The Power Of Family
In our first issue of Black Adam, it seemed that our former foe of Shazam! is now dying after a confrontation with Desaad and a fake Darkseid, but instead of simply going gently into that good night, Adam decided that his power should live on and with that he has chosen a descendant of his to inherit his power. The only problem is..... at least from my point of view from what we got in the previous issue, the descendant and heir apparent is an insufferable, walking-pop culture-dispenser. I can only hope that his new character, Malik White can calm down a bit and I can get on his side but as of right now, this series hasn't grabbed me the way I wanted it to. Let's jump into this issue and see if that can change.
For this issue of Black Adam, we at least get an understanding of what we're dealing with continuity-wise because the way that Adam has been presented in this series, I can't say that I've ever seen an Adam quite like this one but in this issue we see that Adam has a vision about his nephew he betrayed when he originally received his powers, making this the New 52 Black Adam. Does this make things clearer overall? No. I'm just happy to have some kind of basis of knowledge though and after that we pretty much just see Adam dying for the rest of the issue and Adam's descendant reluctant to take the Power of Shazam.
While there isn't a lot to this issue overall, I can say that Malik White, the White Adam.... terrible name.... is at least less annoying this issue than he was in the previous and we see a bit of character here as instead of asking questions about the Power of Shazam or even what the hell is currently happening to him, he just wants to try and save Black Adam's life and even after all seems lost and Malik has become one of the Mightiest Mortals, his main concern is still saving a life so ultimately, it seems like Black Adam chose wisely in his successor who in Adam's mind will hopefully redeem his name.
All in all, the art in this issue remains solid and is good throughout. I just wish the story was more compelling beyond Black Adam looking for a family member to pass his power to because we already did that in the last issue and for this one, we just have Malik standing around while Priest throws words out there in situations that an editor then has to explain while giving us small bits to what's going on since our character feels so far removed than anything we've ever see and since we were thrown head first into this series without any context. Maybe this mystery style of storytelling will work out by the end but right now it just feels frustrating because I'm not sure how much Priest knows about the character or if he cares to or just wants to do his own thing, but thankfully even with these problems, there's enough here to at least continue to be interested in what happens next, especially since our new character Malik, doesn't come off as annoying as he previously did.
Bits and Pieces:
While I'm not loving this series yet.... or as much as I wanted to when it was announced, there is still room to improve from what we get this issue and the idea that maybe our new character Malik may not be as annoying going forward...... maybe, which is a win for me. The art is great and I'm intrigued by some things in this issue, even though there isn't a lot going on in this issue overall.
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