Black Adam #1

Totally makes sense that Black Adam takes over Justice League of America. If we were on Earth 7!

The top five selling DC Comic books in August all had one of two things in common: Batman and Superman. Which tells me something nobody else needed to have told to them: comic book fans aren't interested in interesting or well-told stories. They're only interested in their favorite characters. But how do you get fans interested in other characters when they're spending all of their Comic Book money on all of the Batman and Superman titles flooding the stands? Oh, that's right. You don't. You just keep publishing comic books without Batman and Superman just to watch them slowly fail as comic book stores order less and less copies every month because they're not all selling which means less copies on the shelves for new fans to find which means the comic quickly begins circling the drain. I'm just a stupid fan of comic books that tell entertaining stories (like books not written by Ann Nocenti), so I don't know how to fix the problem so that book sales reflect quality. Perhaps it would help if comic book reviewing sites were honest about the quality of every comic instead of trying to get free advertising by being quoted by the comic book company for the trade paperback advertisements. Every comic book reviewing site that had an "It fucking rocks!" blurb associated with The Red Hood and the Outlaws collected trades should be labeled. I just have to determine what the labels say!

"We Will Suck DC's Cock for Page Views!"
"Shittiest Review Site on the Web Web Ring Member!"
"We Tongue Kiss Our Mothers With Mouths That Praised Red Hood and the Outlaws!"
"Sometimes Our Local Comic Book Shop Puts Dog Turds in Our Pull Boxes and We Don't Even Notice!"
"We Write Ambiguous Reviews That Fool Consumers Just to Get Free Advertising!"
"We Are Truly, Truly Sorry That You Can't Trust Anything We Say."

Maybe review sites don't help sales anyway. I'm not saying that I'm a review site but I do know I sang the praises of Demon Knights for pretty much its entire run and it didn't fucking help. And now All Star Western is nearly at the bottom of the sales charts. And The Movement is barely higher than Katana. Are you fucking kidding me?! If there's any proof that sales aren't linked to quality, it's that. Katana is the worst written comic currently in The New 52. And The Movement is exciting and full of interesting characters. But they're selling equally as well. It's all just so depressing. Why did I ever get back into reading comic books? The fans are a bunch of illiterate heathen Batman groupies!

Maybe DC could license Wolverine and they could have him star in comic books with low sales and grab up all the Wolverine groupie money! Holy shit! That would be a bonanza! Get your lawyers on that, DC!

Anyway, on to Black Adam, the greatest comic book you'll read this year! If you haven't been reading Geoff Johns Shazam, you've been missing out on the greatest serialized story since Tristram Shandy! Or maybe something by Dickens like Bleak House. Was that one serialized? Probably. It's so fucking long! I'm fairly confident the art in this comic book will blow your mind! I haven't actually looked at it yet but when DC uses my quote, they can just ellipses off the beginning of that last sentence!

Here's another blurb for the Villains Month Omnibus: "The art and story combined create bodily juices you never knew you could secrete! Although why the editor's didn't notice that Kahndaq is spelled wrong, I don't know. Perhaps they were distracted by their new bodily fluids!"

Kahndaq has this legend, see? About this superman? With a lightning bolt on his chest? Have you ever noticed how many seemingly literate and competent people type "lightening" when they mean "lightning?" They should stop doing that. I don't even consider it a typo. It's just plain ignorance. Man, I wish I had the guts to have typed "plane ignorance" there and leave it. But then I'd be the only one to get the joke and everybody would simply go straight to the comments section to correct me and point out what a fucking hypocritical moron I am. But I just don't have the strength of character to pull off a joke like that without feeling judged by everybody on the internet. How come everybody on the internet is so judgmental? Am I the only earnest, sweet, lovable, kind person left on the internet?

Speaking of earnest, sweet, lovable, kind people, Black Adam is not one of them. He is the mythical champion of Kahndaq but he's also a vicious bastard. But he's only an asshole to people that would harm Kahndaq. And to Shazam, of course! But Black Adam was turned into a pile of ashes when Billy Batson tricked him into returning to his mortal form that couldn't keep its shit together being that it was thousands of years old. But he might not be completely dead because he's on the cover of this issue! A terrorist group has an ancient scroll and they're ready to figure out what it says because it's probably a spell to bring back Black Adam. And by terrorist group, I mean oppressed people in trouble with the law who are just trying to make their way the only way they know how.

Every ancient scroll either comes from The Book of the Dead or the Necronomicon, depending on if the author is going for realism or complete insanity. Since this spell is about resurrection, I would have chosen the Necronomicon. Or the Necronomicomicon.

In the comic book world, nothing happens in secret. Somebody always knows something no matter how super secret something is supposed to be. And the Sons of Adam know that Shazam turned Black Adam to dust and that he collected the ashes and that he dumped the ashes in Kahndaq. And now they're at that exact location to cast the spell. I suppose the Sons of Adam have an ever-present news broadcast running in the background of their headquarters so they can keep up with everything that happens no matter how many people weren't there to see it. If people know that Shazam turned Black Adam to dust then they know that Billy Batson is Shazam since he was Billy Batson when he convinced Black Adam to say "Shazam" and transform into skin and bones (mostly bones. Very brittle bones).

If I want to be less cynical, I suppose if I were living in a country that believed in a great mythical champion with a lightning bolt on his chest and I saw a superhuman with a lightning bolt on his chest smash an urn full of ashes over Kahndaq, I might begin suggesting it has something to do with Black Adam. But that's only if I wanted to be less cynical. And I don't really want to be since I'm still pissed off that Task Force X is a super secret government organization that everybody fucking knows about.

Anyhow, it doesn't matter what kind of vitriolic pablum I spew onto the internet in a narcissistic need to make my ridiculous opinions known (which I'm not very good at anyway because who can tell when I'm serious or when I'm just making a joke? Maybe I need two blogs!). Black Adam is resurrected and all is now right with the world.

I think what I meant to say was "Black Adam is resurrected and all is now right with Black Adam."

Black Adam overthrows the current leader of Kahndaq and declares the people free. He shall protect and watch over them. But doesn't he feel the need to get vengeance on Billy Batson? What happened to his passionate hatred for Shazam? I suppose he'd rather just forget about that unfortunate incident in his life. Why would he want to repeat that encounter and get his ass kicked all over again, right?

And that's when Black Adam reads a message that appears on a tablet nearby that says, "This World is Ours." He completely flips the fuck out. Calm down, asshole. How do you know the tablet's owner hadn't just been playing a video game before you crushed him with a statue? Why am I always questioning comic book characters on their actions? They obviously have better instincts than I do because they always jump to the right conclusion and very rarely waste any time.

Black Adam #1 Rating: Aren't you all just loving the Reboot? The longer it goes, the more things return to the old universe! Here go again with Black Adam protecting Kahndaq! Just like it was before The New 52. My guess is everything will be absolutely back to how it was three years ago in five years time. But DC will have probably made more money than they would have otherwise and everybody else will just feel like nearly a decade of stories were lost as everything needed to be retold to get to where everything was when it was thrown away. Other than that, it wasn't too bad!