Hello all,

I'll admit right up front that I am a relatively new DC reader. I know my Green Lantern trivia, as he was my favourite DC character, and it's not hard to catch up on the big three. However, I'll come out and confess, I'm a Marvel guy from way back.

That being said, I've been reading (and greatly enjoying!) 52, although I was pretty confused (as a new reader) by Infinite Crisis (or whatever this one was called...stop mixing names, DC!). Specifically, I'm loving the hell out of Black Adam.

With the last couple of weeks being him going ape and slaughtering millions, I was curious -- where does he stand in the DC Earth power structure? Obviously there was no Superman to stop him, since he's depowered throughout 52, but everyone keeps acting like Black Adam is the most powerful person on the planet.

How does he stack up?

He's basically Superman with no heat vision or any of those powers, and has no qualms about killing people and tends to lean toward the genocidal.

He's pretty much always been this way, but 52 changed him for a while to a nice guy.

He's essentially an evil Captain Marvel (got his powers from Shazam, but you probably already know this). He has power on the scale of Supes, but as Scoodle said, no heat vision or the like. However, his power is magic based, so if he got creative, he could take on Kal-El since the Kryptonian has a weakness to magic. Captain Marvel successfully sucker punched Superman a while ago and knocked him out; but, he had to use his magic lighting in conjunction with the fist to accomplish the task. You could therefore reason that Teth Adam could do the same.

He doesn't have a weakness to it like he does Green-K, but he's simply not invulnerable from it. For example:

Normal Sword vs. Superman = Broken sword

Enchanted Sword vs. Superman = Superman might not be damaged, depending on the sword's enchantment, but it would bypass his invulnerable aura.

If you thought Black Adam has been a badass, just wait, the best is yet to come.

I've always liked Black Adam, mostly because he hates Captain Marvel. I haven't been reading 52, though-and it's probably too late to jump in.

I'm not sure why he's suddenly being treated as such a major threat, he isn't normally. However, many of the big guns are out during 52 including Superman (as mentioned), Martian Manhunter (not sure where he is), Wonder Woman (after murdering Max Lord) and even the Spectre. The JLA, Outsiders and JSA are: disbanded, playing possum and lacking numbers respectively. The Marvels up until this point, haven't viewed him as much of a threat. Alot of the heroes are unwelcome outside America (GL is repeatedly warned about trespassing) or dealing with other problems.

I think that a characters danger level fluctuates due to his need to be dangerous at the time.