Enchantress

130 - Dzamor, the ancient sorcerer, succeeds in trapping a malevolent extradimensional spirit entity.

32 years ago - June Moone is born, unaware of her homo magi ancestry.

20 years ago - 12-year-old June first starts to seriously pursue painting.

17 years ago - 15-year-old June begins incorporating ancient mythology in her artwork, leading to her interest in studying lost world cultures.

14 years ago - 18-year-old June's artwork begins to attract attention. She starts to travel, exploring artifacts of lost cultures.

11 years ago - 21-year-old June, while exploring European castles, discovers the secret chambers of the ancient sorcerer Dzamor. When she accidentially releases a magical creature sealed within the walls, she unleashes the magic of Dzamor & becomes the Enchantress, unaware that extradimensional spirt entity has taken root in her subconscious.

9 years ago - 23-year-old June loses control of herself to the extradimensional entity buried in her subconscious, which calls itself the Enchantress. She takes control of Midway City, and is only stopped by the Justice Society.

7 years ago - 25-year-old June is moved to the Ostrander Mental Institute of New Jersey. She begins to learn to restrain and isolate the Enchantress, but not to control it.

5 years ago - 27-year-old June is recruited into the Suicide Squad by Amanda Waller, given a chance to exert control over the Enchantress.

3 years ago - 29-year-old June Moone leaves the Suicide Squad, her sentence fulfilled. She begins working with the Shadowpact.

2 years ago - 30-year-old June Moone loses control of herself to the Enchantress again, fighting the Shadowpact. She is finally able to gain control with the help of Mark Bloodwynd.

1 year ago - 31-year-old June Moone participates in the 5th Shadowpact, forging the spells that allowed Mageddon to manifest in our reality where he can be stopped by the collected heroes of Earth. With her team disbanded, she retreats into the Paths Beyond with Mark Bloodwynd, exploring the realms of magic.

I believe that modern readers are actually more likely than ever to know the Enchantress, thanks to her increased visiblity as a member of the modern Suicide Squad and of course, it's depiciton in recent movies. She was even a playable character in Injustice 2. The comics actually took an interesting journey to get to this character concept, so I think this will be a fun history to follow before we get down to adapting this very cool character to our timeline.

Enchantress's Comic History

The Enchantress first appeared in a story by Bob Haney in Strange Adventures #187 from 1966. In it we meet June Moone, a young lady on a date who finds herself in a strange castle where a mysterious costume party is underway. Soon, the partygoers are trapped in the castle as they are threatened by a malevolent magical entity, while June discovers a hidden chamber where she is magically empowered to change herself from the blonde June Moone to the brunette Enchantress, who uses her impressive magical powers to save the partygoers and defeat the creature threatening them before she returns to her date, quickly accepting the idea that her date seems to like both versions of her. This version of the Enchantress had all the earmarks of a cool new hero with some good potential and a really great costume, and appeared in a few more stories in Strange Adventures over the next few years.

The next big appearance of Enchantress, however, seems to have thrown a wrench into the character concept. She appears in Superman Family in 1980, actually using magic that threatens the lives of people as they cause earthquakes and other disasters, all in an effort to enact a spell that will empower her while disempowering everyone else with superpowers on the planet before she's stopped by Supergirl. Clearly she was grabbed just as a way to challenge Supergirl, but this now meant there was some real disparity in how this character worked.

John Ostrander clearly intended to resolve this discrepancy when he included the Enchantress in his new Suicide Squad in 1987. It was now established that June was actually playing host to a malevolent entity in the Enchantress, and that when she changed into her brunette alter ego she was also unleashing an evil counter-personality... like a combination of the Hulk and Scarlet Witch. This new concept as introduced by Ostrander was quickly established as her main concept, and for a long time her involvement with the Suicide Squad was her main role in the DC continuity.

This started to expand in 1999 in the Justice League spinoff storyline Day of Judgement that introduced the concept of the Sentinels of Magic, a group of magic-based characters that would gather to protect the world from magical threats, June became a part of this loose affiliation of characters, which set her up to be a major character in the Infinite Crisis tie-in miniseries Day of Vengeance, and it's follow-up ongoing series Shadowpact. June actually makes more appearances in this series than any other, and it's where we see a lot of her own personal character growth, learning to balance between her two personalities.

When DC's continuity reset in 2011 with the New 52, one of the new series was Justice League Dark, an attempt to create a magic-branded team very similar to the Shadowpact but cashing in on the name recognition of the title, nevermind that most of the characters involved wouldn't be caught dead on the League. The Enchantress was reimagined here, along with the rest of continuity, to be sleeker and more elegant looking. This version of the character was folded back into the Suicide Squad in the 2016 Rebirth relaunch of the title, an attempt to return the team to it's pre-flashpoint roots and also represent the team as presented in the recent movie.

This is, essentially, where Enchantress remains, although she did have one particularly interesting appearance as a member of the strangely continuity-adjacent team book Superman and the Authority, which is an interesting read even if I have no idea how it relates to the rest of DC's current narrative.

Our Enchantress Story

The specific challenge of Enchantress is actually very similar to the one the character deals with; navigating the balance between versions of her personality. There are versions of the character where June is in much more control and can even use her powers as a relative good guy, and there are versions where she loses control to the Enchantress completely and she becomes a downright villain.

I think we all agreed that the best version of this is somewhere in the middle, where June is constantly struggling to really understand how her bond with this malevolent entity works. There should be elements of June trying to be a hero, elements of the Enchantress entity forcing itself into dominance and becoming a threat to the world around her, and a long, slow journey as she learns how to fight back.

The events of her life are all pretty straightforward and right out of the regular canon, but we tried to use them in a way that showed her evolution. She starts out trying to be a hero but then loses control, has to spend time in an asylum in order to have enough control to serve on the Suicide Squad where her ability to restrain herself is tested. She becomes a member of the Shadowpact where she again risks losing control, but is aided by her teammates to finally assert dominance over the Enchantress entity.

Enchantress's Costume

There's actually quite a bit to explore with the look of the Enchantress, even before we get to topics like her movie design or New 52 look, starting with the most basic topic: her hair color. Modern depictions make her a redhead, but it's a basic part of the original concept that June is a blonde and that the Enchantress is a dark-haired brunette, so we shouldn't have to convince anyone that that's the way to go. Her original costume from both her Strange Adventures and Superman Family appearances had a cool cape and checkered skirt combo, but the real star here was her wide witches hat, which was just a fantastic look that gave her a unique design and silhouette.

In the pages of Suicide Squad, however, series artist Luke Mcdonnell created a fantastic, modern (for 1987) spin on her design, giving her black leggings, a big poofy witches robe with a deeply plunging neckline and her trailing red scarf. She kept her iconic witches hat, but also wore a red bandana underneath, because it was the 80s. This is, I think pretty unquestionably, the iconic Enchantress design. This is what she wore going into The Day of Vengeance series, where it was only improved, better-defining the structure of her robe and just overall perfecting the look.

Weirdly, they completely revamped her costume in the following Shadowpact series, giving her what seems like a far inferior bustier, cape & sash outfit and perhaps most unforgivably replacing her iconic hat. This look has it's fans, but personally I'd say this sacrifices what what previously one of the most unique silhouettes you're likely to see in favor of something much more generic. Still, this is the look she wore in the Shadowpact series where she made the most appearances.

We can quickly review some of the looks June went through in the post-52 DC, from the unnecessarily glamorous look she sported in Justice League Dark, to her pretty bare-bones Rebirth Suicide Squad costume, to the costume she sported in Superman in the Authority (which doesn't really work for HER, but would probably be a cool look for someone else). These are all notably hood-based, which again, seems like a step down from the hat.

Perhaps the only other really notable look for Enchantress is the ancient swamp witch design from the Suicide Squad movie, which is probably the work of veteran costume designer Kate Hawley. It's a VERY cool look, and I think it makes the most sense as the actual manifestation of the Enchantress entity itself, something that only June can see.

Enchantress's Future

In our timeline the Shadowpact has fulfilled it's purpose, casting it's spell during the worldwide battle with Mageddon to force it into material existence so it can be defeated. The members go their separate ways, so what is next for June?

The comics have introduced a relationship between June and Killer Croc, which has a certain we-don't-see-each-other-as-monsters charm. The idea of June being able to connect with someone is a good one, but we do think that it would have to be someone who can actually help her in her constant battle to contain a world-destroyingly powerful spirit entity. To that end and looking at the characters she's recently associated with in our incarnation of the Shadowpact, one character stood out as the clear choice. So in out timeline, June has found a connection with Bloodwynd, who has helped find new ways exert control of herself, and the two of them have departed together on a journey into the Paths Beyond to explore more of the origins of both of their magic.

Related Characters