Comic book fans lost an undervalued yet influential contributor to superhero media with Joanna Cameron's passing. The former actress-turned nurse and hotel marketer was best known for her role in 1975's The Secrets of Isis show as Andrea Thomas, a science teacher who secretly battled crime using a mystical Egyptian amulet that transformed her into a reincarnation of the goddess Isis. While the show, which lasted 22 episodes over two seasons, isn't broadly remembered beyond those who grew up watching 1970s television, its protagonist has since undergone a unique evolution, becoming a fixture of DC's Shazam canon as Adrianna Tomaz (an homage to Thomas' name), the wife of anti-hero Black Adam.
And with DC's Legends of Tomorrow's Zari Tomaz (Tala Ashe) rocking an alternate version of this character for the past four seasons and Sarah Shahi presumably set to play Adrianna in Dwayne Johnson's Black Adam, it's worth looking back at just how odd Isis' relation with DC and Shazam was from the start.
In terms of character origins, Isis has more in common with the likes of Harley Quinn and X-23, both of whom debuted in animated shows outside of comic continuity but were later added in due to their immense popularity. The Secrets of Isis, however, was live-action and not necessarily a full-on DC show. Produced by Filmation, it aired alongside the live-action Shazam! series -- released in 1974, one year after DC Comics licensed the character's rights from Fawcett Comics in 1973 -- as part of CBS' The Shazam!/Isis Hour. This Saturday morning Shazam! also played out much differently than the comics. It still featured Billy Batson and his ability to transform into Captain Marvel by saying the magic word, but the traditional Marvel Family cast never appeared. Instead, TV Billy traveled in an RV alongside his mentor (literally named Mentor) and used Captain Marvel to stop random domestic criminals, educate innocent civilians and teach viewers moral life lessons.
Isis' stories were fairly similar and hokey. Each episode saw Andrea get involved in local problems and, unbeknownst to her students and school colleagues, become Isis via the catchphrase "Oh Mighty Isis" to stop nefarious wrongdoers and help people learn right from wrong. As Isis, whose Egyptian mythology status is often affiliated with magic, she possessed more supernatural abilities through the amulet, ranging from commanding the weather to manipulating elemental forces to flight powers. This power template would carry over into Isis' comic counterpart, with her amulet granting a similar mastery of elemental forces, speed, strength and telekinesis.
Despite arriving eight years after Yvonne Craig's Batgirl debut on Batman, The Secrets of Isis remains something of an unlikely trailblazer for TV heroines in its own right. The show's release predates Lynda Carter's iconic Wonder Woman series and the Six Million Dollar Man spinoff The Bionic Woman by a few months, as well as ABC's Electra Woman and Dyna Girl by one year, technically making Cameron's Isis the first female-led superhero show protagonist. Likewise, where Batman only had one franchise crossover with The Green Hornet, The Secrets of Isis did three with Shazam! and vice-versa, making both series feel like they loosely inhabited a shared universe.
More importantly, these frequent crossovers encouraged Filmation to make Isis Shazam-adjacent in other media. Following The Secrets of Isis' cancelation, Filmation included her in their cartoon The Freedom Force, which only ran five episodes, and later an episode of Hero High for The Kid Super Power Hour with Shazam! She even received her own comic series, The Mighty Isis, which took place within the show continuity but, being a comic book, provided far more ambitious storylines than what a Filmation budget could achieve.
In hindsight, it makes sense that viewers would link Shazam! and Isis together, as both were about characters granted metahuman abilities by the literal gods. Thanks to this established connection, when DC launched their 52 series in 2006, an in-universe take on Isis -- Adrianna Tomaz -- officially merged with the modern Shazam world. Here, Tomaz was a former slave liberated by Black Adam but eventually becomes his ally, encouraging Adam to use his godlike powers for positive development rather than violent brutality. As a result, the two fell in love with, and, as a token of his love, Adam provided Adrianna with the Amulet of Isis, allowing her to access the goddess' powers via a different transformation phrase: "I am Isis."
Since then, more live-action shows have paid homage to The Secrets of Isis' goddess or her iconography when possible. Smallville's Season 10 episode "Isis" briefly featured a version of Adrianna (Erica Cerra) as a museum curator, but made Isis a separate entity within her amulet possessing Lois Lane. By comparison, Legends of Tomorrow's Zari shares Adrianna's last name, and her family Air Totem's design resembles the Isis amulet and headpiece, but Zari's Arrowverse backstory and characterization require little prior knowledge of The Secrets of Isis in general. Yet, on occasions where Zari did wear a costume, such as the Legends episode "Phone Home" or "Crisis on Earth-X," they too bore an overt resemblance to the Filmation protagonist's classic attire.
Obscure as The Secrets of Isis is by today's standards, its legacy certainly lives on. The late Mrs. Cameron embodied a character whose affiliation with the brand she once debuted alongside has only grown stronger, a completely original superhero now fighting evil alongside some of the most iconic DC heroes. It's currently unknown whether Shahi's Black Adam Adrianna Tomaz will include any references to Isis or even a mystical amulet, but knowing DC, they'll find some way to honor the source material. An unorthodox journey from cheesy children's television to the big screen no doubt, but one that you can't deny has been influential.
To see Isis on the big screen, Black Adam hits theaters July 29, 2022.