Fans got their first official look at DC’s Black Adam movie on Friday, when a sixty-second teaser shared a new look at DC Films’ 2022 slate. The biggest surprise out of the footage was the glimpse at the Justice Society of America, an iconic group of DC heroes who will be sharing the screen with Black Adam (Dwayne Johnson) in the film. The snippets of footage provided glimpses at Carter Hall / Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Kent Nelson / Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), Albert Rothstein / Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo), and Maxine Hunkel / Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell) — and in the process, it appears to have teased an adorable sidekick from JSA history. The teaser appears to show a meeting between Cyclone and Atom Smasher in the JSA brownstone, during which Cyclone can be seen holding a stuffed monkey. Eagle-eyed JSA viewers recognized this as Frankie the Monkey, the animal sidekick that Cyclone has in the comics.
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First appearing in 2008’s Justice Society of America #17, Frankie is a monkey who begins following Cyclone during a mission, and ultimately gets adopted by her after Jakeem Thunder jokes that he’s like her “own flying monkey.” Given Cyclone’s love for all things Wizard of Oz — which inspired her costume and her approach to her wind-based superpowers — Frankie is ultimately named after series author L. Frank Baum, and is even given a little vest with wings by Yz the Thunderbolt.
While Frankie only appears in a grand total of ten DC Comics issues, this homage to him in the Black Adam footage is definitely adorable, and honors some of the weirder aspects of Cyclone’s comic canon.
“Noah is amazing, man,” Black Adam producer Hiram Garcia said in an interview with The Illuminerdi earlier this year. “He is so impressive, so funny, and he really brings Atom Smasher to life in a way that I think is going to be very unique to what comic book fans are used to. I think Quintessa does the same thing. What they’re able to do with Cyclone. And I think Cyclone’s a character that not many fans are as familiar with, which is always really appealing to us because we love to introduce these characters. They have a fascinating backstory with relatives that they’re attached to, with experiences that they’ve lived to get to the point they are. So they both did an amazing job. They had amazing chemistry from the first moment they read together.”
Black Adam is set to be released on July 29th exclusively in theaters.
