Faith Erin Hicks is well-known for, among other things, her work on best-selling YA graphic novels. So you wouldn’t immediately think of her as the right fit for Universal Monsters: The Mummy, the latest miniseries in Skybound’s line of comics reimagining the classic monster movies. Spoiler: Hicks is the perfect fit for this property, brilliantly rebuilding the story as a YA coming-of-age/horror book that parallels our main character’s journey with that of the Mummy.
In the series, we meet Helen Grosvenor: half British, half Egyptian, and feeling like she belongs in neither world. And without getting too far into actual spoilers for the book, by the end of the first issue the 16-year-old begins to understand that she’s split in ways far more complicated than her nationality.
Similarly, The Mummy is also a man out of time. Maybe not in the Captain America mold — we only get hints of the monster in the first issue — but definitely a monster of old, returned in the “modern” day. How this will impact Helen is TBD, but it helps emphasize the conflict Helen is going through in her internal monologue.
There are all the YA tropes present here, too… A cute boy, first love, feeling like you’re an outsider even when you seemingly have everything. It’s a coming of age story that just happens to have a resurrected monster at the center. But is that really any different than any supernatural YA story? Helen has powers she can’t imagine that will help usher her through the cusp of growing up. There’s a dark, mysterious, powerful — and maybe evil — stranger. It’s all right there, and it plays to Hicks’s strengths while feeling fresh and very different than her previous works.
Hicks’s art also is on another level in this book, thanks at least in part to the excellent, sand-swept colors by Lee Loughridge. The whole book feels like an old document found buried in the dunes, a classic tale you’re discovering anew. And isn’t that the point of these books? To look at the tales that have been told time and again, with fresh eyes?
Universal Monsters: The Mummy #1 hits stores on March 26, 2025 from Skybound.
Universal Monsters: The Mummy #1 Rating:
Universal Monsters: The Mummy #1 Official Synopsis:
Helen Grosvenor is a woman born to two worlds and belonging in neither, forever haunted by a cursed encounter as a child. When unknown voices bring her back to an Egyptian dig site from her past, Helen will unknowingly play an unexpected role in the rise of a monster known only as…THE MUMMY!
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