'Shazam!' Features an Easter Egg Shared With 'Constantine'

If you blink or sneeze, you'll miss it...but a piece of DC lore appeared in Shazam! that also popped up in the recent Constantine live-action series, confirming that, as far as DC is concerned, this is a particularly powerful magical artifact. The item, known as the Ibistick, shows up briefly in the Rock of Eternity. It is essentially a magic wand or staff wielded by Ibis. It glows in the presence of evil, and is more or less unstoppable when wielded for good. Ibis is a magical being who inhabits the bodies of ordinary people in the DC Universe. Less like Deadman (who possesses people for short periods of time and without their consent), Ibis is a bit more like The Spectre, with a longer-term host who knows what they are getting into.

This is not the first live-action appearance of the Ibistick; you can see it in the Constantine pilot, and in fact was one of the first Easter eggs fans noticed, since it was present behind the Helmet of Fate in a key scene revealed in the first Constantine trailer. In a twist of fate, Constantine may have ended after just one season, but its star (Matt Ryan) has gone on to reprise the role of John Constantine in other projects, including DC's Legends of Tomorrow. The series, which airs a new episode tonight, features a character (Zari, played by Tala Ashe) inspired by Isis, who shared TV time with Shazam/Captain Marvel in the '70s. Her show even crossed over with Shazam a few times during its run. Unlike Shazam, The Secrets of Isis is not available on the DC Universe app, and a Complete Series DVD (they do exist, and were official releases) will cost you upwards of $100 in most cases. The first season is available for $12.99 on Amazon Prime, but the second season is not available there at all.

While Isis was not an original Fawcett or DC character, but rather created by Filmation for the TV series, she would go on to appear in the comics later. The totem that she wears around her neck (from which she gets her powers via a Shazam-style transformation) closely resembles the one that Ashe wore on Legends last season. Now, the stone that "powered" the amulet has been mounted on a bracelet for ease of use. In Legends, they do not use the name "Isis" due to its modern associations with the terrorist group of the same name.

Like Black Adam, Ibis began his life in Ancient Egypt, where he was Amentep, a price who was in love with Princess Taia of Thebes. As a young man, Amentep had been given the Ibistick by the Egyptian god Thoth, who provides its powers. Amentep's throne was eventually usurped by the evil Black Pharaoh, who shot Taia with a poisoned arrow. Using the Ibistick, Amentep placed his beloved in suspended animation to allow her to heal, then did the same to himself, returning to life in an American museum in 1940 at the behest of the wizard Shazam. He took the name Ibis and went looking for Taia, finding her mummified body at a museum and reviving her so that they could have a life together in the future. Ibis used his vast powers to become a crimefighter, operating primarily in Fawcett City and working with the Marvel Family on Earth-S in the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths DC Universe.

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