The Return of Black Adam // Comics 101

When we last left Teth-Adam, the first chosen hero of the Wizard Shazam, he was… dead.

But this is American Superhero comics. This means Black Adam would be back next week, right? Or at least revived with a major event the next year? Naah. Fawcett usually didn’t kill off characters just to revive them, and it would take the comics being canceled and revived for Black Adam to return to menace the Marvels again.

You see, National Comics was very aware of the Captain Marvel franchise from Fawcett Publishing. They were also extremely jealous of the fact that Captain Marvel-based titles were outselling their books by a factor of two or more. Rather than create new comics, or diversify their comic offerings to attract different readers, National Comics sued Fawcett Publishing. To make a long and painful story short, Fawcett Publishing shut down their entire comic book department rather than continue publishing comics and continue the lawsuit against National. This happened in 1953.

DC Comics, renamed from National Comics, would buy their entire comic library in 1972. Unfortunately, their rival Marvel Comics had used the name of Captain Marvel in 1967 with Marvel Super-Heroes issue 12, introducing alien Kree warrior Mar-Vell as Captain Marvel. As such, the name was now theirs to have on the covers of comics.

A rejected cover splash was “This isn’t your older brother’s Captain Marvel!”

1973 would bring the original Captain Marvel back to the comic stands with one of the more confusing comic titles in existence.

It was almost With One Magic Word… Yes, That Word. The Word of Power. The Wizard’s Word. The Wizard’s Word of Power. SHAZAM! The Original Captain Marvel!

With One Magic Word… SHAZAM! The Original Captain Marvel! Future issues would change it to With One Magic Word… SHAZAM! The World’s Mightiest Mortal. This is likely due to Marvel Comics having the rights to the name Captain Marvel when it comes to comic book covers. This change also almost certainly began the slow and painful crawl to Captain Marvel being confused for or named Shazam.

To make things even more confounding, the first issue establishes that this is the same continuity as the original comics from the 40s and 50s. This would also be completely separate from the standard Earth-1 of most of their comics, establishing these comics as living on Earth-S. Regardless, it sold. With the comic out in 1973,  DC would actually push Captain Marvel again. With a live-action TV show.

Also called Shazam. Because this isn’t confusing.

Hilariously, this show was either a massive hit, or we have a rare example of unpopular media influencing the comics. Like Jimmy Olsen before, and Harley Quinn after, the ongoing With One Magic Word… SHAZAM! The World’s Mightiest Mortal would pick up the TV show’s tricked-out van and have Billy Batson wandering the country with Uncle Dudley. Rather than changing Dudley’s name to “Mentor,” the writers were happy enough to just make him look closer to the actor. 

And then they brought Black Adam back, right?

Nope. First, we had a dry run of a villainous counterpart to Captain Marvel: Zazzo Plus!

Source: With One Magic Word… SHAZAM! The World’s Mightiest Mortal issue 19.

The name just rolls right off the tongue.

Zazzo was an alien who built a special helmet to attract the magic lightning to him when Billy shouted Shazam. Aside from having the color scheme of the Reverse Flash and vaguely resembling Black Adam with his pointy ears, however, he really didn’t do much. This was also his only appearance, and no one’s even referenced him in the time since.

Teth-Adam would have to wait until 1977’s With One Magic Word… SHAZAM! The World’s Mightiest Mortal issue 28 to return. However, he would do so in style.

The Return of Black Adam was written by E. Nelson Bridwell, with art by Kurt Schaffenberger. These scans are sourced from the recent omnibus collections of the series.

With this being before the revolving door of death was active in comics, you would think the return of Black Adam would be a big event. A multi-issue story, or maybe some kind of massively-hyped event featuring all of DC’s biggest heroes. Or at least made into a little mystery to be revealed later.

Nope.

True to the Golden Age roots of Whiz Comics, the stories for With One Magic Word… SHAZAM! The World’s Mightiest Mortal were all single-issue tales. World-ending threats came and went rather quickly, and most threats could be resolved like a Saturday Morning Cartoon. In a way, it was a rather lovely throwback to those comics of the 40s and 50s.

Captain Marvel’s most regular nemesis, Doctor Sivana, has found a way to resurrect the dead. He immediately uses it to bring back Teth-Adam, despite not knowing about him before this very issue. Eeh, it’s a world of magic. It works. But does this also mean Sivana and Teth-Adam will team up?

This is also the last time Doctor Sivana really features into the plot. His plans for Boston? Eeh, he’ll just wait until next month.

Also no! Black Adam is a selfish villain, and it’s genuinely hilarious to see the equally selfish Doctor Sivana get screwed over by Black Adam.

Also, an amusing note: This is the first comic book with Black Adam published after Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was born in 1972. This incarnation of Black Adam is likely who he grew up with, as he so claims in interviews advertising Black Adam. In those same interviews, he also claimed he strongly identified with the character of Teth-Adam at the time. He does credit it to Teth-Adam looking a lot like him, which is extra weird as he’s drawn like a white guy with pointed ears. Keep that in mind while we continue with this comic.

A second amusing note is that this issue was apparently written to hype up Boston, either as a lesson for the kids or as some kind of tourist thing. This backfires spectacularly in about a page.

We cut over to Billy and Uncle Dudley, having just arrived in their Shazam Van to investigate Sivana’s threats against Boston. Billy hops out to explore while Uncle Dudley waits with the van, and Billy promises to stay out of trouble.

He instantly gets dragged into a mass protest. People who hate school buses are protesting against those who are protesting for school buses! You know, as one does.

I was going to make a smart remark about how bland politics were before the rise of right-wing nutjobs taking over the GOP, but then I looked for 1977 protests in Boston. And found out about the protests over the desegregation of Boston schools. This included things like segregated buses being unified, schools attempting to properly represent the population of their zone rather than busing a person of a certain skin color across the city, and a ton of racists getting angry about it. The ruling from the government came down in 1965, but it took until 1976 for the whole process to be properly completed.

And there were multiple riots, with hundreds of people being badly injured during them. I could not find direct reports of deaths, but it would not shock me if some did die.

So DC rounds the edges off to make it about the concept of school buses themselves being illegal or legal. I get this is a kid’s comic, but E. Nelson Bridwell likely would have been better off just not referencing such explicitly horrible racism as a lighthearted bit of slapstick comedy.

What the fuck.

Back in the pretend land of DC comics, Captain Marvel immediately runs into Black Adam!

Captain Marvel immediately flashes back to how Black Adam lost last time, complete with his body rotting to dust in seconds. Marvel also laments how he doesn’t have Captain Marvel Junior and Mary Marvel here to help him, as they have not been traveling with him  ̶t̶o̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶i̶c̶ ̶f̶e̶e̶l̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶T̶V̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶w̶.̶  Stretching credulity with the dialogue, Black Adam decides to liken Captain Marvel to the tourist trap of Boston, the USS Constitution, as he throws the thing at his nemesis.

Luckily, Captain Marvel catches the relic and sets it back down in the harbor. However, Black Adam seems to have a tourist map of Boston and hurls a statue of Paul Revere at him!

Somehow, Captain Marvel reassembles the statue perfectly, and Teth-Adam escapes once more. However, Captain Marvel decides that the Wisdom of Solomon is no match for the deviousness of Black Adam, and he calls the Wizard Shazam for assistance on the Eterni-Phone.

Uncle Dudley also uses this when he’s high.

Since the original story was published in 1945, we get a brief summary of the origin of Black Adam. There is also a retcon here that is actually somewhat nice. Rather than being named Mighty Adam and being cursed to have the name Black Adam, there is a different reason for his name here: it’s being translated!

Weirdly enough, unlike Hawkman’s origin story from the old days, the translation is actually accurate. Kemet was the word for the region of Egypt that surrounded the Nile River, as the soil was a very dark color. Khem seems to be an accurate shortening. Naming him Khem-Adam for the soil of the people he was intended to protect actually works really well for approximately 3,000 BC.

It’s also nice to have “Black Adam” not refer to his deeds.

The other major retcon is that Billy notices a flaw. The Greek Gods and historical figures he pulls powers from did not exist at the time. So how did Teth-Adam get powers?

A different pantheon of Gods! Including a modern translation alongside their historical names makes me feel the writer had recently purchased a big book of Egypt. Egypt was a massive thing in the later 70s, thanks to the tour of King Tutankhamun’s treasures across the United States. That E. Nelson Bridwell used a bunch of newly-learned ancient Egpytian knowledge helps anchor the comic closer to reality and also further fleshes out this corner of the DC Multiverse.

Black Adam, meanwhile, has retreated to Doctor Sivana’s pad in Boston. Teth-Adam mopes about not defeating Captain Marvel. Sivana suggests he instead take revenge against the Wizard Shazam, secretly hoping he also takes himself out by slaying the source of his powers.

Billy sees Black Adam flying through the skies of Boston once more, and the two begin to fight just outside the Wizard’s home, the Rock of Eternity. However, Captain Marvel throws Black Adam back to Boston, and something strange has happened.

The fact that the fake “Indians” are really just there to destroy the potential profits of the British Crown as the tax on tea had just been revoked, making a competitor to the rich tea bootleggers of the colonies… isn’t mentioned.

Black Adam has been hurled back 200 years into the past!

Captain Marvel is taken by one of Teth-Adam’s devious tricks. Shouting the Wizard’s name, a bolt of transforming lightning heads towards Black Adam. However, he has put Captain Marvel right in the path of the bolt, turning him back to Billy Batson! Black Adam ties him up inside the hold of one of the three ships. It is not mentioned if the ship is the Eleanor, the Beaver, or the Dartmouth… but Black Adam isn’t about to leave Billy behind.

Remember, The Rock claims he totally identified with Black Adam during this comic, or comics around this time. Comics are fun!

Billy survives, however, being picked up by Paul Revere in redface. Billy remarks it must be good karma for having restored the statue of Paul Revere in the future and not just a weirdly written plot point. He charges back to the Rock of Eternity to ensure the Wizard is safe. He totally is, because Black Adam changed his mind about slaying the Wizard.

Black Adam confronts Uncle Dudley, who is still waiting with the Shazam Van. Dudley claims he doesn’t remember fighting Black Adam, much less the trick he pulled last time. Infuriated with the old man, Teth-Adam loses it.

Uncle Dudley does it again! Black Adam once more returns to his body as Teth-Adam and curses his foolishness just as Captain Marvel returns. Captain Marvel pulls a page from Silver Age Superman’s book and uses a special punch to clock Teth-Adam on the jaw.

Luckily, the revival machine made by Doctor Sivana restored Teth-Adam without resulting in his body disintegrating from 5,000 years of age rushing in at once. Instead, he has become an amnesiac, forever fated to wander the Earth without knowing his real identity.

Don’t worry, he would come back in the also cleverly named All-New Collectors’ Edition C-58. It would be better known as Superman vs. Shazam, and Teth-Adam would be restored to fight Superman and his accursed foe. This would last until the end of the Bronze Age of comics with the Crisis on Infinite Earths.

From there, the Marvel Family would be integrated into the rest of the DC Universe proper, and Black Adam would receive a few reimaginings before it finally took. 

However, All-New Collectors’ Edition C-58 is possibly better remembered for some amazing art and this weird exchange at the end.