Panya: The Mummy's Curse based on characters by Mike Mignola, story by Chris Roberson, art by Christopher Mitten, and colors by Michelle Madsen
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.
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