single unified and peaceful realm. Soon afterward, Zatara was hired by Elmer Gordon, a collector of rare artifacts, to acquire a precious necklace from Inner Mongolia. Zatara and Tong retrieved the allegedly cursed necklace, overcoming many frightful occurrences and attacks from other interested parties in time to display the necklace at the New York World's Fair.

Zatara and Tong were beckoned to the Mid-Atlantic swamplands by one Fred Hodges, who claimed that nearly his entire family—father, mother, and two brothers—had mysteriously died in the swamp nearby. Arriving there, Zatara roamed into the swamp and rescued Fred's sister Eleanor from a witch and her hulking underling. He discovered that they were being commanded by Fred and Eleanor's uncle, Karl, who sought the deed to Fred's plantations. The witch and her ally were also part of the family, which had some sort of mystical "evil blood" running through it that tainted their reputation. Eventually, Tong chased the swampgoers into the quicksands to their apparent demise, while Karl died of a heart attack, overwhelmed by Zatara's magical powers. Zatara and Tong stayed with the Hodges for a short time, and met their friend Jeb Standish, retired industrialist. Standish believed that the Fountain of Youth could be found in the area of the ancient Incan Empire, and offered Zatara a million dollars to bring him a gallon of its waters. Zatara and Tong traveled into the South American jungles, where they infiltrated an active royal village and found the fountain deep underground. Zatara discovered that it was cursed to give its consumer a kind of "living death" of eternal life. Upon returning, Zatara and Tong learned that Standish had died while they were away—strangely, at the exact moment that Tong had scooped the water from the fountain. One day, New York City was suddenly horribly flooded. Cooperating with several major scientific minds, Zatara learned that the flooding had been caused by a scientist in the arctic with a powerful melting ray. The scientist in question sent out a ransom to several major coastal areas, demanding a million dollars in ransom for each or he would flood them. Zatara tracked down the culprit and froze him in a block of ice, throwing his ray into the freezing water. Zatara was awarded with a medal in New York City for fixing the disaster, as well as a million dollars of his own.

Zatara encountered a strange being claiming to be from Saturn, who was scouting Earth for a potential invasion. He transported Zatara to his planet, intending to send him to their leader for observation as a supposedly typical Earthling. Instead, Zatara used a series of frightening magical displays to convince the aliens never to invade Earth, and was safely returned home. He then rescued a woman who was being targeted for her ancient blood by an aging ruler of an African nation desiring immortality. The ruler had in fact originally come from the mysterious undersea city of Atlantis, and Zatara braved a battle with a giant octopus threatening the city to bring her there to see out her days. Back in New York, Zatara trailed and took down a scientist called the "Gorilla King", who was transplanting human brains into apes and using them to do his bidding, going so far as to create a remote city of gorillas with human slaves. In the summer of 1939, a deadly mist spread across the coasts of Africa, Europe, and India. With the help of a winged moon-woman, Zatara traced the problem to a different race that had migrated from the Moon to Earth. They lived in underwater caverns, and were deliberately suffusing a radium gas to the surface in an attempt to kill the entire human race. Zatara put a stop to their plans, and killed them all himself.

## Notes

1. ↑ The witch is described as Fred and Eleanor's aunt. The large man is called her son, but also Fred and Eleanor's brother.
2. ↑ The planet depicted here bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Saturn in our star system, and indeed the surrounding area of space is also not at all similar. This discrepancy is obviously due to a relative lack of information at the time of publication, but it could also be said that the aliens simply come from a different planet with the same name.

## References

1. ↑ *Action Comics* #1c: "Zatara, Master Magician." (June 1938) Guardineer, Fred.
2. ↑ *Action Comics* #2j: "The Haunted Farm." (July 1938) Guardineer, Fred.
3. ↑ *Action Comics* #3i: "Death from the Air." (August 1938) Guardineer, Fred.
4. ↑ *Action Comics* #4j: "The Night Club Murder." (September 1938) Guardineer, Fred.
5. ↑ *Action Comics* #5j: "The Egyptian Wizard." (October 1938) Guardineer, Fred.
6. ↑ *Action Comics* #6i: "The Emerald of Cheops." (November 1938) Guardineer, Fred.
7. ↑ *Action Comics* #7j: "The Zulu Diamond Mine." (December 1938) Guardineer, Fred.
8. ↑ *Action Comics* #8i: "The Indian Prince." (January 1939) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
9. ↑ *Action Comics* #9i: "The Mad Lama." (February 1939) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
10. ↑ *Action Comics* #10i: "The Treasure of Ghenghis Khan." (March 1939) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
11. ↑ *Action Comics* #11h: "The Sea Ghost." (April 1939) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
12. ↑ *Action Comics* #12h: "The Land of the Fourth Dimension." (May 1939) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
13. ↑ *New York World's Fair Comics* #1j: "The World's Fair Exhibit." (April 1939) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
14. ↑ *Action Comics* #13h: "The Swamp of Satan." (June 1939) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
15. ↑ *Action Comics* #14h: "The Fountain of Youth." (July 1939) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
16. ↑ *Action Comics* #15h: "The Ice Menace." (August 1939) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
17. ↑ *Action Comics* #16h: "The Terror from Saturn." (September 1939) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
18. ↑ *Action Comics* #17h: "The Peril of Ophir." (October 1939) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
19. ↑ *Action Comics* #18i: "The Atlantis Mystery." (November 1939) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
20. ↑ *Action Comics* #19i: "The Gorilla King." (December 1939) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
21. ↑ *Action Comics* #20h: "The Moon Men." (January 1940) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).