Here some back-story on Black Adam/Shazam for the people who don't know: both Black Adam and Magneto
aint nobody touching them
1.
It is widely believed by some that Black Adam (or even Captain Marvel) was D.C.’s response to replicate the Superman craze at the time (have lightening strike a second time if you will in the same place)d but anyone who is smart enough to use wikipedia can tell you that he is actually created in 1945 by
Otto Binder &
C. C. Beck and was originally a
Fawcett Comics creation and whose very existence was to compete in the Golden Age of Comics against Superman. Later D.C. acquired the rights to Captain Marvel and the characters related to the series because they were just too popular and offered a different sort of Superman that came from earth and wasn’t so hung up on being an alien.
Transcending comic book companies has a way of messing with a characters origins, so depending on your source, Black Adam was either a proud prince or a lowly slave whose name, Teth Adam, translated to “Mighty Human” or not. Since D.C. is probably the reason you have heard of this character, I’m going to focus on the D.C. origin.
Teth Adam was born in Khandaq, located in North Africa, which is kinda like Egypt, but only in the sense that it was based on Egypt.
Shazam, a powerful wizard of the likes of Gandalf the White decided that he thought that Teth Adam was pure and had a lot of spunk and granted him the power of the gods to be the Champion of the people. From that day forward, Khandaq was under the protection of the Superhero Mighty Adam. Under his watch, Khandaq flourished until Ahk-ton, a Supervillain bent on conquering Khandaq, kills his still mortal family. Of course, considering Isis and Osiris, the solution of giving them a portion of his powers before anything happened seems obvious now, but I think we should just assume that he didn’t read the whole manual yet.
This event changed the Mighty Adam who would find Ahk-ton and murder him. Then, he reclaimed Khandaq and crowned himself a militant dictator before the Wizard Shazam stepped in. History would forever know him as Black Adam as a warning and measure of his corruption.
Black Adam would not walk the earth again until approximately the second time Shazam chooses a successor. This time, the wizard chose Billy Batson, a young orphan and possibly the basis for Harry Potter. Batson hops on a strange subway train not unlike the Hogwarts Express and meets an elderly wizard with a beard who reveals to him a great many powers which is so not anything like Dumbledore. Anywho, thanks to the power of words and spells, Batson is granted the powers of Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury (last one is for swiftness) simply by saying the acronym SHAZAM! And soon, this orphan, who can’t be older than 11 or 12 at the time, must confront an evil murderous dictator using only his childlike innocence and sense of righteousness to help him through his battles, and if you think that this sounds anything remotely like Harry Potter at all, than clearly you are …. um. yeah.
Naturally, due to being equal in strength, speed, and invulnerability, this lead to a lot of great fights between the two.
Eventually, Black Adam returned to Khandaq to become the new leader and enforced his rule militantly, though, the citizens under his rule seemed to thrive.
As an Anti-Hero leader of a nation, Black Adam has: brought wealth to the once desolate land of Khandaq; publicly killed known Supervillains such as Kobra (Bane’s father and murderous cartel who always falls through the legal system); rounded up his own super team of Anti-heroes appropriately comprised of heroes and villains alike; murdered members of Intergang, notably by ripping a part their face; freeing a slave and granting her a portion of his power (perhaps mirroring his humble beginnings); than finding the newly freed slave’s brother (probably by murdering tons of people who stood in his way) and granting him a portion of Black Adam’s power as well.
Isis on the Left and Orisis on the Right
Despite the murdering and brutality, Black Adam seems pretty likable as a leader, and still, the violence and ambition just makes him seem incredibly metal. Sure, you can pretend that you will never celebrate murder, but the only reason why the conservatives did not fire their Magnums in the air when the U.S. killed Osama was because he was killed by the orders of a Democrat. We watched American Psycho, Kick-Ass, and Inglorious Basterds, so it should be established that we already celebrate murder and violence, and all we are haggling over is the extent. You are reading a post about Anti-Heroes which is a character type which is traditionally savage and barbarous so I imagine that anyone reading this has a fair amount of blood lust.
After the death of his family, the slaves he rescued who took on the super hero identities of Isis, Goddess of the Earth, and Osiris, her brother, at the hands of a group of genetically engineered soldiers from Apokolips to kill Black Adam, he went on to murder them all, kill almost every citizen of the neighboring nation of Bialya (which means that he killed at least two million people with his bare hands whose only crimes are paying taxes to a nation that harbors Intergang), tortures death for a day, lays siege to the monuments of the world, and fight anyone who gets in his way. For a week, he basically took on the entire world, and what’s more, the world didn’t seem to be doing a good job fighting him off. He f***ed the world up, in fact. In the end, it didn’t take brute force to bring him down, he was robbed of his powers once the mystics of the world got together and changed his magic word from SHAZAM to CHOCOLATE EGG CREAM!!
A rendering of said long hard dikking to the world.
Let me reiterate, in a world filled with Supermans and Superman clones, the most DC heroes could do against this guy is call in tech support to change his password to keep him from reigning down destruction upon the earth. This week long hard f***ing of planet Earth would later be known as World War III, and it was fought by one crazy ass guy. Superhero teams such as the JLA, Doom Patrol, Justice Society, the Global Guardians, Checkmate, and the Teen Titans fought to no avail. If only this was fought in the Marvel Universe, Adam would have been regarded as a hero like the Hulk. Known casualties of World War III included the Atom Smasher whose face was smashed but ultimately left alive, and one of the superheroines to call herself Terra who died of a fatal case of a fist through her chest.
An Anti-Hero of such badassery is a rarity, but unlike Magneto who is relatively predictable and civilized, Black Adam is unique in the sense that he is equally dangerous to Superhero and Supervillain alike. What I mean to say is that he is just as likely to kill either as he is to befriend either. When he was presented a slave who would later take the name Isis, it was done by Intergang as a gesture of good will… and he ended up killing them. In a way, this makes him the perfect Anti-Hero as he is equal parts good and evil.
He murders, but the ends protect Khandaq. He is a villain to foreigners, but in his home nation, he is a hero. He killed a neighboring country for the sake of avenging his family, but really, isn’t that how Hamlet would have ended if the title character had super powers? For not only straddling the line, but completely destroying the line between hero and villain, I award Black Adam my Anti-Hero of the Week. If you’d like to pick next week’s Anti-Hero, feed me a stray cat.
2.
He First Appeared In The Marvel Family #1, Black Adam is an ancient Egyptian prince named Teth-Adam (i.e., “Mighty Human”), who is chosen by the wizard Shazam to be his successor due to his presumed moral purity.
When Teth-Adam says the magic word “Shazam”, he is transformed into a super-powered being possessing the same powers that Captain Marvel would later be granted; however, Mighty Adam is soon corrupted by the vastness of his powers. Originally, the wizard Shazam grants Adam powers derived from ancient Greco-Roman deities; later in the series, it was changed to ancient Egyptian deities.
Deciding that he should rule the world, Mighty Adam overthrows and kills the pharaoh and assumes the Egyptian throne. Angered by this betrayal, Shazam renames his errant champion “Black Adam”, and—unable to revoke the powers he gave Adam, banishes him to the most distant star in the universe.
Black Adam spends the next 5,000 years flying back to Earth. By the time he makes it back, in 1945, Shazam has appointed three new champions to take his place: Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, and Captain Marvel Jr. Adam’s attempts to take over the world cause the Marvels to seek counsel with Shazam, who tells them about Black Adam. The Wizard Gives Them The Idea to trick him into saying “Shazam,” by repeating the word wrongly, reverting him back to Teth-Adam. 5,000 years of aging catch up with him in an instant when Captain Marvel knocks him out seconds after he transforms, and he dies, becoming a skeleton.
However Later, Dr. Sivana uses his resurrection machine to resurrect Adam.
Black Adam wears a costume almost identical to Captain Marvel’s — except black instead of scarlet, and, capeless.
This Is The Origin Everyone Basically Knows. There Are Other Origins But None That Top This One.
3.
Years ago this writer guy
Geoff Johns whose name keeps coming up all the time for some reason wrote what could be considered the ultimate
Justice Society of America story. Or the ultimate Black Adam story. Or both, really. After having (
somewhat) reformed and joined the ranks of the JSA alongside his once-time nemesis, Captain Marvel, Black Adam took a big step back the other direction.
Specifically, he rounded up a couple of the younger associates of the JSA (
seen on the right, there) and
conquered his own home country. Basically he went out and did what hundreds of other comic book villains have failed to do. Feeling obligated to intervene as they had allowed Adam to roam free as one of their own, the JSA pursued him into Kahndaq, but found that they were very much the enemy in the eyes of Adam's liberated populace.
The ugly truth of how Black Adam gave his people their freedom was on horrific display in this storyline. He and his associates murdered the country's evil dictator, slaughtered the corrupted military and installed themselves as leaders and protectors of the country. And Black Adam was planning on doing to the entire world what he had done with Kahndaq, but in lieu of defeating him the JSA merely managed to convince him to not leave the borders of Kahndaq. Because no matter how noble his intentions, even Black Adam had to admit he would have been no better than the dictator he'd murdered if he continued to impose his will upon the world.
