This week: Isis!
Isis is a strange one because I'm not entirely sure how she's possible. But I suppose I should explain who she is first. See, Isis first appeared in the 1975 Filmation tv series, The Secrets of Isis, which was the second half of The Shazam!/Isis Hour.
The show was about a schoolteacher named Andrea Thomas, who discovered an amulet that she can use to harness the powers of the Egyptian goddess, Isis. As part of the Shazam!/Isis Hour, and probably because they have similar power origins, although I'm not sure whether that was a coincidence, the two characters crossed over frequently, with Isis appearing on three episodes of Shazam! and Captain Marvel appearing on three episodes of The Secrets of Isis.
An animated version of her later appeared in a very short-lived show called The Freedom Force (1978), which teamed up Isis with Hercules - from the Filmation animated series The Space Sentinels - to put together an international team of heroes. In addition to them, the team featured Merlin, Sinbad, and a character named Super Samurai. The whole thing lasted five episodes. The internet also claims she appeared in an episode of the animated series Hero High (the second half of The Shazam! Superpower Hour), but I can't find proof of that.
Isis's first comics appearance was, fittingly, Shazam! #25 (July 1976), but here's where the first bit of strangeness comes in: it's marked as a DC TV comic. DC TV comics were bizarre comics in the 70s of dubious canonicity. They were clearly marked tie-ins to tv shows, but written in a way that doesn't contradict the comic book universe. As an example of how strange they could be, Shazam! was an ongoing comic book series with no relation to the show. This DC TV comic issue was just dropped in the middle of the run, and afterward it's marketed as a DC TV for the rest of its run, but still isn't connected to either Shazam! show at all. All of that is to say that Isis is kind of an Earth-S character and kind of not. (See the Wonder Twins and the Global Guardians for more examples of this oddity.)
Isis then received her own series, The Mighty Isis, that began in September 1976 and ran for eight issues. All eight of them were marked as DC TV comics, so is this the same Isis that appeared in Shazam! #25, or a completely different one? As far as I know, there are no Captain Marvel appearances in the series, and no DC references at all...though the letters page does suggest - but doesn't state outright - that Isis's amulet was created by the wizard Shazam.
In 52 #3 (May 2006), DC introduced a character named Adrianna Tomaz, an Egyptian refugee who was brought to Black Adam as a slave. He killed her captors and freed her, and she helped convince him that he could be doing more good in the world. In return, he retrieved the Amulet of Isis, and in #12 (July 2006), he asked the wizard Shazam to confer the amulet's powers onto Adrianna, giving her the ability to transform into Isis. Adrianna Tomaz is obviously named after Andrea Thomas, and the series established that the Amulet's original owner, Hatshepsut, was one of Shazam's previous champions.
Here's where the strangeness really kicks in: DC DOESN'T OWN ISIS. Isis is a Filmation character. DC doesn't own Filmation. Warner Bros. doesn't own Filmation. How can they use her? Are they just skirting trademarks by the fact that Isis and Hatshepsut are historical characters in the public domain? Is the white dress generic enough that it's not actionable? Can they get by the transformation by the fact that Captain Marvel did it first?
I can't prove it, but I think DC got in trouble over it, and here's why. Less than a year after she was introduced, she was killed off, basically for good. Adrianna Tomaz later appeared in the New 52, in Justice League of America #7.4: Black Adam (September 2013), but she wasn't Isis and she hasn't been seen since.
She's appeared in adaptations, but those are peculiar too. The first one was in the Smallville episode, "Isis" (October 2010). In it, Lois Lane finds the amulet of Isis and transforms into a superhero very similar to the Isis we know. Notably, a character named Adrianna also appears in the episode, but has little to do with Isis - she's in charge of the exhibit that includes the amulet, but that's about it.
The character also appears in Legends of Tomorrow (first appearing in the episode "Zari", October 2017), but you'd be forgiven for not realizing it. Although she has the amulet, her name in this continuity is Zari Tomaz (though Adrianna is given as a middle name) and she doesn't transform or use the name Isis...but she does wear a much more modest version of the Isis costume as a Halloween costume in the episode "Phone Home" (October 2017).
So yeah, it seems like DC has to be very careful about how they use her, but they were still able to get into the comics universe, even for a brief time!
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