Superheroes are shards of broken myth. In a rational scientific world that has left behind the gods and monsters that once peopled legends and sustained religions, the last supernatural beings to openly walk our world are costumed crime fighters with amazing powers.

It is therefore only natural for superheroes to return to the ancient world whose myths and magic they embody in a new form. In Josh Lane's Hero-glyphics, costumed crusaders – from X Men to Power Rangers and Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles – appear on Egyptian papyri in place of Osiris and Anubis. To complicate things, they include Thor, a superhero based on a Viking god. This adds to the sense that Lane's ancient Egyptian comic strips are exercises in comparative mythology.

He applies the conventions of ancient Egyptian art to his portrayal of modern heroes. Captain America and other Marvellous beings pose with feet side-on, torsos turned to face the onlooker and heads in profile. This is the ancient Egyptian way of depicting figures that was already established when the Narmer Palette, one of the earliest masterpieces of Egyptian art, was created in about 3100 BC.

This sideways manner of depicting people and gods was still used when Egypt came under Roman influence over 3,000 years later. Why did ancient Egypt never change its artistic style (apart from in the reign of a single dissident pharaoh)? Why did Egyptian artists not experiment with more fully-rounded pictures of people? They probably did, in their workshops – the brief subversive Armana period with its elongated portraits shows how they could go wild given the chance. But the Egyptians clearly wanted the same thing over and over again from their art. It was a representation of ancient beliefs, an image of eternal truths. Why fix what ain't broke?

The same goes for superheroes, of course. These hero-glyphs are funny because superheroes are so recognisable. Invented by 20th-century comics and present today everywhere from blockbuster films to Lego, superheroes can be daringly reinterpreted but their basic visual appearances are set. Batman can suffer but he can't stop dressing as a bat.

The ancient Egyptians, who believed in gods with the heads of lions and jackals, could relate to that. But how fast can a superhero move with sideways feet flattened out in space?