(Cover to Klarion #4, by Frazer Irving)
Zatanna is all about performance; she is the spectacle of magic. By contrast, Klarion the Witch-Boy is the mystery, secrecy, and control.
Probably somewhere upstate of New York or miles away from Gotham City; deep underground, it's raining. Almost always.
They started out as puritans, the people of Limbo-Town, birthed beneath the Earth by ancestors too horrified by what they'd done to let their children out onto the grass, under the sky. And time went on and on, the sky a distant myth called "Blue Rafters," and the children of Limbo-Town grew. Each and every one of them was a witch by birth. Each citizen is bound to a familiar, like Klarion and his cat Teekl, who act as their second eyes and share something like a sibling bond.
Things were run, initially, by the Submissionaries, a horrible reflection of The Crucible's clergymen - the Submissionaries protect Limbo-Town and hand down edicts from the absentee witch-god Croatoan via their own blood on the iron pages of the Book of Shadows.
Only, there is something approaching progress and over time the people of Limbo-Town have pushed toward having a Witch-Man Parliament. The witch-women are, of course, not included in this, but generally there's an edge that they see the parliament as a bit short sighted. There's secrets that only the Witch-Women know.
And growing up, like Klarion or his sister Beulah? You get to look forward to having a family, toiling away like a good witch, and dying. After death, your family digs up your undead corpse and the Submissionaries bind you magically so that you spend the rest of your unlife working in the fields for them. Maybe if he's lucky, Klarion might get a chance to work as a Submissionary, but it's no work for a wild card and layabout like Klarion. Instead, much like Zatanna's quest for the knowledge of her father, Klarion goes in search of his own mysteriously exited father, heading up past where it's safe to find Blue Rafters. He hasn't had the chance to sin yet, and doesn't see any point to feeling guilty.
He started out as a villain in Jack Kirby's The Demon, about the rhyming, Arthurian demon Etrigan, who sometimes wanders about as an immortal human called Jason Blood. And then, more recently, Grant Morrison got ahold for Klarion for his Seven Soldiers project, with Zatanna; Klarion sits around in a witch-puritan purgatory and then leaves to seek his fortune, has weird adventures, with kid gangs and the Father of Limbo-Town, who is of course an evil sod and worth nothing. He nearly gets burned at the stake by his own mother. The whole thing reeks of Roald Dahl fornicating with Shirley Jackson during "The Lottery," with Charles Addams on art.
He heads up into Manhattan and I would dearly love the series to have a sequel, where Klarion and the remains of his family end up in the city for a kind of Amish in the City reality show, out of date, fiercely moral, and possessing dark prowess. Oh well, if I ever get to write comics for DC...
And to deliver this threat during a childish scuffle: "Would you like to know the exact date and hour of your death?" With creeping, witch-lit eyes.