8 Black Adam Weaknesses Ranked by Severity
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In DC comics, Black Adam is one of the most powerful villains or anti-heroes, depending on how you perceive him. He is closely related to Shazam, and both are known to have nearly identical power sets, with Black Adam often being regarded as more violent and darker between the two. It’s tough to take on Black Adam and live to tell the tale, considering that he has super strength, super durability, super speed, and a plethora of other magic-based powers at his disposal.
Still, like most powerful characters, Black Adam has specific weaknesses that can be abused and have been abused in the past. They don’t necessarily completely eliminate him from the picture but allow dealing with him when the situation calls for it. Let’s see what Black Adam’s weaknesses are & how to abuse them.
8. Kahndaq
It’s weird to have a whole country as a weakness, but it’s true: Black Adam is just that dedicated to his people. In one of several Black Adam’s origin stories, Black Adam was originally a Kahndaqi slave who wanted to get vengeance on slavers so badly he murdered his nephew, that willingly saved his life and brought his own into danger.
After acquiring powers, Black Adam seized control of the country and started to rule it as a merciless dictator. His extreme measures were eventually reined in by his wife Isis, and Kahndaq was turned into a paradise. The country was also nearly demolished by Horsemen of Apokolips, and this is where the weaknesses manifested as Black Adam reacts impulsively and stupidly when Kahndaq is in danger.
7. Overconfidence & Ego
Closely related to Black Adam’s first weakness is his inability to perceive himself as weaker than his opponents, which often leads him into a world of trouble. By assuming that he is the strongest in the room, he leads himself into situations that lead to de-powerment several times. Black Adam is extremely powerful and should have godlike wisdom, but his lack of objectivity fueled by his ego always blinds him. He also gets angry easily, which often leads to impulsiveness.
6. Magic Vulnerability
Black Adam’s weakness to magic is so low on the least for one reason: he rarely encounters someone with magic as potent and powerful as his, at least when we take damage and destruction into account. But the story behind the magical vulnerability is the following.
Black Adam’s magic can be dampened or negated if he encounters someone as powerful as him or whose power levels exceed his own. This eliminates a vast portion of magic users in DC comics but leaves us with godlike entities and other cosmic creatures with whom Black Adam was struggling in the first place.
5. Divine Intervention
Black Adam used to draw his powers from the same Pantheon of Gods as Shazam, which explains why they use the same words to transform. However, Black Adam has moved to the Egyptian pantheon of gods ever since then because he was ousted from the Wizard and sealed for eternity.
This is where his weakness comes in. Black Adam was born as a regular being and only acquired his powers later in life through bestowal. Even though the Wizard claimed that he couldn’t just depower Black Adam, he eventually figured out how to seal him and take the powers away. So, in theory, if the Egyptian pantheon of gods decided to take Black Adam’s powers away, the best-case scenario is that he would revert back to his human form. This weakness is so low because no one, other than the gods that gave him his powers, can utilize it.
4. Lightning attacks
Black Adam has immense durability and can easily withstand planetary damage without batting an eye. We know that his main offensive attack is his lighting damage, but what happens when the lighting damage of equal or stronger magnitude hits him? Well, Black Adam can possibly revert to his human form, leaving him completely depowered in the middle of the battle. It’s rare to find an elemental magic-user capable of summoning that kind of damage, save for Shazam himself.
3. Eternium
This weakness is not from the comics. It’s from the DCEU movie ‘Black Adam’ that was widely regarded as a failure. Since Black Adam doesn’t have obvious weaknesses in the comics, or at least nothing that can be abused easily, there was a need to spice things up and nerf him a bit for his on-screen portrayal, and this is where Black Adam’s kryptonite comes in. Eternium is possibly the only substance capable of physically harming Black Adam, and it’s abundant in Kahndaq but relatively rare in the rest of the world.
2. His human form
In the newly revamped Shazam’s origin story, the first time he was forced to fight Black Adam, he defeated him without laying a single finger on him. He managed to trick Black Adam into reverting back to his human form, and after this, Black Adam turned to dust.
You see, while in his Black Adam form, he is immortal and doesn’t age, but as soon as he turns back into his human form, all the ages that he missed catch up to him, and this is what causes him to turn into literal dust, cause at that point, Black Adam hasn’t used his human form in centuries. However, it’s important to note that this is a former weakness of Black Adam’s, but it has made its way to this list due to its extremely lethal.
1. Speaking
To access his superhuman powers, Black Adam needs to speak, and if his mouth is blocked or damaged for any reason, he would, at best, lose access to his magic-based powers, and at worst, he won’t be able to transform at all. During his fight with Ultraman, the evil version of Superman figured out this weakness and promptly broke his jaw, leaving Black Adam severely crippled.
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