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aboutzatanna · 1 year ago

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Fulcanelli: The Lost Zatara Relative, Could He Be Zachary's Father?

So when I was going through Zatanna's team ups with the many Dr Fate's of the DCU, I stumbled upon a character who probably ought to be a bigger deal than he currently is.

The character debuted in Fate #10 when Zatanna teamed up with the Jared Stevens incarnation of Dr Fate or Fate as he called himself.

The issue was written by Steve Grant and Len Kaminski* with art by Anthony Willams and it takes place sometime after the death of Zatara.

*Kaminski recently had an accident that left him wheelchair with his care completely draining his finances. Consider donating to his GoFundMe and following his FB page for updates.

The story begins with Jared on the run after being framed for a plane explosion and finds himself hiding out at one of Zatanna's shows.

Zatanna is trying to get back her groove after being away from the stage show life for a while. Given the number of issues from that time that picks up shortly after Zatara's death, I should probably compile them all into one post.

As is often the case, Zatanna's show is interrupted by the arrival of cult who attempt to kill her and her fans.

She runs into Jared Stevens which also leads to a fight between her and one of the cult members named Strega:

You might have seen some of these scans posted elsewhere. As Zatanna mentions in the comic itself, she may be out of practice but she was never out of the game:

Zee recognizes the cult members and teleports herself and Fate to someone whom she claims is knowledgeable about them:

Though she introduces Fulcanelli as a friend of her father's here, we will soon learn there is more to it than that. But first:

The cult leaders hold Zatanna's fans hostage until she and her allies intervene and the fight leads to this:

Culminating in:

Yes, she calls him uncle while he calls her niece. So he wasn't just a friend of her father's. He was family.

(Pretty cool of her to give her fans a do-over show)

Sadly, Fulcanelli is never seen again. But Strega shows up just fine as part of the Conclave in Book of Fate #6, the other ongoing that Jared led. So hey, I guess that means that they are both no longer statues ? If you don't know, the Conclave is a group of both good and bad magical beings that interestingly enough, Zatanna was in charge of. I really need to read all of Jared Stevens appearances and the Underworld Unleashed cross over to get the full picture on this.

But lets get back to Evan Fulcanelli, named after the French alchemist Fulcanelli , whom we are introduced to as Zatara's friend but later revealed to be her uncle.

Her uncle who isn't flamboyant showman like his brother, someone who dabbled in alchemy instead of backwards magic and who knew the secrets of transmutation that made him the target of a cult thus forced to keep his existence a secret. Someone who didn't like magic and viewed it as the road to ones end.

Now, what if he was Zachary's father?

It would explain so many things. The biggest being why Zachary can't affect organic beings; his power is rooted in alchemy and why he never mentions his parents (because his father had to stay in hiding or is still a gold statue). It also opens up potential sources of conflict with Zachary wanting to follow in his uncle and cousin's footsteps but Fulcanelli not wanting him to go down that path.

I'm sure Len Kraminski and other writers didn't intend for Zachary's father to be Fulcanelli; Fate #10 came out in 1996, Kingdom Come came out in 1996 and Zachary Zatara wouldn't debut until 2006. Yet somehow it all fits. If there ever was a canonical character who just works as Zachary's father, Fulcanelli is the best bet.

Its sad that this is yet another Zatanna loose end but hopefully more people are aware of this character now. No, I'm not expecting DC to read a Tumblr blog and make additions to their canon but I figured this would be of interest to those of you who like writing fanfics and head canons.

As far as team ups go, this issue was a solid one. Zatanna wasn't treated as a damsel, the writer wasn't quick to take her out so the main hero can shine, in fact he does the opposite and gives her her own villain to fight, plus Zatanna and Jared work well together as a team.

As for Jared, he is one of those characters whom you find yourself reflexively rejecting because on the surface he is so emblematic of the 90's excess but so far, from what I have read of his two ongoings, they're both surprisingly descent.

And the writer even avoided the urge to have Zee pine for Jared. They end up sharing a meal, not a date:

#zatanna #zatanna zatara #fate #jared stevens #evan fulcanelli #zachary zatara #strega #doctor fate #len kaminski #steven grant #anthony williams #john zatara #john giovanni zatara #fate vol 1 #fate 10

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wafflebloggies · 1 year ago

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the long con - part 7/7

a Don't Feed The Muse/Captain Disillusion crossover story. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The Captain stood in the middle of the Mayhew’s front hall, letting the door swing slowly to behind him. In the warm darkness, his sharp eyes sought a point up and to the left, moved away, found the deeper vacancy ahead where the foyer led to the second floor. The hallway was high and open, with a long transom of square panes above the door and a thin sidelight window like a straight slatted backbone to each side. The streetlights cast a tall golden gateway, surprisingly bright, framing his shadow and stretching across and along the glossy wood floor.

He put out a hand, found a switch. The illusion was broken, warm light picking out an ordinary, tidy, two-story space, with pictures on the walls and filling a sideboard of heavy red wood, an open room to the side mostly taken up by a big dining-table, with all of the chairs pushed neatly in. Faith, said a little wooden ornament hanging from the ceramic keyplate by the door, in painted letters. Be Joyful Always, Pray Continually, advised the big dark span of barnwood, directly under the transom, in a looping, light-hearted font.

Precious Memories, said a long picture-frame directly across the hall, busy with a collage of photos of two children- no, three, as the Captain took another closer look he saw that Anthony was there too, in several photos with Mark, from kids barely school-age to teens to two grinning adults with their arms draped around each other.

The Captain looked away from the pictures and up the wooden staircase, to the darkness where the banister gave a sharp right-angled bend around a hidden corner, disappeared into shadows. He removed his other hand slowly from his jacket pocket, cleared his throat.

“I come in peace,” he said.

The house seemed unimpressed. That it seemed to be anything was a peculiar feeling, that the Captain would have been more than happy to chalk up to his hyper-awareness, to the extremely weird day he was having, to anything other than the fact that there was a sluggish heaviness to the air and that his head had started to hurt again, dully, as soon as he’d stepped over the threshold.

He climbed the shadowy staircase. The first half was easy, with the hallway lights at his back, his shadow dark and jagged up the treads in front of him as if it was in a hurry to get there first. Past watercolours and a framed cross-stitch, to the turn. The darkness beyond, up to the landing, was heavy, like a physical curtain barring the upper floor from sight. It felt, to the Captain, like it was daring him to come any closer.

The Captain was irritable enough, by this point, to take it straight up on the offer. He snapped his fingers, and a screen shaped itself above his hand, lighting the way. It took him a couple of seconds to realise that it was playing the sewer scene from IT, and he tapped at it impatiently until it settled down into a featureless, even light. As he continued to the top of the stairs, it bathed the walls, the farmhouse-style shutter on the landing window, the surprising spindly shape of a side-table, in a uniform white-blue glow.

“Hey,” he said, lifting his voice. “You can drop the slasher movie act. I know you’re here.”

The hallway was as tidy and scrupulously clean as the rest of the house. He turned left, through a panelled door, and found himself in a mid-sized bedroom. Here, the methodical upkeep seemed to have faltered. It didn’t feel so much like the result of a messy nature, than simply a creeping lack of care. The bed was unmade and the floor was scattered with clothes. DVD cases were piled everywhere in untidy stacks, and a PC stood on a cluttered, dirty desk littered with discs and papers.

The Captain glanced at everything, seemed to pay attention to nothing in particular, missed very little. There were more photos pinned here and there between the collage of movie posters that covered the walls, several stuck up near the bed. A dark-haired woman with smiling eyes and a fretful-looking guy with a snub nose and glasses. Mark and the other, older kid. Mark and Anthony, again, in matching track shirts, beaming at the camera.

He looked at the photo, at all of the photos, at the only movie poster in a frame, on the wall next to the closet door.

“The original trilogy was better,” he said.

As if this was a password, the closet door cracked open, just a tiny bit. The Captain stepped back sharply, his screen sputtering for a second before it regained its form. He stood, facing the slatted door, a bright yellow shape in a sea of blue and white and dark slanting shadows, and he didn’t move again, not even when a low, liquid sound like a burbling laugh seeped slowly up his spine and rose, like black groundwater, into the back of his mind.

“Oh, no. I don’t do the whole ‘telepathy’ thing. Come on, it’s only polite, if you want to have a conversation, use your words.”

...my words?

The Captain blinked. A very small amount of black, almost indistinguishable from the thin streaky line that held his mask in place over the chrome, started to wind its way from his nose. He sniffed it away, sharply.

“There you go. Much better.”

you. shouldn’t. be here.

“Yeah, well, I was invited. What’s your excuse?”

The feeling of laughter again, sluggish and thick.

we thought. our host was. more reliable. but… he still has. so much. to lose. our methods always work. in the end. he only needs. a little more

motivation.

“Yeah, I’ve been hearing a lot about your methods.” The Captain folded his arms. “Enough to be pretty sure I don’t like them. I can’t say I understand what your endgame is here, but you nearly got two people killed tonight, and that’s definitely not the way to build a lasting partnership. You can’t ‘motivate’ humans to make art by making them miserable. And, I hope you don’t need me to spell it out, but you can’t be someone’s creative inspiration if they’re dead.”

He dropped his voice, his tone serious, earnest. “Listen, let me give you the low-down on this, okay? I know these people. I know how they work. I’ve been here, learning about them, living with them, for a long time. Well- not literally with them, a few thousand kilometres above them most of the time if you wanna get specific- but the point is, I know how you feel right now. You’re small, you’re scared, you think you’re all alone on this weird planet, and I know you probably think this is the only way you can get what you need, but it’s not. All these lies, all this- manipulation, trying to cut this poor kid off from the rest of his species just so you can coerce him into swallowing your screwed-up version of reality, it’s- it’s not gonna fly.”

no…?

The closet door moved again, as if stirred by a breath. There was a new note in the voice, now. Curdled and laboured still, even as it halted and pawed slowly and thickly through each word, it sounded chillingly gleeful.

it seems. to have worked. for you.

“Alright, that’s it-” The Captain stepped forwards, grabbed the handle, and in one move threw the closet door wide open.

It was empty.

Or, not quite empty. As the Captain stood, confused, looking into a shallow space with a few hangars still bundled on the rail, a few boxes stacked on shelves above, he could make up a dark, spreading splotch in the lower corner. By the light of his screen he could see it, like a burn, a sludgy Pompeii cast, the shadowy shape where something had been for a while and was no longer. The impressions of fine lines, like fern fronds or fungus, crawled across the carpet and the walls, radiating outwards, etched like the marks of something that had been clinging on for dear life with a grip that stained and scarred.

The Captain looked at it, and a shivery crawling ice-cold sensation travelled slowly all the way up to the top of his head. It was the feeling of adjusting ideas. He’d been quick to point out, earlier, that Mark’s ideas were not set in stone, that his certainties could still change and that being open-minded was not just necessary but healthy, a vital critical skill. He was, on the whole, a huge fan of the concept. What he was not a fan of was the simple difference between knowing, on Mark’s advice, that the thing was in the closet and couldn’t move, and now knowing that yes it could and it might be anywhere.

A sound, low and somehow sticky, just above the threshold of silence. The Captain turned, sharply, looked up. Flung up an arm, the bright screen at his shoulder flaring and scattering apart as his concentration broke-

-and the light went out.

pathetic.

The voice, slow and satisfied, in the darkness.

you thought you were. the only one who could see. these humans. how they really are. you thought. you have. the insight… to understand… us?

from them?

or.

from you?

It felt like drowning, bodiless, a sinking scrap of flotsam in a sea of black ink. It felt like dying. It felt like falling, hurtling through space, without the strength to stop or save himself, bright stars burning above, black earth below. It felt like-

small. scared.

The voice was laughing.

alone.

Somewhere, a million miles away in the physical world, he knew his body still existed, still moved and breathed. He couldn’t see it. He couldn’t see anything but the blackness and the terrible awareness of the thing that had been playing with Mark Mayhew for months, the ghastly enveloping consciousness of a thing that was bigger, somehow so much bigger, than any gluey spitball lump in a closet had the right to be.

He had been wrong. He had tried to think, he had wanted to think, that the thing felt huge because it had such a strong hold, that it seemed so vast and looming because of how much it overshadowed Mark’s mind, how much it had gorged itself on the ideas and energy of the human it had chosen. Now, too close and too late, he felt the full scale of it, the sense of many, the voice in his head just one swollen tendril of a gargantuan, interconnected whole.

so weak. so limited. so much. like us but… so much less. you attached yourself to one human. one host. to survive. his ideas. gave you form.

The feeling of intrusion, of this careless amused thing pawing clumsily through his memories, was an obscene assault on all of the senses he had left. He would have screamed, if he’d still been in control of anything to scream with.

his power to create. yours. his identity. yours. such short-sighted… waste. to chain yourself to one. finite. human. when every idea in this world. could be yours.

you chase. their approval. try to influence. their minds. always afraid… that they will stop. giving.

that he will forget you.

A long, complacent, unbearable breath. Wet, slow, full of teeth, the sound of a wide, wide, jagged smile.

humans forget. so easily. our host. will not know. what became of you. in time. he will give us. his ideas. his channel. his friend. his mind. in time. he will give us. everything he has left. and with Reconnection… everything he was. will only be another part. of us.

of all. of us.

of MOTHER.

Eyes and teeth, teeth and eyes. A world, a whole world of nothing but heaving black and gold, hunger and hatred.

With a horrendous effort, the Captain looked back. Made himself look. To remember he had a mouth, a tongue, a voice of his own, that he knew words, that he had something to say, these things felt like the most arduous impossibilities in the world, but to remember them was to grasp that they were real. That if these things were real-

-so was he.

“You… forgot…” He had to stop, gather strength. Every word felt like it weighed a ton, his voice weak, thin, like the echo of something only half there. But he could hear it, he could hear himself, the reassurance of the sound existing in a physical space, an incontrovertible reality.

As if his voice was a locus, a signal in the dark, he began to grasp some sense of what kind of a space it was. Wood panelling, clean stone flags, copper pans and utensils hanging from the ceiling like strange fruit, a door somewhere to the left with thick, dimpled glass. Not the place he’d lost himself in. Perhaps he’d wandered down the dark, creaking stairs without knowing it, perhaps he’d been drawn mechanically down, closer, the cellar door a yawning black mouth at the kitchen’s end. He couldn’t know for sure, but it mattered very little as long as he could sense that there was movement, here in the darkness. Something besides himself.

He tried again.

“… forgot something…”

The voice was amused. It couldn’t hear, or maybe it was deaf altogether, to the sharp bright sound that was growing clearer by the second in the Captain’s mind. He could feel the sluggish thing gathering itself, maybe bored of this game, maybe too hungry to resist much longer, even for fun.

oh? tell us.

The Captain’s gloved hands felt numb and a billion miles away from his body, but with his rising sense of where he was came control, and with slow groping fingers he found the pocket of his jacket, felt inside. Brought out Alan’s phone, the screen bright, the call-time ticking.

And then there was a click, and a sick, squishing, suckery smack, and as light flooded across the kitchen Mark was at his side, his pale bloodless face full of fury and loathing, his own phone clattering to the floor as he grabbed and held the thing, his Muse, tightly clamped in both hands.

“I heard everything, you slimy little shit.”

In the blinding yellow light Mark’s Muse was a pathetically small thing, barely a double handful of writhing tendrils and beady little black eyes, screaming and yammering up a hail of noise in both of their minds as it flailed in shock and outrage. Inky goop ran bubbling and dripping, twisting down Mark’s arms to the elbows as he raised it, holding it at revolted arms-length away from his chest, ripping every frantic hold it had on walls and skin and clothing loose in one savage yank as he strode away across the kitchen.

no no no no no! Mark! please!! your m-

The voice broke off into a horrendous wail, as Mark slam-dunked the squirming mass straight down into the sink, slamming the button with one bony elbow and stuffing the shrieking thing right into the hungry buzzing throat of the garbage disposal.

A spray of black ichor, a terrible gloopy crunch. The mechanism struggled for a moment or two, getting to grips with such an unexpected, unwieldy meal, but after a heart-stopping cartilaginous crack and a couple of deep munching growls it evened up into a nice, even, disengaged purr. A little inky water rose, filling the sink to barely an inch, before it rippled quietly back down, and the water ran clear.

It was barely dawn on the morning of the next day. A fine, blue summer morning, already hot, the rain still lying in puddles and glittering in the grass, ready to be baked out of existence by the day’s heat.

Alan, about as awake as anybody would be, jangled abruptly out of sleep by the doorbell, stumbled to his front door as if the remains of his vivid and troubled dreams were tumbled about like an obstacle-course, getting in his way. The feeling of unreality failed to entirely go away even after he had gotten the door open, and squinted sleepily out with a hand up to shield against the soft rising sunlight, because the Captain was standing on his front path, with every appearance of having rung the doorbell himself. At least, there was nobody and nothing else in sight, although Alan took a bewildered look up and down the length of the potholed driveway that ran along the side of the building, towards the road.

It wasn’t solely that the Captain didn’t generally do doorbells, or knocking- though he didn’t- or that he looked distinctly uncomfortable- though he did. It was unusual and alarming enough that he was here at all, let alone here, so weirdly still and awkward-looking and lacking any immediate, demanding motive, at stupid o’clock on a Sunday morning, with nothing to explain himself apart from a small cardboard tray.

On a normal, day-to-day basis, the Captain barely acknowledged that Alan had a life beyond Disillusion Industries. Although very far from the way he’d been, a long time ago, it certainly was the way he navigated things now. If faced with evidence that Alan did not exclusively pop into being whenever the Captain required him to exist, that he was an actual person who had to do boring human things like eat and sleep and pay taxes, had family, friends, a home- he tended to handle it poorly. Alan had slowly come to accept this selective blindness as a good thing, on the whole, given that when the Captain did manage to co-opt some other element of Alan’s life into Disillusion Industries, his approach could be… less than careful. The last time he had ever come anywhere near this quiet suburban street, on a certain memorable occasion nearly six years prior, he’d entered Alan’s apartment through a window, and left through the roof.

Seeing the Captain standing on his narrow little strip of a front walk, therefore, made Alan nervous. The roof was long since fixed, and he really wanted it to stay that way.

“Captain?” Alan stifled a yawn so strenuous it nearly made his jaw pop. “I- I know you said early, but it’s not even six yet…”

The Captain hesitated, then dug in his jacket pocket with his free hand. There seemed to be a quantity of dull black staining, like dried ink, in an arterial spray across his front, making him look as if he’d stood in the way of a minor printer malfunction.

“Here’s your phone,” he said, awkwardly, passing it across. Finding it sticky with the same dark congealed goop, Alan took it very gingerly between finger and thumb, and with no better idea of what to do with it, wiped it off on the hem of his shirt.

“…Thanks.”

Leica, a small, lithe bundle of calico fur and curious ears, padded around his legs and greeted the Captain like an old friend, her coat a vivid hodgepodge of orange-black-white-orange as she twined happily around his ankles in the early sun. The comforting normalcy of her presence made it easier for Alan to go on.

“What happened last night, Captain? Why did you make me promise to go straight home from the hospital? Why did you need my phone? Is- is everything alright?”

The Captain stooped to scratch Leica in the sweet spot, the fluffy white bib under her chin. She leaned into his touch, squinting her large green eyes. Here, her confidence had the advantage over Alan’s, in that she had known the Captain her entire life, and had never known him to treat her with anything other than affectionate respect.

“I brought coffee,” he said.

Alan was thrown enough by this extraordinary statement, without immediately being faced with proof that it was true, as the Captain straightened up again and handed him a takeaway cup from the little cardboard holder. The fact that it was stone cold (unsurprising, as it originated in a café chain located several hours to the north) barely registered with him. It always used to be, he remembered, vaguely. Regardless of all the difficult scientific realities he understood without a hitch, the Captain had never quite managed to grasp the concept of thermal entropy over time.

“Wh-”

“Alan, if you say ‘why,’” said the Captain, in a headlong, completely desperate voice, “I’m going to lose my mother- hecking- mind. We need to talk about so much- like, all of the things- and I have no idea how to start. I have no idea- how- to explain myself.”

(what happened? i don’t remember what happened. does it matter? we’re okay, aren’t we? we’re both okay.)

“I mean- I’ve never had any idea how to explain you,” said Alan, cautiously. “If that helps? And we… we kind of agreed we wouldn’t try, didn’t we? Right at the beginning.”

The Captain shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “Maybe that was a mistake.”

Now that Alan was awake enough to look closer, see more, the Captain definitely looked as if he’d been through something. The splattering of black goop was worrying enough, considering he was the only person Alan knew (or had ever known) who bled black, but he didn’t look hurt anywhere- just exhausted, like something since the hospital had completely floored him and he’d only just made it back upright. It wasn’t just that, either. The Captain looked terribly shaken. He was always so quick to ward off any idea that he wasn’t one-hundred-percent perfect, hiding any real weakness or bad feeling under a million layers of prickly dramatic deflection that made it impossible for most people to even tell if it was genuine or not, that Alan couldn’t feel through to any way of asking if he really was alright.

He didn’t look alright, and he’d ignored even the least direct approach to the question, and there the options dead-ended. The best Alan could do was ask something else, something that at least got close.

"What was it, Captain?"

"Something... here from somewhere else."

This at least felt like a straight answer, if not exactly a complete one. "Like..." Alan hesitated. "Like you?"

The Captain flinched. "No. Nothing... nothing like me."

“Are those kids going to be okay?”

“Kids? Come on, Alan, they’re like twenty-five.” When Alan only continued to look at him, the Captain sighed. “Yes. Probably. More okay than they’d… well, that’s probably something else we need to talk about. I told you I have no idea how to start. But I- I couldn’t risk you getting caught up in the whole thing. I needed to know you were a really long way away, or I couldn’t have…”

“I mean, I understand that,” said Alan.

The Captain looked at him with some amount of surprise, and enough relief to make Alan suddenly not at all certain he understood anything at all. “You do?”

“Sure? It was superhero stuff, it’s not like there was anything I could have done.” He waved his free hand vaguely at the Captain, who wasn’t helping his confusion by watching him with a sinking, anxious kind of disappointment in his half-silver face. Falling back on self-deprecation at least felt safe, not as strange or as unsettling as the growing realisation that the moment in the shuttle the previous day might not just been a painful one-off piece of weirdness, that something between them could actually have changed and stayed changed.

“You’re Captain Disillusion, I’m just… the guy that does your laundry.”

“That’s not true. It’s- never- been true. Alan, I…” The Captain struggled for a moment or two, like he was wrestling with something big and painful stuck in his throat, then ran a hand across his face, scrubbing off a few dried flecks of black from his nose and dragging a finger gingerly under the line of his mask, as if all of a sudden it was bothering him. He glanced up at the sun, still rising above the thin fence of palings that ran the length of the driveway, and then looked at Alan, directly, his sharp bright eyes defiant, vulnerable, sorry, bewildered.

“… Can I come in?”

Alan blinked a couple of times, then smiled. He reached out and took the Captain’s coffee, still in the little cardboard holder, and tucked his own cup in the space next to it.

“Of course. Come in, Captain. Let me heat these up a little, and… we can talk.”

#dftm #don't feed the muse #muse arg #mark mayhew #anthony williams #captain disillusion #alan the intern #alan amelik #my writing

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