Mummies

Mummies, edited by Steve Banes

December, 2017  IDW Publishing

This super-cool trade paperback collects several mummy-centric yarns from the pre-code horror comics of the early 1950s, and boy I had a lot of fun reading it. As a kid in the ‘80s I was a devoted comic reader, but even then I was interested in older stuff, so I knew about the horror comics of the ‘50s, particularly those by EC. As a Stephen King-obsessed teen in the early ‘90s I was really into EC, and I recall having several black-and-white hardcover collections of Tales From The Crypt and Vault Of Horror and the like. Now that I think of it, I wonder whatever happened to them… 

Well anyway, Mummies makes for perfect Halloween reading, collecting as it does several non-EC horror comics. While the stories here are certainly repetitive – basically, an ancient Egyptian mummy comes to life and kills a bunch of people – every single one of them is fun, probably an element that is sorely lacking in today’s comic books. 

I stopped reading comics decades ago, but I still have an appreciation for the old stuff, and there’s nothing better than pre-code horror. I’d forgotten how vicious these comics were, not to mention how darkly comic, which makes it even more humorous when you realize they were essentially produced for the kids of the day. Well, it goes without saying that things have become a lot more watered down in the world of kid’s entertainment in the ensuing decades; then again, I read a lof of pre-code horror comics when I was a kid, and even then I was able to appreciate the goofy, over-the-top vibe without finding any of it scary, so those ‘50s comics creators knew what they were doing. 

I was never a horror kid, but I did have an early obsession with the Universal Monsters Mummy. Looking back on it, I’m certain this obsession started with the cover of an LP my brother, who is seven years older than me, bought sometime in the late ‘70s. A record titled Famous Monsters Speak, which was a spoken-word affair, with a Dracula story on one side and a Frankenstein Monster story on the other side. Despite the cover showing the Mummy, the Wolf Man, and even the Creature From The Black Lagoon (another childhood favorite), none of these three characters were actually featured on the record! Well, all that aside, the illustration of the Mummy really appealed to me: 

I also recall that shortly after this, probably in the very early ‘80s, when I was six or seven years old, I got a Mummy costume for Halloween. One of those oldschool deals with the plastic mask. I just searched for it on Google and found it – apparently it was a Ben Cooper costume from 1979:

I was also so into mummies that I wrote a story about one when I was seven years old.* But it was not until years later that I actually saw all of the Universal Mummy movies, snatching up the DVD box set when it was released. I have fond memories of being unemployed during the summer of 2011 and watching the Mummy movies (and the other Universal horror movies) while drinking my way through several bottles of wine I grabbed off the clearance shelf at Tom Thumb…ah, good times. 

I don’t recall seeing too many mummy pre-code horror comics; I’m sure EC had some that I read back in the day, but if so I don’t remember them. I can see why the concept might not have been used very much, as mummies don’t really lend themselves to much return on investment so far as horror fun goes; just try watching the Lon Chaney Jr. Mummy movies in one sitting. Indeed, you’ll quickly see why clearance-rack wine is necessary. The movies are incredibly one-note and repetitive…nonetheless they are still fun, and I’d rather watch them than any modern-day horror movie. 

This trade paperback was edited by Steve Banes, aka Mr. Karswell, who for many years has run the indispensible The Horrors Of It All blog, where he uploads high-quality scans of stories from his pre-code horror comic collection. This blog is one of the best on the entire internet, and I try to read a comic a day on there – and the blog has been running for so long that there is an incredible wealth of material on there. In fact, many of the stories in Mummies can be found on The Horrors Of It All. 

But still, it is a different experience entirely to see the comics phyiscally, ie not on a computer or device screen, and Banes and IDW have done a phenomenal job reproducing these old comics. For one I am happy to say that they have not felt the need to tidy things up or re-color the comics. Personally I hate it when old comics are re-colored; like for example that Amazing Spider-Man Ultimate Newspaper Comic Collection book I reviewed on here a few months back: great, fun stories, with wonderful art, but the colors had been redone to make it all look more polite and “correct.” 

Personally, I’m a huge fan of the oldschool, blurred-out, “messy” look of vintage four color comics, something I was unable to appreciate all those years ago in the black-and-white EC Comic hardcovers I collected. Sure, the art itself looked great, but missing out on the color really took something away…and, as a simple flipping through Mummies will indicate, the colors certainly popped in pre-code comics. In fact there is an almost proto-psychedelic vibe to these comics in how the colors are so overdone and deranged; in many ways these comics are also harbingers of the drive-in horror fare of the following decade, the cheap monster flicks of the 1960s with their lurid and overdone Technicolor prints. 

And that’s another thing: these comics, despite being from the ‘50s and being made for kids, actually play like the more sensationalistic monster movies of the ‘60s. The only thing missing is the nudity. The violence certainly isn’t missing: in the stories here you will see countless murders, and atrocities like people eaten alive by ants or put inside of iron maidens. And there is in fact a T&A quotient, with each story featuring a young female with ample charms who is often put in a compromising position that results in her clothing being a little torn…yes, the comic producers of yore certainly knew what kind of material their young male (and older male!) readers wanted to see. 

I was interested in the uniformity of design the various artists followed for their depictions of the mummies. Instead of the Boris Karloff or Lon Chaney Jr. approach, which was the mummy wrapping overtop the entire face, the pre-code horror comic illustrators went for a look more aligned with the Ben Cooper costume I showed above, with a demonic skull-like face. They’re more “Pushead” than “Karloff:”

I mean just take a look: 

Only a few mummies in the stories collected here deviate from this look. The mummies themselves are all of a piece, though; unliving pharaohs who are either awoken by wily professors or come back to life due to a curse that was placed eons ago. It’s also humorous that all of the archeologists are either superstitious, stubborn, vengeful, or all three at once. 

The stories are busily plotted despite being so short; some pages are overstuffed with dialog and captions, to the extent that the actual art is often lost in the shuffle. But to be honest this is part of the charm; I much prefer the cluttered storytelling of old comics to the streamlined, “cinematic” art of today’s lame comics. 

Overall I had a lot of fun reading Mummies, and even though I wasn’t even born yet in the ‘50s, it still made me nostalgic, mainly because I did read ‘50s horror comics as a kid in the ‘80s. It made for perfect Halloween reading. Here are some random photos from the book:  

*As mentioned above, I was so inspired by my Halloween mummy costume that I wrote a story about it. I was seven at the time, if not younger, and it was a “drawings with text on construction paper” type of story. Well anyway, all I recall is that the story, humorously, followed the exact same template as many of the stories in Mummies, proving that even a little kid realizes there’s little variety in a mummy-centric horror story: basically, a pharaoh dies, becomes a mummy, and centuries later the mummy comes to life and wreaks havoc. 

I wrote a lot of stories as a kid, but here is why this particular one has always stuck with me. After writing it, I proudly showed the story to my mom, and I recall her standing there and reading it as I waited expectantly for her approval. I recall her face became troubled as she read a certain line, and then she showed me the story and asked, “What does this sentence say?” 

It was at the beginning of the story, the part set in the ancient past, where the pharaoh had just died and was about to be mummified. “Oh,” I said, “that sentence says, ‘The servants wrapped the pharaoh’s body.’” 

The troubled look abruptly left my mom’s face. “Okay,” she said, “but you spell ‘wrapped’ with a ‘w’ and with two ‘p’s.” 

It wasn’t until many years later that I realized the sentence I had actually written: “The servants raped the pharaoh’s body.” No wonder my mom looked so concerned. 

What made me remember this was that look that briefly passed over my mom’s face as she read my story – I got a first-hand, real-time glimpse of the power of storytelling, and how it can elicit both positive and negative reactions. 

Of course the irony is, if I were to write a mummy horror story today, I probably would write, “The servants raped the pharaoh’s body.”