This is an IHeart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is The Monster Fact, a short formform series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on

mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.

My kid and I have been really enjoying the second season of the excellent animated series

X-Men 97, especially its time-traveling two-partter set partially in ancient Egypt. Even if you're

only casually acquainted with the X-Men storylines, you can probably guess that most of the action

here centers around the origins of the first mutant in Sabanur, who of course becomes the near

unstoppable and seemingly immortal supervillain apocalypse. But of course, becomes the near-unstoppable and seemingly immortal supervillain apocalypse.

But of course, Marvel Comics doesn't just have one character with ties to ancient Egypt.

It has loads of them.

From some of the mummy-related characters that I've discussed here on the show before,

to the far-future time traveler who ventured back to ancient Egypt to become

the Pharaoh-Rama Tutt. This is all to be expected, of course, given the just pervasive power

of Egyptomania. The culture of ancient Egypt has fascinated pretty much every culture to come

into contact with it, resulting in all manner of

cultural transformations. And that ultimately includes comic books. Now, you will find the occasional

comic book about ancient Egypt that's either steeped in actual history, such as 1177 BCE, a graphic

history of the year civilization collapse by Glenys Fox and Eric H. Klein, or mythology-focused approaches such as myths, mummies, and magic in ancient Egypt by Stephen Davies and Nurea Tamer. Look both of those up. They look really interesting. But the Marvel universe, of course, is generally going to play a bit looser with the reality here

and is going to be more about the superhero, supervillain entertainment.

Which brings us to a nice and, in my opinion, ridiculous example, and that is Sphinx, an extremely

...