My Rating
“A Choice Of Lions!”
N’Kantu has defeated the mutant known as the Living Pharaoh, but the Ruby Scarab has once again escaped his grasp. Now the four ancient Elementals who enslaved the Living Mummy have grown impatient with their unwilling servant. One of their own is dispatched to Earth to retrieve the powerful artifact and put an end to their increasingly defiant envoy.
N’Kantu, however, has plans of his own.
If the ancient Chieftain of the Swarili can retrieve the Ruby Scarab before his masters, its mystical powers may provide the key to breaking the curse placed upon him more than two thousand years ago. Freedom is finally within reach, and N’Kantu has no intention of surrendering it without a fight.
Unfortunately, the Living Mummy has awakened in a world where men have discovered increasingly efficient ways to kill one another.
As N’Kantu treks across the desert searching for the Ruby Scarab, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War rages around him. Tanks roll across lands once ruled by Pharaohs. Soldiers carrying automatic weapons patrol territory where ancient armies once marched with spears and shields. The old gods have faded into legend, while modern nations fight over the same desert sands.
This is a new millennium.
Within hours of entering the combat zone, N’Kantu discovers just how powerful mankind’s weapons have become.
Will the ancient chieftain accept the fighting prowess of the women serving in Israel’s military? Can two-thousand-year-old flesh withstand a direct blast from a modern battle tank? Will the war prevent N’Kantu from recovering the Ruby Scarab? Or will the Living Mummy discover that the warriors of the modern world are not so different from the men he fought thousands of years ago?
Collect the series to find out!
“Flying Saucer”
Note: Originally presented in Weird Worlds #16.
When space aliens invade Earth, does it really matter which planet they came from?
That seems to be the argument between two irritated moviegoers after they are thrown out of a Saturday-night creature feature. One of the men claims to have witnessed several flying saucers recently, apparently making him an expert on extraterrestrial visitors and their intentions.
His friend isn’t buying any of it.
After all, watching lights move through the night sky hardly makes someone an authority on interplanetary warfare.
Does our UFO enthusiast really know something his friend doesn’t? Are those strange objects in the sky actually visitors from another world? Perhaps these two should stop arguing about flying saucers long enough to look up.
Reviewer Notes
Things aren’t looking too good for the ancient Chieftain of the Swarili in the 20th century. N’Kantu fought against slavery during his mortal life, spent two thousand years imprisoned inside a mummified body, and now finds himself enslaved all over again by a group of ancient supernatural beings. To make matters worse, his search for freedom has dropped him directly into the middle of a modern war.
Damn, this guy still can’t catch a break!
What I found most interesting about “A Choice Of Lions!” is the decision by co-plotters Tony Isabella and Val Mayerik, along with scripter Len Wein, to place N’Kantu in the middle of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. This wasn’t ancient history when Supernatural Thrillers #10 appeared. The Yom Kippur War had taken place only months earlier. Dropping a fictional character into such a recent real-world conflict gives this issue a strange time-capsule quality when reading it more than fifty years later.
The setting also works surprisingly well for N’Kantu. Here is a warrior from ancient Africa suddenly watching tanks and modern soldiers battle across the same part of the world where armies fought during his lifetime. N’Kantu may not understand machine guns, armored vehicles, or the political reasons behind the conflict, but he certainly understands warfare. Men have changed their weapons considerably during the last two thousand years. Their tendency to kill one another over land and power? Not so much.
That is one of the things I enjoy about Marvel Comics from this period. The writers weren’t afraid to let their fictional universe brush against contemporary events. Instead of keeping N’Kantu safely inside pyramids and museums, they throw the Living Mummy into a recognizable 1970s world filled with soldiers, tanks, political conflict, and rapidly changing social attitudes. Whether every element has aged gracefully is another question, but the willingness to use current events makes these old comics fascinating little snapshots of their era.
The issue also continues something I have enjoyed throughout N’Kantu’s storyline: the poor bastard just wants his freedom. Everyone else seems determined to control him. Pharaoh Aram-Set enslaved his people. Nephrus cursed him. Doctor Skarab pursued him. The Elementals now command him. Even after two thousand years, N’Kantu keeps finding new masters trying to put chains around his neck.
At some point, somebody is going to learn that enslaving the man famous for leading a slave rebellion is probably a bad idea.
Val Mayerik’s artwork remains another reason to keep reading. The desert warfare gives him plenty of opportunities to contrast N’Kantu’s ancient appearance with modern military hardware. A Living Mummy standing against tanks should look ridiculous, but somehow it works. That collision between ancient horror and 1970s warfare gives the issue its visual identity.
“Flying Saucer” provides the obligatory reprint backup and shifts from supernatural horror into old-school science fiction. It is short, goofy, and built around exactly the kind of twist you would expect from these pre-superhero Marvel stories. Considering my interest in UFO stories, I certainly wasn’t going to complain about Marvel throwing a flying saucer tale into the back of the book.
There isn’t a tremendous amount of Living Mummy material in Marvel’s catalog compared with characters such as Dracula or Werewolf by Night, which makes this original Supernatural Thrillers run worth tracking down for anyone interested in N’Kantu. Issues #5 and #7 through #15 form the core of his original 1970s run, and issue #10 continues expanding him beyond the traditional mummy stereotype.
I’m giving Supernatural Thrillers #10 three out of five stars. The real-world setting makes this one interesting, and I continue to enjoy N’Kantu as a character, but the story itself didn’t grab me quite as much as the mutant and Elemental insanity of the previous issue.
Still, tanks versus a two-thousand-year-old Living Mummy?
Only in a 1970s Marvel comic.