Gender: Male
First Appearance: "Deadly Force"
Other Appearances: "Her Brother's Keeper," "The Cage," "Cloud Fathers"
Peter Maza was born near Flagstaff, Arizona, on a reservation where the Hopi tribe resided. At one point, he participated in a Kachina dance, where he played the part of the Coyote. Doing this linked his spirit to that of the fay.
In 1960, however, Peter, partly due to a fight with his father Carlos, left the reservation and moved to New York City. There, he joined the NYPD, and married Diane. He eventually rose to the rank of Sergeant, and had three children, Elisa, Derek, and Beth.
One terrible night in 1994, Peter, Diane, and Derek received the news that Elisa had been shot. They came to Manhattan General Hospital as soon as they could, and remained by her side as much as possible until she pulled through.
Some time later, Elisa went to a bar with her father, to discuss how she could prevent Derek from accepting Xanatos' offer to become his personal pilot and bodyguard. Peter agreed that he shouldn't join up, and suggested Elisa tell Derek that it would kill his mother to see him leave the NYPD. However, he was wrong, as Diane advised Derek to do what he felt was right. Thus, Derek accepted the offer.
When Derek disappeared several months later, Peter and Diane grew extremely worried. When they learned that Derek had been transformed into the mutate, Talon, they were shocked, but accepted their changed son with open arms.
The next year, in 1996, Diane went to visit Nigeria. When she returned, she told Peter of how she had met Elisa, and her gargoyle friends, while they were on their Avalon journey. Peter found that "It was all a bit much to swallow." When Xanatos threatened soil carvings in the area around Flagstaff, Peter travelled there to help his daughter, Beth, investigate. Beth asked if he wanted to see his father, and Peter, bitterly, refused. They attempted to investigate the construction site, and a strange guard let them in. However, Xanatos framed them for vandalism, although he really knew that the Mazas were innocent.
When Peter and Beth made bail, they returned to Beth's dorm room, where they met Elisa and the gargoyles, just recently having arrived, sent there by Avalon. Goliath and Angela decided to investigate, while Bronx and the Mazas went to find the guard. Elisa asked Peter the same question her sister did, and he again refused to see his father.
They captured the guard, and Peter failed to recognize the fact that his prisoner looked exactly as he himself did when he was young. The guard used reverse psychology to goad Peter into action, and eventually, the guard was revealed as Coyote, the Trickster. Peter refused to believe it, until he finally accepted it. To help save his children, the clan, and the trickster, he dressed as the Kachina Coyote and danced, hoping to confuse Xanatos and the robot Coyote, who were attacking them. It worked, and Coyote the robot accidentally freed his magical namesake, who helped defeat Xanatos.
Peter, finally accepting his heritage, met with Coyote, and then finally
went to meet with his father- or rather, he went to his
father's grave. He confessed how he regretted missing all the years
they could have had together because he was mad at him, and wished he could
have told him how much he'd loved and respected him.
It's uncertain what Peter did next, as it was never explicitly stated.
Peter Maza was an excellent detective, with the fighting skills all good policemen need. He was a little aged, but little less effective than he was in his youth. His main weakness was his extreme skepticism and resistance to believe in the paranormal, but his acceptance of the gargoyles and Coyote pretty much erased that flaw.