Panya: The Mummy's Curse

The World of Hellboy: Standalone Books

by Mike Mignola, Chris Roberson, Christopher Mitten (Illustrator)

Thousands of years before Hellboy, the B.P.R.D., and Ragna Rok, there was Panya.

As a girl in ancient Egypt, she witnessed the fall of a dynasty and was gifted—or cursed—with abilities. As she ages, Panya aids those she passes as she journeys to seek out a mysterious light…

Mike Mignola and Chris Roberson join creative forces with artist Christopher Mitten and colorist Michelle Madsen to bring Panya’s story to life.

Collects The Mummy's Curse #1–#4 and bonus material.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fantasy, Horror, Graphic Novels Comics, Historical Fiction, Adventure

112 pages, Hardcover

Published April 2, 2024

About the author

Mike Mignola was born September 16, 1960 in Berkeley, California and grew up in nearby Oakland. His fascination with ghosts and monsters began at an early age (he doesn't remember why) and reading Dracula at age 13 introduced him to Victorian literature and folklore from which he has never recovered.

In 1982, hoping to find a way to draw monsters for a living, he moved to New York City and began working for Marvel Comics, first as a (very terrible) inker and then as an artist on comics like Rocket Raccoon, Alpha Flight and The Hulk. By the late 80s he had begun to develop his signature style (thin lines, clunky shapes and lots of black) and moved onto higher profile commercial projects like Cosmic Odyssey (1988) and Gotham by Gaslight (1989) for DC Comics, and the not-so-commercial Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser (1990) for Marvel. In 1992, he drew the comic book adaptation of the film Bram Stoker's Dracula for Topps Comics.

In 1993, Mike moved to Dark Horse comics and created Hellboy, a half-demon occult detective who may or may not be the Beast of the Apocalypse. While the first story line (Seed of Destruction, 1994) was co-written by John Byrne, Mike has continued writing the series himself. There are, at this moment, 13 Hellboy graphic novel collections (with more on the way), several spin-off titles (B.P.R.D., Lobster Johnson, Abe Sapien and Witchfinder), three anthologies of prose stories, several novels, two animated films and two live-action films staring Ron Perlman. Hellboy has earned numerous comic industry awards and is published in a great many countries.

Mike also created the award-winning comic book The Amazing Screw-on Head and has co-written two novels (Baltimore, or, the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire and Joe Golem and the Drowning City) with best-selling author Christopher Golden.

Mike worked (very briefly) with Francis Ford Coppola on his film Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), was a production designer on the Disney film Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) and was visual consultant to director Guillermo del Toro on Blade II (2002), Hellboy (2004) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008). He lives somewhere in Southern California with his wife, daughter, a lot of books and a cat.

Reviews

[Alexander Peterhans · Rating 2 out of 5]

This should've been great - the character of Panya is interesting, the setting is even more interesting. But Chris Roberson manages to make it dull and pedestrian, sucking the life out of the characters. Again, I might add. It starts out promising, and then starts to drag and drag.

One for the Hellboy/B.P.R.D. completionists only, and maybe not even them.

(Thanks to Dark Horse Books for providing me with a review copy through Edelweiss)

[Václav · Rating 2 out of 5]

(3,3 of 5 for a good-ish story in an ugly wrapper)
Panya is a mysterious character in the BPRD series, so I was looking forward to seeing her origin, set in ancient Egypt. Well, the story is quite good, I enjoyed the setting, even if the end feels a little bit rushed (which is in contrast with quite a slow start). But the art, as with many of these new side stories, is underperforming. The scenes are quite good, but the art style is... (well, how to say ugly without saying ugly...?) far from captivating. I'm really happy for anything which adds to the Hellboy universe, but these side stories are mostly disappointing one way or another.

[Dan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is, by far, the worst Hellboy-related book I have read to date, which is saying a lot, ever since Mike Mignola basically began farming the franchise out to supremely untalented writers.

Mignola stated, in the documentary DRAWING MONSTERS, that he is done with Hellboy, but can't bring himself to stop publishing new stories, since so many people depend on him and his characters for their living.

Please stop, if that is what we are going to get.

I'm a Hellboy fanatic, so i would have bought this regardless, but shame on Dark Horse for putting Mignola's name on the cover, which leads you to believe that he at least helped with the plot. He is not listed anywhere in the credits of the book, so all you get is four issues of Chris Roberson's bland dialogue and a hundred plus pages of Panya disconnectedly wandering around the desert. Anyone not familiar with her story from the B.P.R.D. book will be totally lost.

This is just a waste of time and money, and another tarnishment on the legacy of Mignola's Hellboy universe.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Scraping the bottom of the sarcophagus.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

The art was amazing, but the story was so confusing and disjointed. A girl's father blew up, then she was working in another temple...that one was destroyed too. Right before the temple was destroyed, she had a dream in which she needed to tell people... something. It is not clear what she is supposed to tell them. Then she dies and wakes up as a mummy. ??

Maybe this would have been good if it was explained better. One extra star because there were lots of cute cat drawings.

[Josiah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful book

This book was just captivating, cover to cover. If you're a Hellboy fan, an Egyptian mythology fan, or just love beautiful art and an incredible story--open this one up.

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

The art is very good and I like that the story is anchored in the historical reality of Atenism. But the story itself is a bit aimless.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice art. Boring story.

[Joseph R. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Among the many oddball agents at the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, Panya stands out as someone who didn't do field work much, if at all. She was brought in to the B.P.R.D. after the Heliopic Brotherhood of Ra found her mummified corpse and brought it back to life in the 1800s. This story jumps back to her youth and her first experiences with the paranormal in 1339 B.C. She's a child during the reign of Akhenaten, the one Pharoah who abolished the panoply of gods to worship one true God. In this book, he's more setting himself up as God's conduit, which does not work out so well. Panya's dad is one of the Pharoah's priests, so their family has to tow the line. Panya is more interested in the fun mythology of the previous theology and has some mystical visions, including a conflict between primordial cats, representing light, and snakes, representing darkness. Panya is called to seek the light and to find the truth behind the myths. She journeys in search of something she can't quite find though she has some fantastic adventures.

While I found the set-up for this story interesting, it didn't pay off in a satisfactory way. She never gets a semblance of truth or of getting closer to the secrets of the world. The narrative makes some odd jumps which had me trying to see if two pages were stuck together and I had missed something. The pages weren't stuck together but I still felt the lack. This reads like it needs some more narrative to let it reach a successful, or at least satisfying, conclusion.

Barely recommended--more for Hellboy completists or fans of the character.

[Eduardo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I desperately wanted to like this one, but I just didn’t.

Alright, Panya is a character in BPRD, a mummy who was awakened in the Victorian Era that survives up until modern day, and helps out the BPRD with information for a bit, before doing nothing and then getting killed shortly before the finale. A lot of fans (including myself, if you couldn’t tell) felt like she could have done more in the story. So it was interesting to see that we’d be getting a prequel about her youth in ancient Egypt.

Which… turns out to be kind of a nothing burger? There are a lot of interesting visions, and the comic does a really cool thing of tying Egyptian mythology into the cosmic conflict of the Hellboy universe. Apep is clearly seen as a manifestation of the chaotic power of the Ogdru Jahad/Dragon of Revelation. There are little winks to bigger things, too, like a carving of Ereshigal, and two Mesopotamian warriors who are implied to be followers of the Right Hand Path.

At the same time… nothing actually happens. Panya sees interesting visions, and there are bits and pieces of cryptic dialogue that are interesting, but any real adventures, like fighting monsters, are mostly off-page. It’s a whole lot of, “Yeah, cool stuff happens, but we’ll show you that some other time. Maybe. Now have some Mysterious Dialogue.” My guy, this continuity has been going for over twenty-five years–either show us the cool stuff, or stop making ten billion spin-off comics.

Disappointing. Hellboy universe in ancient Egypt should absolutely be a much more exciting story than this.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

A pretty haphazard Mignola-verse prequel, "The Mummy's Curse" takes us back to the origins of living mummy Panya.

The book opens intriguingly enough, with a portrait of courtly life in ancient Egypt during the reign of the heretic pharaoh, Akhenaten. There's an attempt to wield primeval powers, something goes wrong, and things get choppy from there.

We follow Panya as she grows, becoming a conduit for dark and light forces, with each seemingly manipulating her toward their ends. She also runs in with a couple monster-fighting People of the Right Hand and is drawn to a ruined city of Hyperborea. But these encounters are scattershot; it seems more like an attempt to "run through the B.P.R.D. hits" than tell us a coherent story.

The art by Christopher Mitten is strong throughout; it does a lot to make the story engaging. But Chris Roberson's plotting doesn't have a satisfying arc--I actually spent a good portion of the final issue wondering if I'd missed anything. I would say this is skippable even for completists.

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pointless at best, contradictory to previous revelations about Panya at worst. This paints her as a purely righteous battler of evil who just kind of fell over one day and then became a mummy. The entire BPRD run, Panya was always a mercurial figure, impossible to read and seemingly always one step ahead of everyone else. She was portrayed as borderline mischievous, only to just kind of kneecap her storyline in the end and ultimately have her serve zero purpose whatsoever. I assumed a story devoted solely to her would mitigate some of the wonkiness of her character, but instead this just feels like a meandering slog that only muddies her already muddy character. The end of BPRD is such a disappointment, and this is a reminder of the reasons why.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Panya was a reanimated mummy who sat around the BPRD during the Hell on Earth era and did nothing much. She seemed friendly but ultimately a failed character who had no purpose — I expected a big reveal about her agenda and never got one.
The first three issues telling her backstory as a seeker after truth in Egypt, unwittingly swept up in the mythos' struggling between light and dark, are interesting. The ending with her in the BPRD leaves me frustrated: it doesn't explain her or resolve anything and brings back my old feeling she had some agenda they never got around to explaining.
Pretty art though.

[Kyle Dinges · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was borderline incoherent at times and wholly failed to give Panya's background the treatment it probably deserves. Most of the Hellboy Universe books lately have at least managed to be interesting from one angle or another but this reads like Roberson got off the phone with Mignola for a planning session and spent 30 minutes fleshing out a 4-issue script before calling it quits. The art is pretty nice and perfectly serviceable for Hellboy fare otherwise this would have gotten a 1 star.

[Luke Shea · Rating 3 out of 5]

I often find sprawling bottomless comic book continuity to be overwhelming and difficult to emotionally engage with, but I simply cannot get enough of minor Hellboy characters finding their own niches. Lots of fun ways of tying ancient Egyptian religion into the broader Hellboy mythos. Good clean fun.

[Craig · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is, unfortunately, really dull and lackluster. I thought for a while that this was actually going somewhere and it was interesting. But nothing ever really happens. It looks like Panya is destined for great things, then she dies and is mummified. And then she returns. The art is good. The story is not.

[Chad · Rating 2 out of 5]

Panya's history centuries ago in Egypt. It's all very lackluster. I think Mignola needs someone else to partner up with besides Chris Roberson. He's been phoning these Hellboy related stories in for years now.

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pleasant Reading

This is a quiet, gentle comic in tone. The art is lovely and the story brings a small smile to my face.

But there is nothing great or challenging or revelatory here as there is in the very best comics.

[Ember Moto · Rating 2 out of 5]

The cover and title of this book lead me to believe that this was going to focus more on egyptian mythology then it did. Also didn't realize until I finished the book that this was in the Hellboy universe, I thought it was a sand alone book independent of any other series.

[M.i. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Panya is a gorgeously illustrated book. I, of course didn’t realize it was an origin story until much later in the book. A pleasant surprise, revealing the origins of one of the more enigmatic characters in BPRD lore.

[Andres Pasten · Rating 2 out of 5]

Relleno de poco volumen

[Claude Goeminne · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a Wikipedia version of a story written by ChatGPT

[Calvin Daniels · Rating 2 out of 5]

Satisfying art :)

The story was not at all satisfying :(

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really interesting premise and mythology, but the ending doesn't live up to it. Panya has a great destiny, but nothing comes from it, and instead, it just fizzles out ☹️

[Sesana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fantastic art, of course. I liked the first issue, that puts Panya right in the middle of the Aten religion. But after that, it kind of meanders and ultimately feels a little pointless.

[Nick Cochran · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was enjoyable but nothing special.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Origin story done right.