The Monstrefact: Marvel’s Sphinx

In this episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses the Egyptomania-flavored mutant supervillain Sphinx from Marvel comics…

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi, my name is Robert Lambin. This is the Monster Fact,
a short form 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 ninety seven, especially

(00:31):
it's time traveling two parter set partially in ancient Egypt.
Even if you're only casually acquainted with the X Men's storylines,
you can probably guess that most of the action here
centers around the origins of the first Mutant in Sabonur,
who of course becomes the near unstoppable and seemingly immortal
supervillain Apocalypse. But of course Marvel Comics doesn't just have

(00:54):
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 Tut. This is all to be expected,
of course, given the just pervasive power of Egyptomania. The

(01:16):
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 eleven seventy
seven BCE, a graphic history of the year Civilization Collapsed

(01:39):
by Glennis Fox and Eric H. Klein, or mythology focused
approaches such as Myths, Mummies and Magic in Ancient Egypt
by Stephen Davies and Nuria Tamart. 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 entertains, which brings us to a nice end,

(02:02):
in my opinion, ridiculous example, and that is Sphinx and
extremely beefy seven foot two ancient Egyptian mutant wizard with
a hat reminiscent of the god Annibus's jackal Ears. He
gains his powers from the cost Stone. This, I believe
is a reference to the ancient Egyptian concept of kaw
as one piece of the human soul. He has a

(02:25):
flying spacefaring pyramid, and in a nod to Abrahamic traditions,
he loses a test of wizarding power against none other
than the prophet Moses. Having lost to Moses, he goes
on to lose battles against Nova Thing and Galactus. I
am also somewhat delighted to learn that Sphinx also crosses

(02:45):
paths with the Quasi Motivational destruct Organism or Quasi Moto
in a late nineteen seventies Fantastic Four storyline, And don't worry,
ancient astronauts get shoehorned into the whole narrative as well. Now,
you could certainly make an argument that time travel and
time itself becomes meaningless in comic book narratives like these

(03:08):
Ancient Egypt, the present day, far future apocalyptic scenarios, these
all just become mere kingdoms that characters can travel back
and forth to willy nilly, and not just times, but
just timelines as well. Right above all, we should, of
course acknowledge that these worlds are meant to be fun
and entertaining, and they often very much are. But I

(03:31):
also can't help but think of them as accessible, imaginative
realms in the same way that superheroes and supervillains are
imaginative beings, much like a pantheon of gods. Many have
pointed this out before, and then, you know, it's interesting
to think about the fact that we may have You
may be looking at icons of these different superheroes and

(03:53):
supervillains right now on your shelf, on your table, almost
like a little altar to these ideas of different aspects
of human personalities and the larger reality that we all share.
That sort of thing. So the many worlds and beings
of these tales, you know, they constitute a modern pop
culture mythology and serve some of the same purposes as

(04:17):
deities and metaphysical realms in many of the ancient human faiths.
Popular historical imagination meets pop culture pantheon meets paracosm, all
of it serving as a way, at least in a
small manner, to understand and survive the real world all
around us. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster

(04:39):
Fact The Artifact or animally is Stupendium each week. As always,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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