NEAR MYTHS: BLACK ADAM/JSA BLACK REIGN (2004)

Though I'd already seen the 2022 movie BLACK ADAM without having read this JSA compilation, I decided I would give the TPB a read in order to determine whether or not the film's writers for the movie had borrowed any important plot or character points. The short answer is that, if one subtracts all the over-complicated subplots provided in the Geoff Jones-Rags Morales graphic novel, there is a rough similarity of the main plotlines. 

In REIGN, Black Adam somehow assembles a small coterie of super-powered aides with which he overthrows the local dictatorship of his native land. (Note: in the comics-character's original appearance in 1945, he was an Egyptian of an archaic era, but at some point in his DC revival he was reworked as an archaic native from a fictional DC country named Kandahq.) Though the character had been reworked in other ways when DC took over the Fawcett library of characters, I imagine that in 2004 Johns probably was not bound by any previous iterations, and so Adam's conquest of Kandahq here may be the "first" time he ever did so in Johns' version. Adam's ruthless conquest of the country suggests that he may planning the conquest of other neighboring nations. To prevent that contingency, about a dozen well-known Justice Society heroes descend upon Kandahq and have an involved battle with Adam's forces. In the end, enough chaos erupts that Adam pledges to the JSA that he will remain within his own borders unless attacked.

In the film, Adam is newly revived by a band of Kandahq freedom fighters seeking to oust a vaguely defined occupying force. Logically enough, Adam does not attempt to collect any allies, given that as a possessor of the "Shazam lightning" he's almost unstoppable. Adam doesn't take any immediate action to take over the country of his descendants, but four members of the JSA descend upon Kandahq on the theory that Adam's very existence is a threat to cosmic order. In contrast to the graphic novel, the JSA heroes and Black Adam are forced to work together against a common menace. 

I won't expatiate on the film further here, since I'll review it separately. BLACK REIGN is a very ordinary superhero punch-em-up, and I say that as a critic who believes that fight scenes can have a lot of extra-ordinary significance. For my taste at least there are far too many subplots, with the result that no single plot stands out, though since some of the issues appeared in the HAWKMAN title, there's a strong emphasis on the contentions between Adam and the Winged Wonder, just as one sees in the movie. The closest thing to a myth captured in REIGN is not sociological, as it is in the film. Johns' script emphasizes psychological trauma about the loss of loved ones and roads not taken, but the only scene that has any resonance takes place when Adam demonstrates to his uncertain ally "Atom Smasher" the fruits of their violence: the preservation of innocents.