Who is Zattar?
"The ancestors chose a child who was not yet born. I was standing right in front of them."
Some men are born to be kings. Zattar was told he was one of them.
He is the Pride Prince, son of King Zola and Queen Nzinga, raised from childhood to believe the throne of the Bapindi was his. He trained for it. He waited for it. And on the day it should have come, the ancestors looked past him and chose a child who had not even been born.
That child was Zaiire.
Pride is what kept Zattar standing when the crown was taken. Pride is what drives him now. A prince who has been robbed does not ask for what was his. He takes it back.
Today, Zattar leads the most famous royal house in the ISOLELE Universe. The people call them the Bapindi family. When they pass, motorcades close the streets. When they walk, six maids throw golden petals at their feet. The whole world sees a king in everything but name.
Nobody sees the wound. And nobody sees Gorilla Mukomboso waiting beneath the suit.
His family
Zattar comes from a bloodline of giants. His uncles are Mubutu and Shaka Zulu, two men whose names still shake the continent. His sister is Kimoya, the Kandake. Her twin sons, Zaiire and Kongo, are his nephews.
One nephew grew up in his house. The other, he may never have seen coming.
His look
A green royal suit cut like armor. Gold at his neck and wrists. An ornate headpiece bearing the crest of ISOLELE. Zattar rarely raises his voice. He does not need to. He sits in the back of the royal car, surrounded by his escort, while his masked driver Rwagama watches him in the rearview mirror.
When he transforms, the prince becomes Gorilla Mukomboso, a towering gorilla, the most powerful creature of the Congo forest.
From lion to gorilla
Zattar was born a lion. Then something changed everything, and the lion was no longer enough.
He went into the jungle to find a spirit older than any crown: Mukomboso, the gorilla. The path led him under the water and through the fire. He came back carrying the spirit of Mukomboso.
He left the lion behind. He did not leave behind his pride.
Zattar and Zaiire
Zaiire was four years old when he woke up in a car wearing half of an ancient necklace. He was taken into the house of his uncle.
To the world, Zaiire grew up as royalty. Inside the palace walls, he lived as a servant. And every single day, Zattar looked at the child who had taken his crown before he was even born, and at the half of the necklace hanging from his neck.
Why would a man raise the boy who stole his destiny? The answer is in the pages of Zaiire.
Zattar and Mbeli
Zattar has many enemies. He has only one rival: Mbeli. The one the Pride Prince measures himself against, and the one he refuses to lose to.
Zattar and Dawidi
In the back of the royal car, a father teaches his son how to be a king. Every lesson is sharp. Every lesson ends with a line Dawidi will carry for the rest of his life.
"A king who wears his fear on his face invites every wolf in the territory to test him."
But pain passes from father to son, generation after generation, until one man decides to break the cycle. The question is whether Zattar will be that man.
African cultural inspiration
Zattar's royal image draws on King Solomon and the legend of the Queen of the South. His ship, Nommo, carries the name of the ancestral water spirits of the Dogon people of Mali.
His animal form, Gorilla Mukomboso, honors the guardian of the forests of the Congo. The Democratic Republic of Congo is home to the mountain gorillas of Virunga and the Eastern lowland gorillas found nowhere else on Earth. Like Zattar, the gorilla is gentle until threatened, and unstoppable once it is.
But his real inspiration is a question Africa has asked for centuries: where were the ancestors when we needed them? Zattar is what happens when a prince stops waiting for the answer.
Appearances
Zattar appears across the Zaiire saga as Zaiire's uncle and one of his most dangerous threats. He leads his own series, Zattar & Dawidi: The Ancestor's Silence.
