While Marvel and DC go to extremes to ensure that plots and casting news stay secret until they want the world to know, a new enemy has recently reared its head. It continues to attempt to thwart their heroic efforts to keep their biggest mysteries under a cloak of vague denial for months or even years. This threat of spoilers comes in the form of merchandise, and in particular, toy lines linked to the biggest movies, which release pre-orders months in advance and therefore tend to offer up information that has not been officially released in any synopsis or trailers. The arrival of a new range of McFarlane Toys linked to the DC movie Black Adam has seemingly confirmed the appearance of a supervillain called Sabbac in the Dwayne Johnson movie.
A toy listing shared via Reddit revealed a list of upcoming figures from the DC movie which will bring Johnson’s disruptive character to the DCEU, with the promise of “changing the hierarchy” of the superhero world. As well as the expected Black Adam variants, Dr. Fate and Atom Smasher, there is also a Megafig version of Sabbac included in the list, which as the name suggests, will be a larger figure than the regular figures in the range.
This is something that has been happening more and more often recently, with a range of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness figures also revealing several characters that were previously unconfirmed, although in this case, there was a rumor back in 2020 that the character would appear. With this latest round of toys, we seem once again to be getting a preview of something that Warner Bros. probably wasn’t planning on fully revealing just yet.
Sabbac Will Likely Be His 2004 Iteration In Black Adam
Like many of the best comic book characters, over the years, there have been more than one iteration of the demonic entity since the villain debuted in 1943. Of course, the shared world of Shazam and Black Adam means that there have been several writers involved in the characters over the decades. Sabbac, also known by the name of Timothy Karnes, has powers that are very similar to the Shazam family, but he was transformed by the magical word “Sabbac”. Possessing super strength and speed, the ability to blast fire, breath fire and fly, Sabbac was not gifted his power from the gods, but instead from the dark powers of the forces of Hell.
A new version of the character made his debut more recently in 2004, with the demon now called Ishmael Gregor and sourcing its powers from the Seven Deadly Sins of Man rather than the darkness of Satan, Beelzebub and all his Hellish company. What makes this newer version of the character more attractive to the Black Adam movie is that Sabbac appeared in this iteration as a 50-foot tall demon under Black Adam’s command as he attempted to obliterate the world to be able to remake it from the destruction. With Aladdin star Marwan Kenzari being rumored to be wanted for the role, it does sound like this version of the character will be the one coming in Black Adam when it hits cinemas on July 29th.