Hello and welcome to Comic Drake where I talk about comic books and my name is Drake.
Now, I’ve covered some crazy convoluted characters in the past, but Mantis of the
Guardians of the Galaxy ranks pretty high up there, but just how is this innocent antenna'd
telepath complicated?
Well let me fill you in.
Mantis is the half-Vietnamese daughter of the villain Libra who was taken in by outcast
members of the alien Kree race, the Priests of Pama.
It was with the Priests that Mantis was trained in the ways of martial arts and where she
developed psychic powers.
In addition, she was raised to be the “Celestial Madonna”, the woman who will give birth
to the messiah of the universe.
On her eighteenth birthday, the Priests wiped Mantis’ memory and she eventually picked
up work as a bar girl in Vietnam where she met Swordsman, the on and off again villain
who trained the Avenger Hawkeye.
Like his student, Swordsman once reformed and joined the Avengers, but left when he
betrayed the team.
Mantis got into a relationship with him, put Swordsman back on the right track, and managed
to convince The Avengers to let them join up.
Part of this involved single handedly taking down both Thor AND Captain America.
See here’s the thing.
Mantis is what’s known as a “Writer’s Pet”, a character that a writer loves so
much that they make them SUPER important, special, and shoehorned into appearing on
screen as much as possible.
Well Mantis’ creator, Steve Englehart is absolutely in love with his creation and as
such, he’s pretty much the only one to use this “perfect human”.
No I’m serious, that’s literally how Mantis has been described at one point.
Anyway, after being introduced, Mantis essentially became the focus of The Avengers comic where
they went into her character arc as the Celestial Madonna as well as lightly exploring her attraction
to The Vision.
Hoping to father the Celestial Messiah though, the time travelling villain, Kang the Conqueror,
kidnapped Mantis and then attempted to kill her when he was ultimately defeated by The
Avengers.
However, Swordsman took the killing blow.
Shortly after, a tree person took on Swordsman’s form, married Mantis, and the two went off
into space where she would get knocked up with the Celestial Messiah.
Now after this storyline with the Avengers ended, Steve Englehart went to work at DC
Comics, instantly brought back Mantis under the name “Willow”, and now she’s green…
for some reason that is never explained.
Mantis even turned up at Eclipse Comics when Englehart was writing the “Scorpio Rose”
series.
This time however, she’s referred to as “Lorelei”.
In a bizarre move though, the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe had an entry on Mantis
in 2005 that officially listed both Willow AND Lorelei as aliases of Mantis.
Steve Englehart eventually returned to Marvel and surprise surprise, he brought Mantis back
with him.
After giving birth to her son, Sequoia, Mantis journeyed with the Silver Surfer, permanently
keeping her green skin.
It was later retconned that she turns back to her normal skin color when in public, but
this explanation too was retconned… again…
Because comics.
While with the Surfer, Mantis’ essence was shattered by the Infinity Gems, creating several
sort of “Ghost Forms” that worked with high profile superhero teams, but then faded
away.
When they were gone, the teams conveniently forgot that Mantis was even there in the first
place.
Basically, this was used as an explanation of how Mantis could be inserted into several
books that Englehart was working on at the exact same time.
Eventually though these ghosts later reformed into a more substantial form as five separate
Mantis’.
This would be the driving force of the Avengers storyline, Celestial Quest, which made Mantis
the center of everything…
again as Thanos was trying to kill her son and Mantis had a fling with The Vision.
This story is extremely inconsequential is pretty much never mentioned again.
This character was later picked up for the Annihilation: Conquest storyline where it
was revealed that Mantis ended up in a Kree prison.
It’s here that her character was radically altered.
Instead of strands of hair or as a part of headband, Mantis now has antenne that are
attached to her head and completely unexplained.
She’s also become a much more powerful telepath with her new main feature being able to constantly
tell the future.
She was recruited by Star-Lord to be a part of a special task force to take on an invading
techno-organic species called the Phalanx.
Mantis used her martial arts skills to help fight and her mental powers for recon and
group communication as the group was technology free to stay invisible to the enemy.
This unit was a great asset against the Phalanx invasion which is why most of the members
immediately went on to help Star-Lord out with his new experiment, a team dedicated
to taking on galactic scale threats before they happen, the Guardians of the Galaxy.
However, Star-Lord wanted to assemble the team as fast as possible so he had Mantis
psychically manipulate the team’s minds so they were more likely to come along.
While many of the Guardians were active in the field fighting the good fight, Mantis
mostly stayed back on the ship, handling communications, intel, and serving as what’s pretty much
group counselor.
From time to time though, Mantis did join the team out in the field where she mostly
used her psychic powers to assist, only really using her martial arts as a last resort.
The Guardians disbanded when Star-Lord seemingly died and Mantis has more or less vanished
since.
She popped up for a couple of pages after the Guardians re-formed when Star-Lord came
back from the not dead though.
Other than that, Mantis has also appeared briefly as a member of the Knowhere Corps,
a team made up of former Guardians members plus some guy named Prism and they all help
defend Knowhere, a spaceport made out of the head of a deceased Celestial.
Mantis.
It’s hard to believe that such an interesting character from the Guardians movie had a really
weird backstory and was even an Avenger at one point, but hey, I hope you learned something
new and I also hope that you liked this video.
Maybe consider subscribing or leaving a comment or something like that or if you really want
to learn more about the Guardians of the Galaxy then we have an entire playlist of all of
our Guardians videos.
So if you like this one, it just makes sense that you’ll like those as well.