Black Adam

2246 BCE - Teth-Adam is born among the slaves of Kahndaq.

2220 BCE - 26-year-old Teth-Adam is chosen by the Wizard Shazam to wield the Power of Shazam and become the champion, Mighty Adam.

2140 BCE - 106-year-old Teth-Adam's family is killed and his home is destroyed when Kahndaq is attacked by Ahk-ton. Khufu Kan-Tarr & Chay-Ara Thal forge the soul-knife, which Adam uses to kill Ahk-ton. He violates his covenant with the Wizard Shazam, stealing his powers for himself to become Black Adam, the new ruler of Kahndaq.

2137 BCE - 109-year-old Teth-Adam discovers the Reach Scarab. He is unable to unlock it's power as Black Adam, but when he returns to his mortal form, the scarab overwhelms him to try to steal his magic, killing him. His people entomb him with honors.

52 years ago - Theo Adam is born, a reincarnation of Teth-Adam.

34 years ago - 18-year-old Theo begins studying archeology.

30 years ago - 22-year-old Theo fakes his credentials & starts working digs in Egypt.

26 years ago - 26-year-old Theo begins robbing tombs.

21 years ago - 31-year-old Theo is almost caught. He goes legitimate & becomes a guide.

11 years ago - 41-year-old Theo meets the Batsons. They find a tomb that draws him, he kills them to steal the amulet worn by Teth-Adam.

8 years ago - 44-year-old Theo's past life memories are awakened when Captain Marvel becomes the new champion of Shazam. He returns as Black Adam, battling Marvel as Thaddeus Sivana continually plays them against each other.

7 years ago - 45-year-old Black Adam confronts 25 year-old Adrianna Tomaz & Anansi the Spider as they venture into Khandaq before he joins them in securing their Gods from the Godwar.

6 years ago - 46-year-old Black Adam rediscovers his purpose. He abandons his Theo Adam identity & retakes the throne of Kahndaq.

3 years ago - 49-year-old Black Adam brings Northwind into his court.

Black Adam sat dormant for a very long time, even compared to the rest of the Marvel Family, but he has gone on to be one of the most important villains in the entire DC catalog. Almost every other villain with his level of power by default has to be completely shut down between appearances, just because of the threat they represent. Black Adam, however, has developed in such a way that he actually is understood to just be at large in the world, refraining from using his unbelievable power more out of his own personal convictions than anything. This role he plays would be really interesting even if he WASN'T one of the most powerful beings on the planet.

Black Adam's Comic History

Black Adam has only a single appearance in Captain Marvel's Golden Age Fawcett Comics, but it's a pretty big deal; the first issue of The Marvel Family from 1945. He's introduced as The Wizard's first champion, Mighty Atom from 5000 years ago who, immediately upon receiving his powers, used them to make himself the ruler of Egypt, so the Wizard renamed him Black Adam and banished him to the farthest star in the universe. He then spent the next 5000 years flying back to Earth. (In case anyone is interested, the furthest star currently known is Earendel, discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope, which is approximately 28 billion light-years away... which means he's traveling at 5,600,000 times the speed of light.) He proves to be a challenge for the entire Marvel Family until Uncle Dudley tricks him into saying Shazam, turning him back into his human form which immediately crumbles to dust, because, lest we forget, he's 5000 years old.

Black Adam's second appearance happened in the 1977 in DC's revival of the Captain Marvel property, Shazam!, merging the classic comics with the more modern live-action Saturday morning TV show. Black Adam returns in issue #28, where Doctor Sivana uses his resurrection machine to bring back Black Adam, who immediately betrays him and goes to attack Captain Marvel. They battle each other across time, until Uncle Dudley again tricks him, and Captain Marvel punches his unpowered identity so hard he is stricken with amnesia.

Adam's role in the Captain Marvel mythology gets a huge upgrade in the four-issue post-crisis miniseries Shazam! The New Beginning by Roy Thomas, as he's introduced as the main villain along with Doctor Sivanna. The 1995 ongoing series The Power of Shazam! by Jerry Ordway made the reintroduction of Black Adam a long, slow burn, introducing his host, Theo Adam, the man who killed Billy's parents, and taking a long time before having him become Black Adam. This is the version of the character we see in the 2000 series JSA where Geoff Johns introduces the idea that Black Adam's 'evil' tendencies are more due to the influence of Theo Adam, and that the original Black Adam was a noble if arrogant ruler, a character much more like Namor. He actually worked WITH the JSA for a good long while before he left to assume the throne of his native country of Khandaq, and became an extremely featured character across much of the 2000s. He was a main character in the stories leading up to Infinite Crisis and was a major part of the series 52, and in its finale, World War III.

It gets a little hard to talk about Black Adam's role in comics from this point forward without talking about the world of comic book movies. During the late 2000s and early 2010s, when the Marvel movies were doing incredibly well, most other companies were trying to do the same, and at the time, DC started talking to the Rock about possibly playing the Captain Marvel villain Black Adam. In the intervening decade or more, the Rock became a massive movie star, and eventually Black Adam, the Captain Marvel villain, was starring in his own movie, where "The hierarchy of power in the DC Universe was about to change."

I don't need to dive too hard into the ups and downs of the world of DC movies since the entire internet seems to have that covered. The upshot of all of this, however, is that in the comics Black Adam had a MASSIVE push. They literally put him on the Justice League. There was a very real sense that the Rock and Black Adam were about to take over everything... until the movie actually came out, and it was all sort of swept away.

This weird recent chapter in the character's history aside, Black Adam has a very firmly established place within the Mythology of DC. He often gets featured as a villain capable of taking on the entire DC pantheon of heroes himself. Being equal in power with Captain Marvel means he's essentially Superman-strong, and that makes him easily one of the most powerful and dangerous characters on the planet.

Our Black Adam Story

We're adhering as close as we can to the Geoff Johns take on Black Adam. We made sure to give a lot of structure to his original story set back in ancient Khandaq, and his interaction with other characters of that era. As you might have guessed from our earlier math, we're going to skip the part where he's sent across the universe, and instead have his host die, and then later be reincarnated... concepts already established to exist in the world of DC, particularly to characters associated with that era.

The reincarnation of Teth Adam as Theo Adam is actually a really cool story element to introduce, because it means the Wizard Shazam is pressured to find a new champion before Theo rediscovers his history and potentially unlocks Black Adam. We don't want to make him a villain outright, mostly because that's a much less interesting version of the character, but also because he's Superman strong and that would be a PROBLEM. Instead, we suggested that his conflict with Captain Marvel is largely the result of them both being manipulated by Doctor Sivana, but left to his own devices he chooses instead to work toward the well-being of his country of Khandaq.

This is, again, a very deliberate mirror to Namor, but it's in fulfilling that role that Black Adam's best stories happen, and that's 100% how we want to use him here.

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