Capeworld Comics

The FORBIDDEN Prediction Blog Episode 13

 

Original Fight 8

 

Electra Woman vs Isis.

 

Now I know what you’re thinking. “Otto, what is this? Why are you doing this fight There’s like three people on Earth that know about these characters.”

 

You’re wrong. There’s four, because I’m about to tell you about them.

 

Here begins your initiation into the mystery cult of obscure pop culture.

 

It’s the seventies, and woman’s lib has caused an expansion of superheroines. Tigra! Valkyrie! She-Hulk! Zatanna gets a make-over and joins the Justice League! Wonder Woman gets a make-over and becomes Emma Peel! Lois Lane learns Kryptonian martial arts and Rose and Thorn become a back-up feature in her book!

 

With Batman ‘66 showing that superheroes making it big on television wasn’t limited to Superman back in the 50’s, it was only natural that you would see more superhero shows pop up. And with the 70’s becoming the decade of the superheroine, it was only natural that the girls would be making the jump from ink to live action along with the boys.

 

Wonder Woman and The Bionic Woman weren’t the only superheroine tv shows in the 70’s. You also had The Secrets of Isis and Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. Both shows featured women armed with a myriad of powers and abilities that would make even Dr. Strange blush but differed substantially in tone. The Secrets of Isis was a serious, sweet-hearted show about a science teacher with magical powers making the lives of her students and community better. Electra Woman and Dyna Girl was a female and more surreal (if such a thing is possible) take on Batman ‘66.

 

Magic vs Superscience! Serious vs Camp! Brunette vs Blonde! It’s the battle of the obscure 70’s tv superheroines!

 

Isis and Electra Woman seem to be able to do anything with the number of powers they have. But do they have the power to defeat their greatest rival?

 

Let’s find out!

 

Bonus theme–Both Isis and Electra Woman have been horrifically abused by modern writers that seem to have nothing but sneering contempt for their shows. Isis wasn’t seen for years after DC moved Earth-S to the Hypertime toybox in COIE. Then Geoff Johns introduced “Adrianna Tomaz” to the main DC universe not as a science teacher, but as a sex slave that fell in love with Black Adam after he rescues her. Instead of having her power come from Hatshepsut and Isis, it now came from Black Adam. Isis had a family with Black Adam and then died so DC’s version of Namor could continue to be angry about the world outside Kandaq.

 

Ew.

 

Electa Woman hasn’t fared much better, sadly. The WB had a pilot back in 2001 for a new Electra Woman and Dyna Girl show where Electra Woman was a bitter, chain-smoking piece of trailer trash who lost her husband to Dyna Girl.

 

Again, ew.

 

You remember Sid from Toy Story? That’s who modern superhero writers are. They take toys that aren’t their own and do horrible things to them because they think it’s cool.

 

Electa Woman

 

“Electra Woman and Dyna Girl fighting off evil deeds. Each writes for a magazine hiding the life she leads.”

 

“Summoned to Electra Base by the Electra Comps they wear Lori and Judy dare to face any criminal anywhere.”

 

“Electra Woman and Dyna Girl!”

 

Fun fact–the theme song was done by Cyndi Lauper years before she took off in the eighties.

 

Electa Woman and Dyna Girl was the Sid and Marty Kroft version of sixties Batman. Electa Woman and her sidekick Dyna Girl, known only as Lori and Judy in theri civilian identities, fight outrageously campy supervillains doing their best to out-ham Caesar Romero and Frank Gorshin. Instead of a utility belt filled with bat-gadgets, Electra Woman used an electra comp filled with electra powers. Dyna Girl would say “Electa wow” like Burt Ward Robin and his “Holy blank” schtick. Electra Woman would often find herself in death traps just like Adam West. Where Batman had a bat-computer and bat-cave, Electra Woman had Electra Base and crime scope. Electra Woman even had her own batmobile in the form of the electra track. It wasn’t powered by an atomic engine and didn’t come with a bat-zooka, but it could fly!

 

The biggest difference between Batman 66’ and Electra Woman and Dyna Girl is that Electa Woman’s Alfred plays a far more active role. Frank Heflin, played by the Super Friends version of Aquman’s voice actor Norman Alden. He managed crime scope, the super computer that powered the electra comps and often tweaked the computer to help out Electra Woman. “Increase power by increasing the rate of electron oscillation” and what not. Frank was a fun character and Alden was by far and wide the best actor on the show.

 

For most viewers, I can’t really recommend Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. If you want campy Batman inspired superheroics, drink from the source and watch Batman ‘66. Electra Woman and Dyna Girl tries to be Batman ‘66 but it’s actors aren’t as skilled and the writing isn’t as witty. There’s a legitimate art to pulling off camp. Batman ‘66 pulls it off probably better than any other show in the history of mankind. Electra Woman and Dyna Girl doesn’t. It’s a surface imitation of Batman ‘66 with none of its heart.

 

I only recommend it if the idea of Adam West Batman with very little budget appeals to you. If hearing that Electa Woman fights an all-powerful energy being depicted as what can best be described as a superimposed, glitching ditto from Pokemon puts a smile on your face, if knowing that that Electra Woman travels through a mirror dimension that looks like a sunday school fall festival haunted house puts a twinkle in your eye, if you have ever wondered what Batman 66’ would have looked like if they only had a Spirit Halloween to work with, then you absolutely must watch the show.

 

Oh, and Sid Haig stars as an evil genie in one episode .

 

I don’t care who you are or what your tastes are, that’s something to note.

 

The first episode. You can find the rest on youtube just by searching for them by episode name:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccjO6H7Vzz0

 

Electra Woman’s Powers

 

In General

 

— You know how in comic books electricity can do a lot of weird things it can’t do in reality? The same applies here to the electra comp. Electa Woman can freeze objects, increase gravity, and even speed up her speed and reactions 10000 times. Electa wow!

 

The electa comp is a bulky computer fitted onto her arm. Think a pip-boy from Fallout, a deck from any Gibson-derivative cyberpunk work, or a comp from Shin Megami Tensei. Most features of the electra comp require it to be aimed at the target.

 

The electa comp is linked to crime scope and Frank back at Electa Base. Crime scope sends power to the electra comps, and if this signal is ever cut off Electra Woman becomes powerless. She doesn’t have any superpowers or combat skills on her own without the electra comp. For instance, she was powerless when trapped underground in The Sorcerer’s Golden Trick and when trapped in a mirror dimension (and later ancient Venice because it’s a time travelling mirror dimension, you see) in The Sorcerer (until Frank found a way to create a rip in space/time to send her power). Good ol’ Frank. He’s Electra Woman’s (and the writers’) ace-in-the-hole.

 

Frank serves as a combination Montgomery Scott and Otacon providing Electra Woman with information and superscience wizardry. If Electra Woman is in a jam, he can do superscience to boost the power of the electra comp (Return of the Pharaoh) or use crime scope, after some finagling, to open up rips in the space/time continuum and send Electra Woman power back in time (beat that bat-computer) (The Sorcerer). Frank can also detect illusions through crime scope (The Sorcerer, Return of the Pharaoh, The Sorcerer’s Golden Trick) and guide Electra Woman through them. What fools Electra Woman’s senses can’t fool crime scope’s scanners. Crime scope can also detect traps (Glitter Rock), though given how often the girls fall into death traps this ability is rather unreliable.

 

Frank once routed so much power through crime scope into Electra Woman and Dyna Girl’s comps that he feared he would destroy a mirror dimension the girls were trapped in along with themselves. If I was crazy, I would say that threatening a world-behind-the-mirror makes Electra Woman what some on the internet term a “dimension buster” who could aim her comp at the sky and nuke everything in the universe. 

 

But I’m not crazy, and so Electra Woman remains free of insane vsbw wank.

 

It also helps that Frank was wrong and the mirror dimension didn’t blow up after all, which sort of makes him the King Kai of the 70’s superhero tv show universe.

 

Electa Degravitate/Gravitate

 

–Electra Woman can fly (The Spider Lady, The Pharaoh), though it’s more like a slow hover. For speedy flight, she uses the electra track. 

 

She can also reverse the electra degravitate in a move called electra G (no points for figuring out what the G stands for). She can use this to crush opponents to the floor as she did to the Sorcerer after he tried to trap her forever in a mirror dimension. Electra Woman does not appreciate battlefield removal as a win con.

 

Electra Beam

 

–The bread and butter of Electra Woman’s arsenal. Electra beam emits a magnetic beam that can push or pull objects. At max power, it was unable to push back a ten ton weight slowly falling on Electa Woman as part of an Egyptian pyramid themed death trap. But after Frank made some adjustments to push the comp beyond max power it was able to lift the weight (Return of the Pharaoh). Good ol’ Frank!

 

Throughout the series, the electra beam has moved a chair, Dyna Girl’s electra comp, metal bars, a door, a guitar, and the Mona Lisa. 

 

What a list! It’s like something from an I Spy book.

 

Electra Shield

 

–A barrier of energy that can be used offensively to trap opponents (The Spider Lady) and defensively to shield Electa Woman from attacks (The Pharaoh). The shield is pretty durable and was able to protect Electra Woman from the 50,000 volt touch of a weird ditto-looking energy being named Solaris who the ancient Egyptians kept as a pet monster (I thought they were into Yu-Gi-Oh, not Pokemon).

 

Directa Scan

 

–Your all-purpose tricorder scan. It shows up in nearly all the episodes because if you could scan a room with a tricorder, wouldn’t you?

 

I’d use it just to find change, forget about the traps!

 

Electra Freeze

 

–Showing up in Ali Baba, the electra freeze, in the words of Frank, lowers a target’s temperature to below freezing. In practice however, it more so turns whatever it hits into brittle ice that falls apart with the merest touch. It was used on both a seashell and a gong. 

 

Think of it like the handheld version of Kiryu’s absolute zero cannons.

 

Electra Split

 

–Creates an unstable duplicate of whatever it hits, but doesn’t work on living things. It was used on the Empress of Evil in her titular episode which revealed that she was a robot (surprise!). Since this caused both her and the duplicate to break down (wait a minute. Does this mean Electra Woman created a duplicate of a sapient robot just to die? That’s pretty fucked up!) it’s a great weapon to use against robotic opponents. Unfortunately, Isis isn’t a robot.

 

Electra Vision

 

–This power emits a bright light that can turn night into day and blind opponents (The Return of the Pharaoh). It’s a big flashlight.

 

Hey, they can’t all be winners.

 

Electra X

 

–Showing up in The Spider Lady, the Electra X sounds cool but…it’s basically just a big X-ray. It can make people look like skeletons and reveal disguises in an ability that’s somehow related to making people look like skeletons. It’s also made redundant by the existence of directa scan which does what it does and more.

 

It’s good for Halloween, not so much for fights.

 

Hey, they can’t all be winners.

 

Electra Vibe

 

–Hey look, a winner! Electra vibe appeared in Glitter Rock and allows Electra Woman to project a sonic wave powerful enough to crush ten ton boulders and knock down concrete walls. It can be fired with such precision as to destroy a glass, and only a glass, on top of a table. It performed a little better than Frank described as Dyna Girl used her electra vibe to blow up a satellite that was going to mind control the world with glam rock (how horrible!). This satellite is comparable to the Apollo lunar lander (as in the special effects crew took a lunar lander model and spray painted it) which had a mass of 15103 kg.

 

I’m going to try and use the Apollo lander alongside the Orca from Jaws as my reference weights and measures.

 

Electra Strobe

 

–The winner among winners and likely Electra Woman’s greatest power. Only ever used in The Pharaoh, electra strobe causes a headache-inducing strobe effect that likely wouldn’t fly under today’s standards and practices that speeds up Electra Woman so that everything around her looks like statues. Frank states that electra strobe boosts her speed and reaction time 10000 times.

 

It’s the accelerator from Cyborg 009, basically.

 

Electra Woman used the electra strobe outside the lab only once, and interestingly she didn’t use it on herself. She used it against the energy creature Solaris under the reasoning that since it absorbed energy, then speeding Solaris up 10000 times would make it absorb energy too fast and die.

 

Good thing she was right about that, otherwise she would have created an energy-absorbing Flash.

 

Isis

 

“”Oh my queen,”said the royal sorcerer to Hatshepsut… “with this amulet, you and your descendents are endowed by the goddess Isis. You will soar as the falcon soars, run with the speed of gazelles, and command the elements of sky and earth. Three-thousand years later, a young science teacher dug up the lost treasure and found she was heir to…The Secrets of Isis!”

 

“And so, unknown even to her closest friends, Rick Mason and Cindy Lee, she became a dual person–Andrea Thomas, teacher…”

 

“O MIGHTY ISIS!”

 

“And Isis! Dedicated foe of evil! Defender of the weak! Champion of truth and justice!”

 

I love this show so much.

 

Yeah I’m coming into this match up with a bias. So sue me. I liked Dachande more than Kraven and I still gave the win to Kraven.

 

Secrets of Isis is like a warm blanket of superheroic fun. It’s as wholesome as crustless sandwiches and juice boxes on a Saturday morning. Secrets of Isis is the antidote to the poison of modern comics. Secrets of Isis isn’t in the same world that has Juggalo Batman from the Depressoverse. It isn’t in the same galaxy. It isn’t in the same multiverse.

 

People are nice in Secrets of Isis. Do you have any idea how rare it is to just see people be nice in superhero comics these days? 

 

The best you get is a 22 page calm-before-the-storm story where Superman patches up the moon after it blew up and talks about hope and good feelings right before Juggalo Batman murders twelve universes.

 

One episode is about Isis helping a kid learn to deal with his dead dog. That’s it. That’s beautiful. If someone like Scott Snyder wrote a story like that, you can bet that the next issue would involve the dog secretly being the last guardian of the secret petforce, one aspect of the secret mimosa of secret loyalty. He would then be killed by the Justice League’s super-pets after they decided that they wanted to use the petforce to retcon reality into a world where dogs walk humans.

 

“No! Krypto! Why did you betray us?”

 

“We were always here Superman, right under your noses. Waiting. At the end of your nightmares. All roads lead to the doghouse.”

 

To be continued in JLA Petforce 2: Existence is Ruff.

 

I can’t recommend this show enough. Yeah, its low budget. The special effects are George Melies camera tricks. But I think it just adds to its charm. It’s just such a pleasant, heart-warming show. It’s the Mr. Rogers of superhero shows.

 

One episode, The Outsider, is about a kid from Appalachia who gets bullied because he’s a kid from Appalachia and keeps a little book of nature observations like an old-school natural philosopher. The only place where he can find peace from the bullying is at a local lake, but he learns that its about to be bulldozed under to make room for houses. Distraught, he steals a bulldozer to knock down a sign saying the lake’s scheduled to be dynamited today. Isis shows up and stops the bulldozer and the foreman shows up.

 

You would think the foreman would chew the kid out. “You crazy kid! I’ll sue you for theft!.” You would think that. I thought that. But he’s actually sympathetic. He has a job to do, but he wants to help the kid. He not only forgives the kid for stealing the bulldozer but delays the dynamiting so he can talk to the rich guy that owns the land.

 

So he goes to see a rich guy on a golf course, and you think the rich guy is going to blow him off. “Get lost kid. I got the land fair and square. I don’t care about no mudhole!” But no. The guy is actually swayed by the extensive log of rare fauna the kid’s collected in his little book. He sees that the land is worth preserving and tells Isis to stop the dynamiting which she does in the nick of time.

 

You don’t have this in superhero comics anymore. The citizens of the DC multiverse just voted for BAD WRONG EVIL DOOM over GOOD NICE HOPE JUSTICE. The X-Men run a violent ethnostate.

 

You don’t have this in superhero comics anymore.

 

And I love this show because it’s so unlike modern superheroes, cheesiness and all.

 

It also helps that Joanna Cameron is very easy on the eyes.

 

In 1976, Secrets of Isis was brought into the DC multiverse, but not the DC universe.

 

Let me explain. Secrets of Isis was created by Filmation. Filmation was producing the live action Captain Marvel show Shazam! at the time and crossed over Captain Marvel and Isis in a couple of episodes. Cap appeared in three episodes of Secrets of Isis, and Isis appeared in three episodes of Shazam!. They shared a universe together, and this universe was later folded into the comics. 

 

This requires us to talk a little about Captain Marvel.

 

When DC sued Fawcett into oblivion in the 50’s, they took Captain Marvel and his world and made it Earth-5, aka Earth-S. You see, the lawsuit was transparently bullshit. It wasn’t about copyright infringement. It was about taking the most lucrative and popular superhero outside Superman and making him work for their side.

 

Earth-5 was explicitly the Fawcett universe, and to bring Captain Marvel into the then-modern world of the 70’s, DC wrote in Shazam! 1 that Sivana trapped the Marvels and himself in a time-bubble of suspendium (that’s where Grant Morrison got the suspendium for the Thunderworld issue of Multiversity). So the Marvels missed out on the sixties. Forrest Gump means nothing to them.

 

Now some of you probably know that the setting of the Shazam! show was different from that of the comics. In the show, Billy traveled around with an old guy named Mentor in an RV (Ben 10 took inspiration from more than just Dial H and Green Lantern). There wasn’t a Marvel Family, Sivana, Talky Tawny,or radio station WHIZ. And the situations and stakes in the show were very mundane compared to the cosmic situations of the comics.

 

(By the way, note that Cap was called Captain Marvel in both the Shazam! DC comic and the Shazam! television show. So no Death Battle, DC did not decide to call Captain Marvel Shazam when Marvel took a trademark out on the name Captain Marvel. It was only with Nu 52 that Cap became Shazam because a certain influential author at modern DC is a godawful steward of the Captain Marvel legacy. Say his name. Name the bad steward. His name is Geoff Johns.)

 

Effectively, the world of the television Captain Marvel was different from the world of the comics Captain Marvel, but in Shazam! 25, DC decided to make the world of the comics the same as the world of the shows and advertised that the very same Cap on television was the same as the one in the comics. In the following issue, they explained away the differences between the show and comic. The wizard Shazam tells Billy that Sivana is plotting to blow up America’s cities one by one, so it’s operation road trip for Billy. Billy worries about his job at WHIZ, but it turns out that Mr. Morris, Billy’s boss, has assigned him to travel across America to report on young people. Uncle Dudley is revealed to be the Mentor character from the show and grows a mustache to look more like Mentor. The RV turns out to be a tricked out WHIZ news van. Freddy and Mary are tasked with taking over Captain Marvel’s typical duties while Billy is on his road trip.

 

So yeah. The TV show is 100% canon to the comics. It’s just that Billy is doing a considerable amount of stuff off-camera like teaming up with Superman and raiding Hell.

 

No seriously. He raids Hell itself in the Shazam! series.

 

In Shazam! 25, Isis teamed-up with Cap just as she had several times before in the show. She brought her friends Rick Mason and Cindy lee along for the cameo to cement that Secrets of Isis was on Earth-5.

 

And you thought the only things on Earth-5 besides the Marvels were Bulletman and Bulletgirl!

 

While Isis is technically part of the DC multiverse insofar as the pre-crisis cosmology is preserved in hypertime panels and the metaverse universe called Earth-1985 from Doomsday Clock, she’s part of the DC multiverse in the same way Rom, the Transformers, Godzilla, and GI Joe are part of the Marvel multiverse. To this day, the rights to the character are kept by NBC, not DC. That’s why the degraded copy DC gave to Black Adam as a waifu is called Adriana Tomaz, not Adrian Thomas.

 

After Shazam! 25, Isis got her own book that lasted for eight issues. It homogenized Isis. She got supervillains and angst just like every hero and heroine from the bronze age. She fought wizards and aliens and the god Set. Her comics lost the innocent charm of the TV show, but I can understand why they wrote Isis the way they did. That’s just how superhero comics were in the seventies. You couldn’t have a nigh-omnipotent character solve problems and help high school students. There had to be supervillains to challenge her.

 

In 1978, Isis also showed up on the filmation cartoon The Freedom Force where she was part of a superteam stationed in a pyramid in the Valley of Time, a weird sort of timewarp place where dragon riding vikings and giant samurai meet up. Freedom Force was sort of like Earth-5’s time patrol. You had Isis, Merlin, Hercules (though not the Hercules Billy draws power from. Now, this was never explained), Sinbad the sailor, and…Super Samurai, a young boy from Feudal Japan who turns into a giant armored warrior when he says SUPER SAMURAI!

 

Yeah sure. Super Samurai. The famous character from Japanese folklore.

 

What, Momotaro wasn’t available? Like I get they wanted a kid character the viewers could identify with like how the Super Friends had Wendy and Marvin, but you got a kid hero from Japanese mythology right there! It’s not like Momotaro is obscure. Pick up any book on Asian myths and he’s there.

 

The Freedom Force consists of five eleven minute episodes that ran as part of Tarzan and the Super Seven. The entire show isn’t even feature length. You could probably watch the entire thing before you finish reading this who-would-win fight.

 

The Freedom Force…is a thing. I mostly recommend it just off it being weird and short. The first episode is probably going to hold the most interest to people as it eerily predicts How to Train Your Dragon. The episode is about a misfit viking boy from a culture of dragon riders who is trying to prove himself to his dad with the help of his runty pet dragon.

 

If you’re going to watch the show, keep an eye on Sinbad. The guy is useless. He does one thing in the entire show and that’s spray a little water in episode 4. He’s what people think Super Friends Aquaman was. I think his nameless fat sidekick might actually have more screen time than he does.

 

The Freedom Force was never explicitly declared canon by the comics, but there was a connection. In the show, the Freedom Force hangs out in a pyramid in the Valley of Time. In Isis 5, it’s revealed that Isis gets her powers from a pyramid in Egypt. In Isis 6, we see the inside of the pyramid and it’s all Ditko Dr. Strange and the narration says that the pyramid is a place whose reality has its own rules. It could easily have become the Freed Force’s base in the Valley of Time.

 

It still doesn’t explain how Hercules is supposed to work in the context of Captain Marvel, but the guy DOES seem pretty weak for a Hercules. He struggles to move big rocks. Maybe this is because Captain Marvel is taking the lion’s share of his power?

 

Isis made a few cameos along with Captain Marvel in the 1981 Filmation cartoon Hero High which ran as part of The Kid Super Power Hour with Shazam! Hero High was an interesting bit of weirdness. It started as a pitch for a show about the Archie characters as young superheroes in a school teaching superheroes. It likely would have involved the superpowered versions of Archie and his friends (Pureheart, Superteen, etc) as seen in Life with Archie back in 1965. If the pitch had gone through, Earth-5 would have been home to Archie and Captain Marvel and would have been the comfiest superhero universe ever. But it didn’t. Filmation salvaged the idea as Hero High with the characters clearly based on Archie characters. Captain California was Archie, Glorious Gal was Betty, etc.

 

Hero High wasn’t the best show, but it was influential. A lot of people think that X-Men invented the “superhumans in a school” concept, but in 1981 the X-Men weren’t so much a school for superhumans as a paramilitary group under the cover of a school. It wouldn’t be until a year later in 1982 that the school aspect really started to be stressed with New Mutants. 

 

Goofy as it is, a lot of stories owe a debt to Hero High—X-Men, PS 238, My Hero Academia, my own Martin’s School, and Sky High.

 

Sky High vs Hero High? Maybeeeeee…

 

As the rights for Isis remain at NBC, she’s effectively retired as a character not counting the in-name-only character DC uses. She’s stuck in the same IP crate as Web Woman, Superstretch, Microwoman, Manta, and Moray.

 

What, you don’t remember all those characters?

 

I might need to do an NBC superhero battle royal one of these days…

 

Isis’ Powers

 

ARE YOU READY FOR A LIST?

 

Oh yes. The scroll bar does not lie.

 

In General

 

–Isis is able to call upon and command a variety of supernatural forces, most often but not limited to the classical elements. To use her powers, Isis has to vocalize her commands. For instance, Oh zephyr winds that blow on high, lift me now so I can fly. This is a strict rule, and instances in the tv show where she uses her powers without speaking were explained in Isis 7 as being due to her whispering. When Isis can’t speak, she’s powerless such as when she tried to fight an alien that became the god Aten to the ancient Egyptians after the older gods abandoned them (it was a neat way to explain Pharaoh Akhenaten and ancient Egypt’s brief flirtation with monotheism) in Isis 5. She fought him too high up in the atmosphere and lost when she couldn’t breath and thus couldn’t speak. This weakness also got her in trouble during the third episode of The Freedom Force when plant monsters subdued her by putting a leaf over her mouth before she completed a spell to summon ice.

 

–Isis must be in physical contact with nature in order to use her powers. In the third episode of The Freedom Force, she was imprisoned in a glass coffin and had to be rescued. In Isis 7, she was imprisoned in a plastic coffin, but because she learned from her previous defeat in The Freedom Force (and because she got a smarter writer) she was able to free herself by commanding the air inside the coffin.

 

–Isis’ power comes from her pyramid in Egypt as seen in Isis 5. If her pyramid is ever destroyed she’ll lose all her powers forever.

 

–Isis can speak really fast when she needs to. She’s able to get spells out while a beam of magic is hurtling toward her in Isis 1 and while a tomahawk is flying to her head in Isis 4.

 

–Isis isn’t limited to using one spell at a time. She can stack spells, most commonly casting a spell while flying on the winds.

 

Flight and Aerokinesis

 

–Flight is Isis’ favorite power and gets used every single episode. “Oh zephyr winds that blow on high, lift me now so I can fly.” You’ll have that phrased memorized by the time you finish the show.

 

 She looks so pretty rising into the air with her hair blowing around her.

 

Isis’ flight puts Electra Woman’s to shame. She can soar above the clouds and fly fast enough to catch up to one of Isis’ most common adversaries–speeding getaway cars (The Lights of Mystery Mountain, Fool’s Dare, Dreams of Flight).

 

–Summons the winds to pull away the smoke and fire of an erupting volcano (TFF 5).

 

–Has the winds stop a falling car, lift it into the clouds, and then place it back on the cliff it fell off of (Girl Driver).

 

–Isis can easily support more than her own weight when she flies. She once tied a rope around herself and Richard the bigfoot (not actually a bigfoot. This isn’t The Six Million Dollar Man. Richard was a mountain man that people thought was bigfoot because he was Richard Kiel huge but he was a nice guy and…just watch the episode) and was able to comfortably hoist him back up a mountain (Bigfoot).

 

–Has the winds push a car up a hill (No Drums, No Trumpets).

 

–Asks the wind to bring her an object (Scuba Duba).

 

–Lifts a student with the winds and places them gently on the ground (Dreams of Flight).

 

–Commands smoke to enter a tube (The Cheerleader).

 

–Speaking of smoke, later in the same episode she calls upon the wind to make stairs out of smoke strong enough for people to climb (The Cheerleader).

 

Should smoke control be its own category? Naw. If I started splitting hairs like that you’d be reading this all week.

 

–Carries her voice on the wind to Captain Marvel (…Now You Don’t).

 

–Orders to wind to repair a demolished building brick-by-brick at superspeed (Isis 2)

 

–Commands the wind to lift two kids out of the sea (Isis 2).

 

–Calms a tornado (Isis 3).

 

–Calls on the wind to slow a falling cable car (Isis 4).

 

–When trapped in a plastic coffin by Serpenotep (ain’t that a name you only see in comics?), uses the air inside it to bust her way out (Isis 7).

 

Mental Powers

 

–Can detect the approximate location of whatever or whoever she’s looking for, though precise determination requires searching (Spots of the Leopard).

 

–Can show mental images to those that look into her amulet. This was useful in teaching a young boy how to move on from his dead dog (Lucky).

 

–Can project thoughts into the minds of others by flashing them her amulet (How to Find a Friend).

 

–Looks into the past to vet a kid’s story about losing his father’s gun (How to Find a Friend).

 

–Looks into the past to uncover cheating at a car rally (Girl Driver).

 

–Knows what’s happened to a stupid kid before being told due to esp (Scuba Duba).

 

–Finds two kids in a car after some scanning from the air (The Hitchhiker).

 

Illusions

 

–In The Lights of Mystery Mountain, Isis calls upon the sphinx to give a UFO huckster a taste of his own medicine and assault him with illusory foo fighters.

 

You know, on its own, the ability to create illusory ufos is pretty awesome. I’m surprised there’s not a superhero character that does it exclusively. I might have to do something about that…

 

The Sky Watcher! A psychokinetic who believes the visual manifestations of his powers are aliens charging him with the duty of saving the planet…

 

Chronokinesis

 

–Stops time to prevent a kid from shooting a rabbit with a stolen gun (How to Find a Friend).

 

–Rewinds time to repair broken bottles and to deflate a raft (The Cheerleader).

 

–Stops time to defuse an amusing but potentially deadly situation three of her students found themselves in with the guards of a government building. It’s a long story. Just go watch the episode. It’s worth it, trust me, the kids are fun and there’s even a cameo by Captain Marvel at the end (…Now You See It).

 

Cryokinesis

 

–Ices up a car to put out a fire in its engine (…Now You See It).

 

Telekinesis

 

–Commands a criminal’s car to rise into the air and then lower (Fool’s Dare).

 

–Telekinetically threw the tires in a junkyard at a car thief so they stacked on him like horseshoes around a peg (Spots of the Leopard).

 

God, I love that move. It’s such a classic. Isn’t trapping bad guys in tires just great? Superheroes need to do it more often.

 

–Tells the forward motion of a car plummeting over a cliff to stop, pausing it in midair. She then commands its motion to reverse which pushed it back up the cliff (The Hitchhiker).

 

–Stops a falling gargoyle (Isis 7)

 

Fulgurkinesis 

 

–Summons a bolt of lightning to fell a tree and cut off the path of a fleeing getaway car (The Sound of Silence.)

 

Isis fights an awful lot of fleeing getaway cars. They’re like her version of “two guys that shoot pistols at Superman’s chest.”

 

–Calls upon the storm gods to send a bolt of lightning to her hands. She then uses some of it to charge a car battery (The Hitchhiker).

 

–Makes electricity vanish (…Now You Don’t).

 

Geokinesis

 

–Tells a boulder to move off a trapped student’s ankle (Rockhound’s Roost).

 

–Tells a starting cave-in to stop (The Show Off).

 

–Tells the earth to move a fallen telephone pole (Girl Driver).

 

–Commands rocks to fly through the air and plug up a dam (Isis 3).

 

–Creates a sandpit to stop a tank (Isis 6).

 

–Breaks her pattern of using the winds to fly by using a column of sand to fy (Isis 6).

 

–Has trouble fighting a blob monster that eats everything ala’ The Blob but defeats it by moving the chunk of ground it was on into the sky. Eventually, without anything to eat, it dies (Isis 6).

 

This plot was very similar to an issue of Captain Marvel Adventures where Captain Marvel struggles to contain a superfire that can’t be put out. It can’t harm him, but it burns everything around him. Eventually, Cap digs up a forest and tosses it into space where it becomes an ever-burning star.

 

— Makes the ground grab the feet of two kids fighting (Isis 8).

 

Gravikinesis 

 

–Decreases gravity on a boulder allowing her to easily push it up hill (The Outsider).

 

–Increases gravity on a bunch of dragon-riding viking warriors (decades before How to Train Your Dragon) to bring them to the ground (TFF 1)..

 

–Doubles the force of gravity on a car to get it to stop (…Now You See It).

 

–After an evil ancient Egyptian wizard named Scarab (not the one from Mummies Alive) uses magic to pull apart an airplane in the middle of the air and expose 300 innocent people to the sky, Isis slows gravity so that everyone drifts gently to the ground (Isis 1). 

 

You know the D&D spell featherfall? Isis cast that on 300 people.

 

–Calls on gravity and snow to stop an avalanche (Isis 4).

 

Hydrokinesis 

 

–Commands the rushing waters of a dam to freeze in mid-air through the power of the editor hitting pause (Lucky).

 

–Creates mist (No Drums, No Trumpets).

 

–Moves the water in a fountain (Isis 2).

 

–Commands the waters of a lake to bring Cindy to her in a geyser (Isis 2).

 

–Halts a man’s fall with the water from a fire hydrant (Isis 3).

 

–Creates a whirlpool to trap a lake monster that turns out to be a tricked out submarine (Isis 4). 

 

How very The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1969)! You know, whenever you see a “the lake monster turns out to be a submarine” plot it goes back to The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes where Holmes discovers the Loch Ness monster is a submarine.

 

–Sucks all the moisture out of the ground and some trees which travels upward like reverse rain (Isis 5). So yeah, Isis can totally pull a Mera on opponents if she wanted and suck the water out of them.

 

Pyrokinesis

 

–Commands fire to vanish (Rockhound’s Roost).

 

–Puts out a gasoline fire (Girl Driver).

 

–Commands the flames of several bunsen burners to project upwards and set off a sprinkler system (Isis 2).

 

Isis could have easily summoned water from the air, but what’s heroism without style? She doesn’t need to rhyme all the time either but does it anyway.

 

–Puts out a flaming building (Isis 3).

 

Solarkinesis 

 

–Calls upon the sun to overheat a fleeing criminal’s car (The Lights of Mystery Mountain)

 

–Calls on the sun to surround a bear with a circle of fire (Rockhound’s Roost).

 

–Commands the sun to shine through the clouds onto an evil Greek witch’s castle. This bothered the witch as she was really into the whole dark and dreary thing millenia before emo (TFF 4).

 

–Commands the sun to dry up a blob monster (Isis 6).

 

Object Manipulation and Restoration

 

–A pathologically lazy kid (Dude forged his father’s signature to go on a camping trip he didn’t want to go on because he didn’t want to do chores) is surprised when he’s told to wash the camp’s dishes in a stream and thinks the best course of action is just to toss them all in the stream and claim they fell in. He didn’t think about his fellow campers wanting to strangle him because there’s no more plates because he doesn’t really think at all (Rockhound’s Roost).

 

I’d say it’s unrealistic for a kid to be this dumb, but I work with kids. Some of them really are this stupid.

 

Isis just tells the plates to jump back out of the water and tells him to clean them again and this time scrub.

 

–Commands a broken rope to repair itself (Bigfoot).

 

–Tells a car to stop (Funny Gal).

 

–Tells a broken rope to repair itself (Scuba Duba).

 

–Points at a car and makes it stop (The Class Clown).

 

–Tells a crane that lifted a car a Chinese girl hid inside of to stop in one of my favorite episodes (Year of the Dragon). 

 

This girl hid because she was ashamed of her friends following her home and seeing that her father wasn’t an import dealer like she said but instead the stereotypical owner of a Chinese restaurant. She was ashamed her father was a stereotype in her eyes. 

 

Well, she managed to subvert the stereotype of Chinese being smart. But she couldn’t be the stereotype that Asians and cars don’t mix.

 

But seriously, Year of the Dragon is one of the best Secrets of Isis episodes. If you want to glance through the series to see if you like it, that’s one I recommend looking at. People don’t really talk about the complexities of race these days like they did back in the seventies. Nowadays it’s all a power struggle without nuance or humanity.

 

–Restores a broken ladder and makes it fly through the air (Year of the Dragon).

 

–An amusing gag in the last episode of the show–after making fancy rhymes to work her magic for two seasons, Isis confronts an iron fence in her way. She prepares to say something grand as usual then goes “O iron fence…please let me through.” The fence vanishes. (…Now You Don’t).

 

–Overrides an evil sorcerer’s spell which caused lampposts to coil around bystanders like snakes (Isis 1).

 

–Commands a pyramid to fly with her so she could trap an evil sorcerer with it. It makes sense in context (Isis 1).

 

–Commands bullets to miss her and then chase after those that fired them, not to hit them (Isis is a classic superheroine) but to scare them (Isis 8).

 

Teleportation

 

–Teleported herself to appear in front of fleeing criminals like Jason Voorhees (Spots of the Leopard).

 

–Makes a car go the other way by teleporting it to face the other direction (Funny Gal).

 

–Makes a wild dog vanish with a snap of her fingers. Where it vanished to, who can say? Probably the shadow realm. She is ancient Egyptian (The Class Clown).

 

No worries for the people concerned for the dog though. Isis makes it reappear later in the same spot with another snap.

 

Animal Control

 

–Calms down an angry gorilla and gets it to help her push a boulder (The Show Off).

 

Phasing and Molecular Control

 

–Phased through the side of a building (The Cheerleader).

 

–Ordered the molecules of a speeding car to expand allowing it and its passengers to pass harmlessly through a bulldozer (The Hitchhiker).

 

–Invented a force field generator powerful enough to stop a fastball and ward off people called the circle guard (Science teacher remember? If you think that’s impressive, her boyfriend Frank created a weather control device during the last two episodes.) When a student stole the circle guard to offer to an underworld big figure to break into the game, he and his new friends get cornered by Isis. They urge him to turn on the circle guard to ward off Isis, but Isis talks him down from it. He then asks Isis if the circle guard would have done anything to her anyway and she tells him to turn it on and find out. He does, and Isis just walks through the forcefield. She didn’t tell the kid she could overpower the circle guard earlier because it was important that the kid made a moral decision (The Sound of Silence).

 

I told you this show was good.

 

Magic Control

 

–Orders an evil sorcerer’s magic blast to miss and not just hit trees, but harmlessly hit trees (Isis 1). Now that’s how you do a counterspell!

 

–Finds her control over a hailstorm blocked by Set (as in the god). Isis manages to power through the mystic block and calm the storm anyway (Isis 3). However, it’s worth noting that Set did prove stronger than Isis and created a rainstorm she could not control. This makes sense mythologically. Isis needed Horus to take care of Set after he killed Osiris. She couldn’t beat him on her own.

 

–Transforms a girl turned into a snake by an evil ancient egyptian wizard (the second in the comics) back into a girl (Isis 7).

 

–Shoots a blast of magic energy. Because why not? (Isis 7).

 

Clone Summoning

 

–As her final spell on the show, Isis creates clones of herself to surround and intimidate criminals into surrendering. Rick later states that she made eleven clones of herself (…Now You Don’t). She really showed up Captain Marvel who just…pulled a helicopter down to the ground.

 

–Creates clones of herself to help in a game of hide-and-seek with Super Samurai (TFF 3).

 

Nature Summoning and Control

 

–Commanded trees to appear out of nowhere to imprison two bad guys (The Sound of Silence).

 

–Ordered a branch to fall in front of an out-of-control horse (Seeing Eye Horse).

 

–Calls upon the god of meadows, trees, and grass (Pan?) to lift a student into the air and let a cart pass beneath her (The Class Clown). The god doesn’t put an appearance, likely because his appearance fee was much greater than Joanna Cameron’s, so it just looks like Isis telekinetically lifts the girl up into the air.

 

–Commands trees to grow so large and so strong that they’re not only able to support the weight of a pyramid but hide it from view (Isis 1).

 

Storm Summoning and Control

 

–Tells a storm at sea to dissipate (Funny Gal) which blew Captain Marvel’s feat of tugging a boat…out of the water.

 

–Calls a storm to put out a burning ranch (Seeing Eye Horse).

 

–Calls a storm to flood the Nile (they were back in ancient Egypt) to wash away an army of plant people (What? You didn’t know they had those in ancient Egypt?) (TFF 3)

 

Net Summoning

 

–Can summon a net to throw at bad guys (Spots of the Leopard).

 

…I mean what more do you want me to say? She made a tiny net. She threw a tiny net. The tiny net caught a bad guy. Don’t underestimate the net buddy. A tiny net is a death sentence. It’s a net. And it’s tiny.

 

Necromancy and Healing

 

–Summons the spirits of an old west ghost town to create a hoosegow around a bad guy (No Drums, No Trumpets). 

 

–Cannot raise the dead (Lucky). I’m willing to bet that Isis actually could given all the powers she has. She can pause and rewind time. That should allow her to cheat death. She probably doesn’t because cheating death would cause a lot of problems in the Egyptian pantheon. Isis would have to explain to her son Horus and husband Osiris why mommy is overstepping the rules. Family drama is never pretty, especially when it involves gods.

 

–Heals the throats of a crowd that drank poisoned punch to quiet them as they were robbed (Isis 3).

 

Tut

 

–Andrea’s loyal pet myna bird who she can telepathically speak to.

 

–Served as a spotter for tracking down bad guys (Spots of the Leopard).

 

–Is highly intelligent. From just whistles, Tut knew that an Andrea-mode Isis wanted him to ring the doorbell of a house to distract the goon watching her so she could transform (The Sound of Silence).

 

–Flies to Andrea-mode Isis and tells her about a fire (Seeing Eye Horse).

 

–Is told telepathically to find Captain Marvel (Funny Gal,…Now You See It).

 

Amusingly, Captain Marvel was able to understand Tut’s cawing. Does the wisdom of Solomon let you talk to animals? Demons, animals, when you really think about it there’s not that much of a difference.

 

4th-Wall Breaking

 

–Because the show is as wholesome as Silver Age Superman, Andrea sometimes acknowledges the audience like Silver Age Superman.

 

–Raises her eyebrow at the audience when Rick tells her “Face it, you aren’t Isis.” (Bigfoot).

 

–Winks to the audience at the end of the episode like Superman (The Outsider).

 

–Another Superman wink (No Drums, No Trumpets).

 

–Isis winks at a camera, and it’s even more appropriate because this was the end of her fist team-up with Captain Marvel (Funny Gal).

 

–Winks at the camera, just like Superman (The Cheerleader).

 

–Talks directly to the camera about what she’s going to do in this episode like it’s the opening of Richard III (…Now You See it).

 

–In the very last scene of the very last episode, Isis winks to the camera and tells the viewer that “…You just got to believe!” Classic Superman! And classic Parapa the rapper!

 

God I love this show.

 

The Winner

 

Isis takes this one pretty handily. I mean, you did read that giant list of powers, right? Fortunately, as characters retain their personalities for my fights and don’t default into psychopaths like in Death Battle, Lori doesn’t get blown to bits while Isis screams for her to BOW BEFORE THE GODDESS like how Death Battle writers think Wonder Woman behaves. Isis just breaks the comp, then tells it to fix itself after she realizes they just did the superheroes-meet-fight-then-apologize thing. 

 

Then they go to beat up the cynical scuzbags that wrote their modern incarnations.

 

It’s a case of “anything you can do I can do better.” Electra Woman can hover, but Isis can soar through the clouds. Electra Woman can speed up 10000 times, but Isis can stop time. Electra Woman can’t tell magic to stop, but Isis can tell technology to stop. Electra Woman can only use one power at a time, but Isis can use several spells at once. Electra Woman has to aim her comp at opponents, but Isis can just tell the elements to attack her opponent for her. Electra Woman can run out of power while Isis’ powers are the powers of nature itself. Isis runs out of power only when the air and rocks and time do.

 

The electra shield won’t be able to trap Isis, nor will it be able to protect Electra Woman. Isis showed the ability to walk through a force field and electra shield fails at around 50,000 volts. Now, knowing the volts of something without the amps tells us little, but we have to roll with what we know. And what we know is this–a bolt of lightning, a single bolt of lightning, has one billion volts. Now, it is true that Solais was holding back when it emitted 50,000 volts and that supercharged the electra shield was able to withstand it…but only for a moment. The shield was buckling. Even if you quadruple the electra shield’s strength, it still folds to a single lightning bolt.

 

Poor Electra Woman even gets outdone by Isis in the realm of electricity.

 

Electra Woman can counter a few things Isis can do. If Isis snaps her fingers and teleports her out of existence, Frank can open a wormhole to bring her back. If Isis uses sphinx illusions, Frank can counter with crime scope scans. If Isis uses gravity powers, Electra Woman just toggles Electra Degravitate/Gravitate on or off as needed. It’s possible that Frank could even start the comp back up if Isis tells it to turn off. But between the clones and time stop and teleportation spells, Isis just overpowers Electra Woman. It’s icing on the cake that Frank and crime scope are Electra Woman’s ace-the-hole, but Isis is likely to discover Frank feeding Electra Woman power through her divination and fly to Electra Base to take out Frank. 

 

“Oh comp upon her arm, turn off now and protect me from harm.”