The sapiential superadventure: Brief relations between Shazam! And the wisdom discourse in the Hebrew bible

The relationship between comics and religion is an approach of intense academic interest. Since the acknowledgment that the mass culture expressed in comics can communicate religious knowledge, many narratives were focused on by the academy. The superadventure, i.e., the narratives on superheroes fighting super villains, is also academically investigated, and shows theological potential to be expressed as a religious discourse. Among the superadventures that could be analyzed is the one about the superhero Shazam, whose powers come from divine figures; one of them, Solomon, is acknowledgedly Judeo-Christian, who is usually related to wisdom in the Hebrew Bible. Bearing this in mind, this work aims at briefly exploring the links between the biblical wisdom discourse and the 12-volume comics series "The Challenges of Shazam!". For this end, the discourse analysis method was employed, starting with some of the main traits of the Hebrew Bible wisdom literature. In the end, the series shows the possibility of being read as a "wisdom superadventure", precisely for its presentation of contextual, linguistic e communicational elements also present in the Hebrew Bible wisdom genre.