Isis
32 years ago - Adrianna Tomaz is born in Alexandria, Egypt
16 years ago - 16-year-old Adrianna Tomaz receives a scholarship award, affording her a full scholarship to Cairo University.
14 years ago - 18-year-old Adrianna Tomaz attends Cairo University to study history, participating in several archeological digs.
10 years ago - 22-year-old Adrianna Tomaz helps in the unearthing of a previously unknown tomb of Hatshepsut, the champion of the goddess Isis. A hidden chamber opens for her, where she discovers that she is the descendant of Hatshepsut. She is bestowed the Amulet of Isis, and gains the ability to become the goddess's new champion, using her name.
7 years ago - 25 year-old Adrianna Tomaz & Anansi the Spider help protect the African Animist Pantheons during the Godwar. They venture into Khandaq, where they are confronted by Black Adam before he joins them in securing their Gods.
6 years ago - 26 year-old Adrianna Tomaz is approached, as Isis, by David Zavimbe, who invites her to help form The Kingdom.
3 years ago - 29-year-old Adrianna Tomaz and David Zavimbe work together to stop Kobra from building their new criminal network in Algeria. They find a deep personal connection, building a relationship.
Isis is a fun inclusion in DC's catalog, because she actually came from television first and then was adapted into the comics later. I'm not certain, but if I'm not mistaken DC doesn't even own the original version of this character, so what we see is a lot of adaptations of her all tailored to fit the time and medium she's in. For our purposes, I think that doing her justice really just means getting as close to her original TV persona as possible.
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Isis's Comic HistoryIsis is a character that debuted in her own live action television show in 1975. The Secret of Isis was one half of the Shazam!/Isis Power Hour, part of CBS's Saturday morning lineup. She was essentially the lady counterpart to Captain Marvel. Andrea Thomas was a high school teacher who used a magic amulet to turn into a magical superhero. She was played by JoAnna Cameron, and was the very first female superhero to lead her own live action series, predating even Wonder Woman. It's really easy to watch the show even now, here's a link to the first episode on YouTube.
DC created a tie-in comic for Isis in 1977 which was edited by Denny O'Neil with some really solid art by Mike Vosburg. It's a pretty straight forward seventies era episodic comic that lasted for eight issues. Isis the character would go on to appear in a few animated CBS cartoons as a part of the Filmations Associates character catalog, most of which now all belong to Dreamworks Animation. |
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In 2006, during the year-long crossover event 52, written by a virtual who's who of popular writers of the era, one of the many storylines that developed was Black Adam's evolving role as the ruler of the fictional nation of Khandaq. He meets his consort Adrianna Tomaz when she is, as a person trafficked by Intergang, given to him as a gift, which is exactly as unnecessarily dark as it sounds. He kills her captors and takes her in, and over the course of the series he gifts her with a portion of his powers, allowing her to become Isis, and also empowers her brother, making a Black Adam family that mirrors the Marvel family. She is a huge positive influence on him, making him a much more heroic character, but of course it doesn't last. She's killed before the series is over, and would later come back thanks to a Lazarus Pit, becoming a much darker character. It was the 2000s in DC. That's just what comics looked like.
Isis would actually go on to have a few different live action appearances. Lois Lane was possessed by the spirit of Isis and wore a version of this costume in the final season of Smallville, while Adrianna Tomaz (not Isis) was a featured character across most of the series Legends of Tomorrow. She was also a major character in the Black Adam movie, and in fact is probably one of the best parts. For the most part, Adrianna mostly appears in Black Adam stories, and DC did undergo a brief period when it thought Black Adam was going to be a very important character, so she gained a few more appearances that way, but for the most part when you're talking about Isis, you can basically focus in on the 2006 version, or the 1977 pre-crisis tie-in comics. |
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Our Isis StoryWe did originally use a much more 2006 version of Isis, leaning on her connection to Black Adam as an explanation for her powers, using the unnecessarily dark backstory... but eventually realized that not only is all of that unnecessary, but it's a real disservice to the actual character. She has an absolutely serviceable backstory all her own that requires almost no work to integrate. We even were able to tie her story in with the history of Captain Marvel by making her amulet the creation of the Wizard Shazam as part of one of his covenants with the gods. We made her actually Egyptian, and just like in her original TV show, we made her a secondary school teacher.
We also found a really fantastic role for her specific to our timeline that we really enjoy. Our team of African heroes, the Kingdom, managed to (completely without our trying to) become a really strong mirror to a rather famous lineup of heroes from DC's esteemed competition, and adding Isis, who is a beautiful woman flying on the wind as she uses her control over the weather and elements to evoke the might of her goddess... just seems like a really good addition for some reason. We made her part of the Kingdom from the beginning, and even built in a growing relationship between her and David Zavimbe. She does still interact with Black Adam a little, but this just feels like a much stronger role for Isis to play. |
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