I hesitate to suggest yet another superhero franchise in an already saturated market, but the current fad for female superheroes has me wondering. Why is there no word of an “Isis” revival?
Okay, the name Isis has an unfortunate connotation in today’s world, but maybe that could be overcome. Or else change her name to Hathor or something.
A superheroine who fights evil by controlling the weather has a lot of appeal for climate change aware folks, and the ancient Egyptian bit could be fun, and appeals to a lot of little girls.
Anyway, just drop the preachiness, except for the climate stuff, and it can’t miss. Why hasn’t this been picked up on?
It doesn’t have a lot of name recognition (and what it has isn’t good), very little backstory/history, not tied to a superhero universe, the powers are basically duplicated by Storm of the X-Men, and the original material was low budget cheese.
There are so many better options to choose from, there is no lack of superheros ready for a major motion picture treatment.
There was talk of a Black Adam movie staring Dwayne Johnson, when Black Adam was still going to be a villain in the Shazam! movie. She would likely have shown up in that.
As someone who has never heard of Isis, my first thought when I read “Egyptian who controls the weather” is “Sounds like a ripoff of storm.” And I think the average audience would think the same thing.
The character was created for a 1970s live-action Saturday morning kids’ show, which ran in conjunction with a similar show which featured Shazam. Unlike Shazam, Isis hadn’t previously been established as a comic book superhero when the TV show premiered.
Eventually, DC adapted a version of the TV show character into their continuity, but as far as I can tell, she’s never been a major character in the DC universe.
I think what DigitalC says reveals the main problem with Isis (apart from the connotations the name has today). Although she had a short-lived comic book back in the 70s, and has been re-introduced into the comics today as part of the “New 52” thing, Isis is a pretty obscure character, and not primarily a comic book character.
She was created for a Saturday morning TV show in the 1970s. A show that was, let’s face it, not very good, and didn’t last very long. I remember it, because I was the right age for it at the time. But even so, what I remember about it is merely the fact that it was a thing that existed. I could not begin to tell you the plot of even a single episode. I didn’t know, without looking it up, who Isis’s alter ego was, or the name of the actress who played her, or anything about the premise.
I imagine most people remember even less than that. Apart from a very narrow segment of the population who remembers watching her TV show, she’s not just not known at all.
Isis, Zari Tomaz, is currently on “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow,” on the CW. They always refer to her by Zari. I think they have only used the name Isis once or twice (don’t know why).
I have fond, if vague, memories of the show. The character’s alias was Joanna (or maybe that was the actress’s name?)and she was a school teacher. When she wanted to invoke her super powers she’d pull out her golden amulet and say “Oh might Isis”. I think I remember the amulet would contain images of. . .something. Clouds rushing by or roiling ocean waves or some such.
I’ve no idea how popular it would be, nor why it’s any less appealing as a character than any other SH.I mean, I know the character doesn’t have a comic book following but aren’t new characters ever introduced to the Super World?
Anyway, my like aged coworker and I chant the aforementioned “oh mighty Isis” surprisingly often :o
The message the original ISIS tv series left (and which the comics have never really eliminated) was not female empowerment, or environmentalism, or anything like that. The message was that Joanna Cameron was really hot, and it mostly impacted adolescent boys and young men.
Hell, if Joanna Cameron were cast in an Isis revival, I’d STILL go see her.
Lack of name recognition is not THAT big a hurdle. The Guardians of the Galaxy had pretty much zero name recognition and it’s still one of Marvels biggest hits. The problem is that it looks like a very uninteresting derivative character, “Storm ripoff” would be most people’s reaction.
No one said Isis was a rip off of Storm, but she would appear that way to 99% of the public, at least the majority of fans who know the X-Men movies.
What do you find interesting about the character? I ask because those of us who remember the Saturday morning show don’t recall any details about the character. I couldn’t have even told you that she controls the weather and I follow superheros.
I did watch the show occasionally, and was suitably impressed by Joanna Cameron’s charms. Lovely woman! I would have loved to have seen more superheroic action, though. I don’t remember her doing much by the way of fight scenes.