The Secret of Isis

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Joanna Cameron as Isis.
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Joanna Cameron as Isis.

The Secret of Isis was a live action television series produced by Filmation in the 1970s that appeared during the Saturday morning cartoon lineup. It was also aired in various countries around the world. The series was initially aired in tandem with another live-action series, Shazam!. It is also known by the shorter title, Isis.

It aired on CBS from September 6, 1975 to September 3, 1977 (although only 22 original episodes were produced) and starred Joanna Cameron as Andrea Thomas, a high school science teacher. She was on an archeological dig when she found an amulet. This was a mystical amulet, originally given to an ancient Egyptian Queen.

When one wore the amulet, she was given great strength, the ability to move inanimate objects, and the power to fly and run at super speed. Thomas adopts these powers and the name Isis. Whenever Isis was needed, Andrea would hold the amulet up in the air and shout an incantation ("Oh, mighty Isis!"). She then intoned rhythmic, rhyming chants to activate her powers; a representative chant was Oh zephyr winds which float on high, lift me now, so I can fly, which, obviously, enabled her to fly. Isis used her powers for good by capturing criminals, righting wrongs, and helping anyone who was in danger. Unlike other superheroes who responded when people called their name, the beauty of Isis' assistance was that she often came to the rescue of people who didn't call for her, arriving in the nick of time and encouraging the wrongdoer to see the error of their ways through self-reflection.

The series spun-off a comic book produced by DC Comics. Although Isis is often cited as a DC creation, in fact she was created specifically for the television series and was only later adapted for comics. The TV character later appeared in animated form on other series. A considerably reworked version of the character (though still connected with Captain Marvel) was introduced in the 2006 comic series 52.

In 2006, BCI, an American distributor of DVDs, announced it had acquired the rights to release the series on DVD in North America, with a release scheduled for the summer of 2007.[1] Grammnet, the production company owned by Kelsey Grammer, has reportedly obtained the rights to produce a movie based on the character, the movie to be called "The Legend of Isis".

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