The issue opens with patrons in a movie theater watching newsreel
footage from World News Now. This appears to be a fictional
newsreel series of the time, based on the Movietone News
newsreels that ran in U.S. theaters from 1928-1963 and 1929-1979 in
the UK. There is currently a late-night news show on the ABC
television network called World News Now which has been on
since 1992.
The World News Now
logo may be intended as an homage to
the Universal Pictures logo of
1936-1946. (Universal is the studio
that owns the Mummy
franchise.) |
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The
newsreel mentions the
Smithsonian Institution, an
educational and research institute
funded by the U.S. government,
headquartered in Washington D.C. and
known for its museums and large
collection of historical artifacts.
The picture shown in the newsreel is
of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural
History. |
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The newsreel compares the disappearance of Lord Horwood with that of
Amelia Earhart. Amelia Earhart was an American aviatrix who
disappeared in 1937 during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe in
a small airplane.
Langford remarks that Lord Horwood had been granted a concession of
land in the Valley of the Kings.
The Valley of the Kings is a real world archaeological site in Egypt
where the Pharaohs of the Egyptian New Kingdom (16-11th Centuries BC)
were entombed.
Page 4 takes the reader to Burma, which is a real country in
Southeast Asia, now more commonly known as Myanmar. During the time of this story, Burma was under the
rule of British India.
The winning poker hand held by Horwood in panel 1 of page 5 is a
royal flush, the highest rank in straight poker.
On page 8, Alex tells his father to stop treating him like an 8 year
old kid. This is probably an intentional callback by the writer to
The Mummy Returns, in
which Alex was introduced when he was 8 years old.
Also on page 8, Rick reveals that the train Alex is on is bound for
the Valley of Rubies. This is the real world region around the city
of Mogok in Burma known for its mining of precious gems,
particularly rubies.
Notice during the attack on the train that the rhinos being ridden
by the natives have holes in their skin revealing muscle and bone
structure underneath, an early indication of their undead status.
Later, we see the attacking natives are also similarly rendered.
On page 18, the undead natives demand the return of the Third Eye
of Shangri-La, a large ruby once possessed by Xango, the god of
thunder.
The
Third Eye of Shangri-La appears to be a fictional artifact invented
for this story.
Xango is considered the thunder god of the Yoruba
religion, originating in the Assyrian Empire in the 7th Century BC.
Shangri-La is the name of the lost utopian city in Tibet in James
Hilton's 1933 novel Lost Horizon. It seems extremely
unlikely that any Burmese natives would have an artifact referring
to a fictional city from a 20th Century western novel. It seems that
within the Mummy universe, Shangri-La is an actual place of
legend in the far east; to go a step further, possibly the novel
itself takes place in that same universe!
On the last page of the story, the native leader (who is revealed as
Xango himself in
"The Rise and Fall of Xango's Ax" Part 2) appears to be
riding a mammoth (confirmed in
"The Rise and Fall of Xango's Ax" Part 2).
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