Giovanni Zatara

Doctor Fate II

Giovanni Zatara

## Biography

### Early Life

Giovanni Zatara was born on June 1st, 1931 to a family of working class Italian-Americans in Bludhaven. Like most of the American working class, the family struggled to make ends meet during the great depression. Gio’s father in the midst of working in the local shipyard has taken to becoming a nighttime boxer, and was priming Gio’s older brothers to take his place.

Gio was often left in the care of his grandfather, Luigi, who had been a well-off performer before the depression hit. When the era of economic hardship eventually passed, Gio and Luigi were closer than ever before, with Luigi starting his stage act up again, and taking on Gio as his stagehand and apprentice.

When Gio was ten years old, Gio’s brothers were drafted following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Heartbreakingly, the two of them would end up killed in combat. Shortly after, Gio’s father turned to the bottle, and ended up killed in a bar fight. In her grief, Gio’s mother was unable to take care of him any longer, and so he moved in with his grandfather.

Luigi continued to teach the boy all of his stagehand tricks, eventually revealing some of them to not be tricks of deception and theatrics, but rather aided by the possession of magical intrinsic energy. Upon showing Gio how to access the same energy fields, Gio became as skilled of a magician as his grandfather. In poor health, the two swapped roles, with Gio taking over as Zatara, a one-man magician act.

Gio spent a few years on the road with the show, until Luigi died, and he played to a sold-out audience in remembrance for his grandfather. After the show, while locking up and loading up his truck, Gio was confronted by two individuals who wanted to recruit him for his special skills.

The older man of the two introduced himself as Kent Nelson, a former soldier imbued with the sorcerer powers of the Lord of Order Nabu, who was now looking for proteges to help fight on the mystical front, as Adolf Hitler’s advisor, Per Degaton, was on the loose and collecting magical artifacts. Intrigued by Zatara’s power, the two had tracked him down. Nelson introduced his friend, a Turkish woman going by the name Sindella - for Gio, it was love at first sight.

### Magical Training

Gio accompanied the pair back to Nelson’s base of operations in Salem. There, he spent the next year honing the mystic arts in ways he and Luigi couldn’t have even imagined. He bonded with Sindella - who revealed she was Turkish and Atlantean in heritage, and once even took him on an expedition to see the fabled Kingdom of Atlantis.

After serving as his apprentice for around five years, Kent revealed his true intentions for gathering proteges - he was trying to win back his wife’s soul from the Lord of Chaos, Wotan. The trio confronted the Lord of Chaos in his domain, only to discover that he had bonded his soul with Inza’s, forever intertwining them and making it impossible to separate. Wotan then revealed her allies, revealing that the trio had been set up.

After an intense battle, the trio were able to escape by the skin of their teeth and retreat - although they were wounded and angry at Kent for leading them into a deathtrap, prompting the two to turn in their resignation and leave the Tower of Fate. The two were married and moved to Metropolis, where Gio returned to being a stage magician, with Sindella occasionally joining in on the act until she eclipsed him in popularity and became the frontman of the show. With their newfound fame and fortune, they purchased an elegant estate known as the Shadowcrest.

In 1970, Sindella gave birth to Zatanna and their little family was complete. Gio began staying at home with Zee, while Sindella took to the road to travel. In their rare times together, they took on two proteges: John Sargent and Gregorio de la Vega. When Zee was just four years old, Sindella got in a car accident while returning from a performance and died. It was big news for the world. In an attempt to hide Zee from the prying eye of the paparazzi, Gio hid out in the back room of the Oblivion Bar for a few months. There, he first began teaching his daughter the mystic arts and the art of the stage.

In 1986, the two were visited by the young multi-millionaire Bruce Wayne, a student at the Sorbonne, who requested to be trained in matters of theatrics and illusion, in exchange for a hefty sum of money that would single-handedly keep the duo afloat for the next few years. They agreed - and Gio began to notice some chemistry between his daughter and the young boy, but before things could go further, he disappeared seemingly overnight.

Shortly before Zee’s seventeenth birthday, Adrian Veidt’s attacks left a lasting impact on the magical community, and Kent Nelson came to the family, asking Giovanni to attend a council meeting to discuss the after effects of such an attack. Gio left to the Tower of Fate to discuss with the Sentinels of Magic, and when he returned, Zee had vanished without a trace.

He spent the next few years combing this plane of existence searching for her, enlisting the help of many magical allies, but there was nothing to be found, so he began searching through every other plane of existence and dimension he could feasibly travel through - and even some he couldn’t - often enlisting the help of other occult figures and making questionable deals.

After nearly two decades of searching, Gio came to the Tower of Fate, weary, and begged Kent Nelson to help him - instead, Nabu replied. He told him that Kent Nelson’s body was ailing, and that if he were to take Nelson’s place as Doctor Fate and give up the rest of his mortal life in servitude of the Lords of Order, he would help him find Zatanna. Gio desperately agreed.

### Doctor Fate

Kent and Gio spent the next few months holed up in the Tower of Fate casting spells and igniting ancient rituals, until at last they were able to locate Zatanna in a dimension where time stood still only accessible through a portal in a hidden city in the mountains of Turkey. The two embarked on their quest, arriving in the mysterious plane - where Gio stood face-to-face with Sindella.

As it turned out, she hadn’t died, rather she had been returned to her native plane by scouts sent out by the race of homo magi known as the Hidden Ones who lived within the city. Sindella had cast a spell to take her daughter with her and train her to fight an impending battle with the Forces of Chaos. Nabu bargained a deal with Sindella and got her to turn Zee over to this realm, with Kent Nelson agreeing to take her place.

Now, back in the correct plane of existence, Gio reunited with his daughter, although he was now nearly twenty years older, Zee hadn’t aged a day since her disappearance. After a tearful reunion, Nabu called on Zatara to take Nelson’s place and fulfill their original agreement. With a heartfelt goodbye, he put on the Helmet of Nabu, and Giovanni Zatara was no more.

Giovanni spent the rest of his life as the agent of Nabu. He moved into the Tower of Fate in Salem and scarcely saw his daughter from then on. He eventually reached an agreement with Nabu, allowing him to spend Zatanna’s birthday with her every year outside of the Helm. After saving the Justice League from Doctor Destiny, Batman nominated him to join in 2007, where he and Wonder Woman began specializing in fighting the mystical forces that would befall the League. He also became a close ally of the Hawks due to their past encounters with Nabu in prior lives. He assisted in proving that Charlie Parker was in fact their child from another life and began tracing their lineage throughout history to fill in the missing gaps.

Acting as the mystical safeguard for Earth became a full-time job, and he lacked the time necessary to take on apprentices, but he convinced his daughter to fill in the gaps, and she began training the more mystically-inclined heroes of the Titans within Shadowcrest’s grounds.

In 2015, when Eclipso was freed from the Black Diamond, Doctor Fate helped make the last stand against the prince of darkness on Shadowcrest’s grounds. During the battle, Zatara was forced to remove the helmet and give his life fighting the evil - imprisoning him within the Black Diamond. Zatara’s mortal form had at last passed, but the Helmet of Fate found itself now a shelf-adorner within the estate. Honoring her father’s wishes, Zatanna turned Shadowcrest into a training camp nicknamed Mystik U and has begun training her own proteges there - one of which may just become the next Doctor Fate.

## Trivia

* Wotan's allies were a team called Tartarus, which included Per Degaton, Ian Karkull, Stanley Dover Sr, Felix Faust, Tala, and Klarion.

## Notes

* His stint as Doctor Fate is inspired by the *Young Justice* TV series.
* Leonardo da Vinci being his ancestor is a nod to his original origin.