Yoe - Mummies!

I've always enjoyed a good mummy movie. The Mummy from Universal is likely my favorite of the classic original cycle. Dracula is limited and stiff given its stage origins despite the compelling performance of Lugosi, and as good as James Whale's Frankenstein is, it falls short with a somewhat clumsy ending despite the wonder of Boris Karloff. 

But The Mummy which also stars Boris Karloff is a solid flick right the way through that pays off all the elements it has taken some pains to set up. Karloff gets to talk in this one and his somber tones, his finest acting feature, are key to making this movie absolutely atmospheric. Zita Johann as the love interest of both the titular Mummy and the stock-hero David Manners is exotic, lovely and compelling. I know how the movie ends, but still you can see part of her wants to go with Imhotep before she is disgusted by his unnatural state. The first ten minutes of the movie, the part which actually features a wrapped mummy corpse is arguably among the finest in all of horror history. It's only equaled in the Universal movies by reveal of the Creature in the first Frankenstein. It's actually scary. 

But the Yoe Books collection Mummies is not about the classic Karloff flick, but about the whole history of mummies in pop culture and beyond. Steve Thompson (BookSteve) delivers a detail-rich essay to front this volume which then proceeds to deliver a gauntlet of Pre-Code mummy horror tales from an array of fright comics. To be honest most of the stories look pretty much alike about mummies, gods, sphinxes, and such with competent but sometimes indifferent art from pros such as Mike Sekowsky and Don Perlin. Aside from a story by John Belfi for Charlton's The Thing and a story or two from Bob Powell which plays a bit with perspective, the stories are designed to tell a tell as efficiently as possible. One artist who is well represented is a guy named Sy Grudko, who I have never heard of before. There are stories from Ace, ACG, Star, Quality comics along with a few more. Titles like Web of Mystery, Web of Evil, Forbidden Tales, and Chamber of Chills are the sources for these yarns of moth-eaten Egyptian corpses up and causing trouble. But they are a fun diversion on a calm afternoon, which is when I read them. 

There's a nifty little cover gallery as well with the Jack Katz offering above being the best of the lot and my personal favorite image in the entire volume. There's an energy of impending menace which is sadly missing from much of the other more sedate images in the tome. Despite a somewhat dizzy collection of tales, I find this volume still entertaining. 

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