Episode 17: Mummy Sightings at San Diego Comic Con 2018

Ii-wey! It has been a hectic week between getting ready for and attending San Diego Comic Con Wednesday evening, July 18 through Sunday, July 22, 2018. While at the biggest popular arts convention in Southern California, I made a point of looking for instances of mummies. I found a few. 

The most exciting find was at the CovenTree Olde World Market (check out their Facebook page here) booth Sunday afternoon. The vendor had colorful Egyptian gods and goddesses’ statues approximately 5 inches in height. I was surprised by the generous selection that included Nut, Osiris, and gods I did not recognize. There was a scarab beetle and a mummy, but honestly, it looked silly in comparison to all the others. Regrettably, they were out of Bastet and Anubis, which are popular. So, after much deliberation, I settled on Osiris since he is associated with the afterlife. If I had the space, I would have bought a few of the others, but another time. In addition to ancient Egyptian gods/goddesses, the vendor also had ancient Greek and Roman gods/goddesses’ statues too. I wish the Facebook page featured more photos since their website doesn’t show any of the ancient series. 

The publisher, Humanoids, has a kid’s line of books, HumanoidsKids, in which I found O.G. Boiscommun and D-P Filippi’s Halloween Tales (2017). The back cover describes the collection of three stories as recounting “three young characters’ enchanting stories that span the dusk of childhood to the dawn of adolescence, as they explore the dark and light in us all.” I was drawn to the book because of the cover: a tall slender was amongst the group of children dressed in Halloween costumes. The art was gorgeous and oscillated between dreamy muted earthy colors in the initial story featuring a ghost, soft black/white tones accompany a vampire tale and in the third, more vibrant colors spotlight a beastly tale. While the stories were engrossing and provided an “old world” European feel about them, sadly, other than appearing as a tertiary character, the mummy was absent. 

The Famous Monsters of Filmland booth had a few older magazine issues for sale featuring mummy covers, specifically Boris Karloff. And, collections of Eerie bound into hardcover books were also found at one of the half-off comic book vendors that I have visited before at other conventions. The focus isn’t on a big budget mummy film this year, so it’s not all that surprising that not much was found. Perhaps next year.

Senebti! 

Photo by author, at the CovenTree Olde World Market booth, SDCC 2018.