Review — ‘Panya: The Mummy’s Curse’ #1 Spins A Timeless Tale

Welcome to the table,

From her first introduction, Panya the psychic, lore-mastering, seemingly eternal mummy has been one of my favorite characters from The World of Hellboy. In a landscape where werejaguars and fearsome fighting fish-men fight alongside ghosts of Nazi-smashing pulp heroes with shellfish iconography and nearly unstoppable pyrokinetic, Panya is, by all appearances anyways, one of the least bombastic of the agents of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. That unassuming ever-watching nature and kindness for animals make her easily one of the most mysterious and interesting.

All of that and of course, her love for cats.

Panya: The Mummy’s Curse #1 is based on characters created by Mike Mignola, written by Chris Roberson with artist Christopher Mitten, colorist Michelle Madsen, and letterer by Clem Robins bring Panya’s origin story to life.

The tale starts thousands of years before the Hellboy is summoned to Earth, the B.P.R.D. is formed, and Ragna Rok occurs. Long before these monumental events we have seen play out across the pages of Dark Horse Comic’s Hellboy Universe, there, in Akhetaten at The City of the Horizon of Aten in 1339 B.C.E., there was Panya.

The story picks up with a young, very much alive Panya learning the story of forgotten gods clashing in the cosmic landscape. In the same way that most stories set in the Hellboy universe go, these visions of cosmic forces battling feel like they are foreshadowing things to come in the mortal world.

While the general belief structure of The City of the Horizon of Aten, including Panya’s mother, seems to bow to a living god-king known as The Great Akhenaten, Panya is told stories of the old gods by a handmaiden named Nofret, who has seemingly not lost her faith in the forces more ancient than time itself.

It is Nofret who gifts Panya with a small black kitten who is named Olabisis, Nofret who lost her child to The Great Akhenaten’s tyrannical building projects that cost so many who were not born into nobility their lives, including young children. It’s also Nofret who, in a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, saves Panya and perhaps allows her to become the entity we know her as today.

Everything about this book from the interior cover art to the folktales of old to the events unfolding across each page echoes with rich worldbuilding and a deeper secret lore that feels as timeless as the sands of the desert that were ancient before the first cities of man were even conceived of.

This is a story about time and timelessness and I for one can’t wait for the next issue to arrive.

Until next time, cats will come to you when you need them most.