A Brief History Of Shazam, One Of The Strangest Characters In The DC Universe

Whether or you loved it or hated it or had no strong feelings about it one way or the other, the first trailer for Warner Bros.' Shazam certainly got everyone's attention at San Diego Comic-Con. The film, starring Zachary Levi as the title character, came out swinging when it comes to proving the DC films are shedding their grimdark past. Colorful characters, comedy, fun, laughter? All these elements were highlighted to hammer home that not all DC heroes inhabit a world that fell into a sepia filter.But while the trailer was heavy on personality, it was light on knowledge. Just who are these guys? Why is a creepy old man giving ultimate cosmic power to a snotty teenager? And where the heck is Dwayne Johnson and, better question, who is Black Adam? Well, strap in folks, because this explainer is gonna get weird.

This time, just for fun, let's start at the end. In the most recent iteration of Billy Batson, as seen in the pages of DC comics, he is in a foster care situation with his (now non-biological) sister Mary and his friend Freddie. Billy is granted powers by an Ancient Wizard who had scoured tens of thousands of years of human history looking for a "pure human" to whom he can bequeath his abilities. Instead, he runs short on time and has to settle for a snarky child. Okay, it's more like Billy convinces the Wizard that there's no such thing as a completely pure human because Earth is hot garbage and the Wizard realizes he needs only to find the potential pure goodness in humanity. Thus Shazam is born!

Of course, the finer points have evolved and shifted over the decades. During a reboot in 1986, DC Comics made a conscious choice to remove the split-personality aspect from Shazam. During his initial run at Fawcett, Billy was subsumed by Captain Marvel when he shouted "Shazam!" They were separate personalities. However, DC wanted to keep Shazam's upbeat, sunny personality from the Silver Age, so they opted to simply have Billy participate in the superhero version of living out the plot of Big every time he transforms.

Shazam's powers are granted by the following deities: Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury. You'll notice at least two of those guys aren't gods, but the activation word is Shazam! and they had to fit the acronym, dammit. While that line-up represents the most likely candidates for the film adaptation, within the comics, the old gods are dead. Thus, Shazam had to strike a deal with six new gods in order to maintain his Champion powers. His current sponsors are S'ivaa, H'ronmeer, Anapel, Zonuz, Yuga Khan, Ate, and Mamaragan. With their powers combined (whomever the current "they" are), Shazam has access to a bevy of superpowers. Much like how each fairy granted Sleeping Beauty a boon based on their personality, the gods grant powers in their wheelhouse.From Solomon comes the power of superhuman intellect and knowledge, Hercules grants super-strength, Atlas bestows the gift of near-invulnerability and increased stamina, Zeus shows off by giving Billy dominion over lighting (along with near-immortality and magic spells), Achilles grants willpower (talk about phoning in a gift), and Mercury offers superhuman speed.

Short answer: a pissed off ancient Egyptian demi-god. Longer answer: it's complicated.Okay, so originally Vlarem started to get tired of being a Champion of the gods about 4,000 years after he took up the mantle. It didn't help that the gods were already forgotten and it was a thankless task. So Vlarem looked to retire and pass on his powers to a new Champion. He chose the (fictional) son of Pharaoh Ramses II named...Adam. Just go with it. An adult man with a family, Adam lived in the (fictional) country of Kahndaq, which bordered Egypt. However, during the transfer of power, Vlarem's daughter Blaze made a deal with the god Set to exchange the powers of the six forgotten gods with the power of six Egyptian gods for whatever reason.So, now called Teth-Adam, AKA Mighty Adam, the new Champion protected the Pharaoh and Egypt for centuries. But when his duties kept him from home, his family was murdered. Thus began Adam's long, slow decline into sympathetic villainy. Meanwhile, since his daughter did him dirty, Vlarem still needed to get rid of his magic powers before he died and they were extinguished with him. But now Vlarem also had an evil Teth-Adam problem. Or a Black Adam problem, as he was now known to reflect his dark tendencies. Using a magical scarab amulet, Vlarem trapped Black Adam's soul and powers within and buried it in a tomb. It is the escape of Black Adam from his prison that spurs Vlarem to pass his powers on to Billy Batson, as the world is out of time and needs protection from the problem Vlarem created.To add an even more tangled web, the amulet was discovered by Billy's Egyptologist parents on an archaeological dig. When it turns out their assistant Theo Adam is a descendant of Black Adam, all hell breaks loose. The assistant becomes obsessed with the amulet, eventually killing Billy's parents and absconding with it like he's Gollum. The metaphor is apt as, unlike the merger of the Shazam and Billy personalities int the DC reboot, Adam and his descendant Theo remained two separate people sharing a body until Adam eventually became the dominant personality. This is is probably the best possible outcome: Adam is merely a hardliner for justice in a way that'd make Batman blush, while Theo was the purely villainous influence.However, before all that happens, Theo recognizes Billy as the son of his ex-boss and taunts the child with details of his parents' murder. After a meeting like that, it's no wonder it took a while for Captain Marvel to see Black Adam as anything more than a monster.

It remains to be seen if Black Adam will have any kind of role in the movie, but Dwayne Johnson is already set to play him in a spin-off film.