Black Adam: Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask

[Barry]

I’ll review it when I see it on Friday but I thought this would be a good thing to put up now.
 
Black Adam originally appeared in only one Comic of the original Captain Marvel, “Marvel Family” #1. Like so many super villains he had a similar origin and similar powers as the superhero he was going to fight.
 
The original Captain Marvel (a.k.a.) was published in 1940, two years after Superman appeared and he sold better than the 2 million comics Superman sold.  Immediately DC sued for plagiarism and in 1953 and put the original Capt. Marvel out of business.
 
In the 1960s Martin Goodman changed the name of his comic book company to Marvel when he heard that DC was trying to buy the original Capt. Marvel. The abandoned trademark was available to Goodman so he created his own Capt. Marvel, a soldier from the Kree galaxy. Goodman did not want DC comics using the word “Marvel” on their covers. In 1982 that Capt. Marvel died and later Carol Danvers took over that name. And she was what you saw in the movie “Captain Marvel.”
 
In 1972 DC comics licensed and then bought the rights to the original Capt. Marvel, who they put out of business. DC tried but they were not allowed to use that name on the cover of a comic because the trademark now belong to Marvel. So they use the name “Shazam” and that’s what his movie was called a couple of years ago.
 
As common in comics, Black Adam has been reintroduced several times in the DC universe. No exaggeration they have redone him roughly 10 times giving him different origins and different powers and different points of view in life. He has been a hero fighting with the superheroes and he has been a villain fighting against the superheroes.
 
Lately, he has been an unusual superhero where he fights for good, but does bad things. He takes extreme measures against the bad guys. For example, DC superheroes don’t kill the bad guys, he does. I think that’s what the movie is going to be about because they’re not going to have a series of movies of a bad guy.

[tripplej]

Thanks for the history lesson. Will be interesting to see if the movie is worth watching or not. Waiting for your review.

[Paul Heroy]

Thanks for the history, Barry. Man that sounds like a confusing character! I have to admit, I had thought Black Adam was a Marvel character, and it sounds like his origins are with Marvel but the large bulk ended up as DC after just the first issue. Read a bit on the Wikipedia page, whew... 

[David Vaughn]

Who's on first again? 

Very confusing. 

[Barry]

Thanks for the history, Barry. Man that sounds like a confusing character! I have to admit, I had thought Black Adam was a Marvel character, and it sounds like his origins are with Marvel but the large bulk ended up as DC after just the first issue. Read a bit on the Wikipedia page, whew...

I just looked at that page and it is long and involved. I hope I gave a brief summary. But so much of the essence of the page is how often they change that  character. Sadly, for me that has become incredibly common in Comics and one of the reasons I gave up on them.
The biggest redo of Comics that was done in 1956, which many considered to be the beginning of the silver age of Comics. Super heroes had stop selling, for all publishers,  and there were only three left: Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman. DC decided to bring their popular heroes back, but as totally different characters. So that began an era  of where they were actually two characters for every superhero. It was the beginning of the Multiverse.