About Mummy Issues

 

Mummy Issues takes place right after Lesson One: Vampires, which showed Tim answering a call asking for help in the end, and sees him hunting down a revived Egyptian mummy in a museum. However, that's not the only threat lurking around...

This was where everything changed and the series took a decisive turn for the Lovecraftian. It introduced important characters, set up future storylines, and hinted at the endgame. The most important new character was Bob. When we describe the series, we mention Tim and Penny fighting the occasional malicious eldritch cosmic entity. Well, this was where it started (read more about the cosmic threats here). We ended up revealing a lot about him and also how Lovecraft ended up a brain in a steel box. Since it felt like a big departure from the more standard monster hunting stuff of Tim and Penny's debut, we didn't think it made much sense to wait to show prospective readers what the series was going to be about.

Bob and Lovecraft (yes, the steel box contains H P Lovecraft's brain)

When we came up with the basic plot, Lesson One still had its original ending and it must be the story that suffered the most changes. For instance, Penny was going to return as the girlfriend of the lilac-haired geek, who was someone's assistant at the museum, and they were going to help Tim catch whoever had revived the mummy. Fortunately, we eventually ditched all that and made Penny co-lead (fun fact: we were planning to make her Tim's sidekick after he saved her from Kit Marlowe later on). The original story was a lot more comedic, which can be seen in the resolution to the mummy plot. Bob's first planned origins also reflected that, until we decided to go full Lovecraft. This is already visible in the opening sequence, which ironically, was the last thing we made. By the way, there's a brief moment hinting at the vessel that was inspired by Bram Stoker's The Jewel of Seven Stars. Dr West was going to be a descendant of Dr Frankenstein, mostly because we're terrible at coming up with names. However, with the Lovecraft influences, we went with a different mad scientist with a less obvious last name. The changes to the character here made us go back and change some dialogue and panels from the ending of Lesson One after it was already published. This makes us feel as if we should thank all the people who didn't buy Lesson One: Vampires Part 2. If someone had already downloaded it, we wouldn't have done it. Another big addition to the series was time travel. This led us to alternate timelines and when creating a diagram to keep everything in check, we came up with four separate ones.

Later additions include Ben, Tim's mentor, and his daughter Nikki, who ended up as part of Tim's backstory. There was also Myst, who was originally going to be a Hellraiser spoof. When we changed our minds, there was a last minute makeover to get rid of the piercings. And we took the opportunity to show a little of Nina's family by making Prof Wanda Gibbons, the head of the History Museum, her aunt. Really, Mummy Issues is a great example of how waiting to publish can be beneficial for the book.

Ben and Nikki (and Gustaf) | Myst