The Mummy #1 Manages to Make the Dullest Monster Great (Review)

This might sound harsh, but The Mummy is, without question, the weakest overall franchise when we’re talking about the classic Universal Monsters. It’s not even until 1999’s reboot starring Brendan Fraser that a Universal Mummy movie was even really all that interesting, and that one was clearly lightning in a bottle. But when accounting for 1940s sequels like The Mummy’s Tomb, The Mummy’s Ghost, The Mummy’s Curse, and so on, it’s a franchise that delivers basically the same thing that we got in 1932 almost every time, with little invention and few new ideas. That’s what makes the new Skybound Mummy series so interesting, it lands with not only a reverence for the material, but a distinct take on the franchise that feels modern and, like the monster himself, timeless.

Faith Erin Hicks writes and draws this new The Mummy series, the latest in Skybound & Image’s Universal Monsters comics, and from the first sentence on the first page she makes it clear that this is a unique story. Mummy stories have long been a lens through which ill-conceived ideas of foreign lands and cultures can be used as a prop for magical subplots, and one where “curious” white intellectuals were never seen as anything but the good guys. This Mummy story plants a flag at the start that the people from the land that is being exploited are the ones who take center stage here, and the ancient culture at the center of it all is very much a living thing, too.

Hicks makes this work by making the visuals of the setting feel lived in and old, like the sand itself is going to brush off the page as you turn it. Though some readers might imagine grittier art given the genre at play, Hicks takes what works about her specific style and uses it to play into the personal and romantic elements of The Mummy. When required though, the imagery harkens to the gothic framing of that classic movie. Color artist Lee Loughridge should also feel a sense of pride with the layers that his work provides within the art of The Mummy, bringing a sense of depth in some key sequences, temperature in others, and even frightening shadows.

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Skybound’s The Mummy, like some of the other Universal Monsters comics, delivers a surprising tale, revealing that it actually takes place during the events of the original feature film and colors in the lines with some more detail. We’re introduced to a young version of Helen, the character played by Zita Johann in the original movie. Born to an Egyptian mother and a British father, whose dad is a wealthy man with ties to the British museum’s archeological dig seen in the first movie, Helen wrestles with her place in the world. Not only does this weigh on her due to her parentage arriving from two very different places on the social ladder, but also in trying to find her own identity through it all. This is one of the only areas where the weight of the plot starts to show, when the cast expands too much beyond Helen herself.

Hicks threads these elements of Helen’s personality throughout the comic, showing her talking with friends and trying to be rebellious despite her father’s strict feelings. These quieter moments paint a complete picture of Helen that the original movie couldn’t quite accomplish, and by doing so not only offer a deeper vision of her as a character but her place in the larger story. As fans may know, Helen gets tied into the revived Imhotep’s life in the movie, with the Mummy believing that she is the reincarnated version of his love from Ancient Egypt, Princess Anck-es-en-Amon. By the end of The Mummy #1, Hicks has added layers to this plot thread that could never have been done in the original movie, but which also feel succinctly fitted to the comic book form.

As a longtime Universal Monsters fan, I was even more curious for how a Mummy comic would go than any other series that Skybound has announced. Though the first film is an admirable effort, it doesn’t reach the heights of the others in the canon and its sequels largely fail to match even that. But what Faith Erin Hicks’ comic series has already proven is that not only is there material to mine in even the most sluggish of films, but that the right creator can bring a depth to these stories that not even the movies really had.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Published by Image Comics

On March 26, 2025

Written by Faith Erin Hicks

Art by Faith Erin Hicks

Colors by Lee Loughridge

Letters by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou