Mantis
Real name: unknown
First appearance: The Avengers
#112, 1973
Base of operations: unknown
Occupation: crimefighter
Place of birth: Hue, Vietnam
Membership status: temporary
History:
The enigmatic Mantis traces her roots back to the family of
Vietnamese crimelord Monsieur Khruul who, disapproving of his sister
Lua's marriage to German mercenary Gustav Brandt, hunted the couple
across Indochina. The Brandts eluded him while Lua bore a child, but
Khruul ultimately had their house burned to the ground, killing Lua
and blinding Gustav, who fled with their infant daughter. They found
sanctuary in the temple of the Priests of Pama, renegade pacifist
members of the alien Kree race who were caretakers of the Cotati, a
telepathic race of sentient plants. The Priests trained Gustav,
granting him psychic sight, but separated him from his daughter, not
wanting his violent nature to influence her development. Brandt
eventually left the Temple, later joining the crime cartel Zodiac as
Libra.
Believing Mantis might grow to be the Celestial Madonna and mother
the genetically perfect Celestial Messiah, the Priests of Pama
trained Mantis in their martial arts, which she mastered, and gave
her the name "Mantis," in recognition of her skill in defeating male
opponents. They also taught her telepathic communication with the
Cotati, which gave her empathic abilities. On Mantis' eighteenth
birthday, the Priests removed Mantis' memories, implanting false
memories of an orphaned life in Ho Chi Minh City, and sent her to
experience life among normal humans. Meanwhile, the Shao-Lom monks
of Titan, whose teachings also stemmed from the pacifist Kree's
beliefs, mentored another possible Celestial Madonna: Earth-born
orphan Heather Douglas, later known as Moondragon, but her sheltered
life denied her insight into human existence, making her a
less-rounded candidate. Moondragon would eventually return to Earth,
becoming involved with the Avengers.
As a bar girl coincidentally employed by her unwitting uncle,
Monsieur Khruul, Mantis met the Swordsman (Jacques Duquesne), an
adventurer turned alcoholic mercenary who worked for Khruul. Sensing
a spark of nobility in the Swordsman and seeking a better life for
herself, Mantis romanced and rehabilitated Duquesne, convincing him
to return to America and rejoin the Avengers. She accompanied him,
but had difficulty gaining the Avengers' trust after she deceived
them, single-handedly taking down both Thor and Captain America as
part of her plan to help the Avengers defeat the Lion God. Still,
her abilities served the Avengers well; she aided the team during
its Loki/Dormammu-masterminded Avengers-Defenders War; and against
foes including the Collector, Klaw, and Ultron. Her empathic
abilities helped save the universe when she deduced how Captain
Mar-Vell could defeat the Cosmic Cube-empowered Thanos.
During her association with the Avengers, Mantis became disenchanted
with the Swordsman and began a slow seduction of the Vision, which
further damaged Mantis' standing with the team. When the Avengers
fought and defeated Zodiac, Libra was captured and revealed his
identity as Mantis' father, telling her some portion of her history.
Returning to the Pama temple, Mantis found the Priests slain by her
uncle, who was in turn slain by the Star-Stalker, who had been kept
imprisoned by the Priests. Though she still lacked her true
memories, Mantis began doubting what she'd believed.
Knowing the Celestial Madonna to be among them and hoping to father
the Celestial Messiah himself, Kang attacked the Avengers. Defeated,
he identified Mantis as the Celestial Madonna and attempted to kill
her, but the Swordsman took the blast himself and died. Mantis,
guilt-ridden and grief-stricken, buried the Swordsman in the garden
of the Priests of Pama; however, the eldest Cotati reanimated the
Swordsman's body and confirmed that Mantis was the Celestial
Madonna. Immortus, Libra and the Cotati revealed the full history of
Mantis, who accepted her destiny as the Celestial Madonna (to
Moondragon's irritation). In a ceremony conducted by Immortus,
Mantis and the Eldest Cotati wed (as did the Scarlet Witch and the
Vision), after which the celestial couple transformed into energy
and departed Earth. Before she departed, the Avengers declared
Mantis an official member of their ranks.
Merged with the Cotati's essence, Mantis gained Cotati abilities as
well as her own, and began to evolve into "the essence of life," a
change which physically manifested as a greenish hue in her skin.
Conceiving the future Celestial Messiah, she left our universe, but
even in other universes she found herself pursued -- on one
alternate Earth she was aided by a league of justice-serving heroes
against a mechanical construct which sought to prevent her child's
birth. Eventually her son, Sequoia, was born, and Mantis attempted
to raise him as normally as possible in the town of Willimantic,
Connecticut. Dark forces rose against her, attempting to create an
evil counterpart to her child, but she aided those who fought them;
nothing eclipsed her attempts to raise the boy peacefully.
When the fast-growing child reached an age when the Cotati race
chose to parent him alone, Mantis again took to the stars, where she
uncovered a plot by the Elders of the Universe to acquire the six
Infinity Gems and destroy Galactus. Fearing this would destroy
reality, Mantis located the Silver Surfer and traveled with him as
he fought the Elders, bonding romantically with him. When the
Gardener attacked her using the Soul Gem, she barely escaped and
transferred herself to Shalla-Bal, the Surfer's former beloved on
his homeworld. She and Shalla-Bal were both subsequently captured by
the Elders. When the Elders attempted to destroy them both, Mantis
sacrificed herself, allowing the Surfer to rescue Shalla-Bal.
The power of the Elders' Infinity Gems proved too much for Mantis,
who could not fully reconstruct herself, and fragments of her
essence formed several "shadow" Mantises. One shadow form awoke on
Earth as an amnesiac, lacking powers. Seeking help, she aided the
Avengers against the Voice and the High Evolutionary, and they in
turn aided her in regaining her memories. The Fantastic Four then
helped her try to return to her son, but Kang and Necrodamus
interfered; after foiling them, Mantis returned to the stars as pure
energy. The Silver Surfer encountered a shadow Mantis on Verdant, a
plant world threatened by Galactus, and this Mantis aided the
Surfer, the Fantastic Four, and the Avengers in defeating Galactus
and saving the Shi'ar homeworld. Over time, most shadow Mantises
ceased to exist, fading even from the memories of those they'd
encountered. During the Immortus-guided conspiracy known as The
Crossing, the Avengers fought a Mantis seemingly allied with Kang,
but this Mantis was ultimately revealed to be a Space Phantom, with
no relation to either the true Mantis or her "shadows."
Over time, the true Mantis began to recover as her scattered essence
coalesced into five forms, each reflecting an aspect of her
personality: freak, mother, lover, mystic, and Avenger. Thanos, a
self-proclaimed god of death disturbed by the emergence of the
Celestial Messiah and the Celestial Madonna as supposed deities of
life, began killing fragmentary Mantises, unwittingly hastening the
re-formation of the true Mantis, who was reborn as "the goddess of
life." Fully restored, she teamed with the Avengers and the Squadron
Supreme's Haywire to seek out Sequoia and defend him from Thanos,
ultimately fighting beside Thanos to neutralize the
reality-devouring Rot (though Thanos later claimed it was one of his
Thanosi "clones" who encountered Mantis). Mantis offered guidance to
both young Avengers recruit Silverclaw, another potential goddess,
and her own son, "Quoi," who had become bitter and rebellious during
Mantis' absence but ultimately accepted his mother and his own role
as the Celestial Messiah. During the Thanos conflict, Mantis and
Vision (now long-separated from the Scarlet Witch) finally became
lovers, but the Vision decided his mechanical nature made him
ill-suited for a relationship with the maternal Mantis because their
union could not produce children, and he broke off the romance.
Copyright Avi Green. All rights reserved.
