Pandora Pann is a fictional

comic book A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...

character owned by

DC Comics DC Comics, Inc. (doing business as DC) is an American comic book publisher and the flagship unit of DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. DC Comics is one of the largest and oldest American comic book companies, with thei ...

. Pandora debuted in ''

The Comic Reader ''The Comic Reader'' (''TCR'') was a comics news- fanzine published from 1961 to 1984. Debuting in the pre- direct market era (before the proliferation of comics retailers), ''TCR'' was the first regularly published comics industry news fanzine, a ...

'' #197 (December 1981) and was created by Len Wein and Ross Andru. Pandora Pann is based on the

Greek myth A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the origin and nature of the world, the lives and activities of d ...

of Pandora the first woman, as related by the poet

Hesiod Hesiod (; grc-gre, Ἡσίοδος ''Hēsíodos'') was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by western authors as 'the first written poet ...

in his epic poem, the ''

Theogony The ''Theogony'' (, , , i.e. "the genealogy or birth of the gods") is a poem by Hesiod (8th–7th century BC) describing the origins and genealogies of the Greek gods, composed . It is written in the Epic dialect of Ancient Greek and contain ...

'' (700 BCE).

Publication history

The character was originally slated for a September 1982 publication date by DC Comics. Len Wein and Ross Andru's Pandora Pann was described in ''The Comic Reader'' #197 (December 1981) as "the assistant of an archaeologist who unwittingly opens

Pandora's box Pandora's box is an artifact in Greek mythology connected with the myth of Pandora in Hesiod's c. 700 B.C. poem ''Works and Days''. Hesiod reported that curiosity led her to open a container left in the care of her husband, thus releasing physi ...

and spends the rest of her time trying to retrieve the evil she has unleashed by doing so". Pandora Pann was originally scheduled to debut as a backup preview in '' The Saga of the Swamp Thing'' #5 (September 1982). Promotional art from the preview debuted in ''The Comic Reader'' #201 (April 1982). According to an interview in ''The Comic Reader'' #202 (May 1982) the series was instead put on indefinite hiatus "due to Len Wein's inability to find the time to write it". Launched instead was '' Arion, Lord of Atlantis'', which had run for several months as a backup feature in '' The Warlord''. When

Bob Rozakis Robert "Bob" Rozakis (; born April 4, 1951) is an American comic book writer and editor known mainly for his work in the 1970s and 1980s at DC Comics, as the writer of Mazing Man'' and in his capacity as DC's "Answer Man". Career Bob Rozakis go ...

asked him about the character, Len Wein responded with:

Even I had forgotten about Pandora Pann. The answer is that Ross Andru penciled most of a terrific-looking 15 page insert to be included in ''Swamp Thing'', before going off into her own book. But for reasons sadly lost to history (meaning, for the life of me, I can no longer remember why), we never went ahead with the series. A shame too, since it would have preceded things like Tomb Raider and Relic Hunter by decades. And there you have another Secret Behind the Comics. --Len Wein

References

{{reflist Characters created by Len Wein Characters created by Ross Andru DC Comics titles Fictional archaeologists Unpublished comics

Publication history

See also

References