User blog comment:Leathercock/Every little thing she does.../@comment-1038387-20120110144158

Some points:
 * Zatanna had her own ongoing series up until the reboot, written by Paul Dini and later Adam Beechen, 16 issues in total. Before that, she had two 4 issue limited series, the latter one as part of the Seven Soldiers event.
 * As for young witches, they could've gone for Traci Thirteen. Definitely Zatara's behavior towards her resembles Terry Thirteen's beef with his daughter (though Zatara obviously doesn't do it because he's a Flat Earth Denialist). A lot of people in the "Who do you want to see" blogs mention her, but now that we have Zatanna, I don't think she would work, because, as JLU said, "You don't need two stretchy guys". Traci had a weird haircut back when she first appeared as Girl 13, partly bald. Happy ;)?
 * Who came up with it? That'd be Fred Guardineer, back in 1938. Zatara first appeared in Action Comics #1. The "magician" character was an often used character, every publisher had one (along with reporters, scientists and federal agents). Fawcett had Ibis the Invincible and El Carim (read that backwards), MLJ had Kardak the Mystic Magician, and National (DC) had Sargon the Sorcerer and Zatara, the Master of Magic. You had to be original, so Guardineer came up with talking backwards. It's certainly more original than "presto chango" or dog latin (if they did that, everyone would boo the show copied Harry Potter). Though I think backwards works better on paper than on the screen.
 * I liked Zatanna. You could guess from the start they were going to use her - why else get Zatara out of the mothballs? - and Lacey Chabert had a good voice for her. An older Zatanna wouldn't have worked so well in the show. Maybe Traci, but she wouldn't have had an obvious connection to the Justice League needed for an introduction - you can get away with putting Zatara in the League, but Doc Thirteen?