Merge:Mantis

Mantis is a superheroine in the Marvel Comics universe, and former member of the Avengers. She first appeared in Avengers vol. 1 #112 (June, 1973). Her creators were writer Steve Englehart and artist Don Heck.

Character biography
Mantis is the daughter of Gustav Brandt, Libra. While a child, her father left her with the alien Priests of Pama, a sect of the Kree who believed that she might become the Celestial Madonna.

She excelled in her martial arts studies, but when she reached adulthood, she was mindwiped and sent into the world to gain life experience. She became a prostitute in a Vietnamese bar, where she met the Swordsman. She helped him regain his self-respect, and followed him when the former villain attempted to rejoin the Avengers.

There, she became taken with the Vision, and - though rejected by the android - neglected the Swordsman until his death at the hands of Kang the Conqueror, only proclaiming her love for him as he died. Shortly afterward, she was revealed to be, indeed, the Celestial Madonna and married a Cotati in the reanimated body of the Swordsman, leaving the Avengers to mate with him.

After she bore her child, Sequoia, she took the name "Mandy Celestine" and lived with him for a year in the suburbs of Connecticut before handing him to his father's people and going into space with the Silver Surfer. The two flirted with each other with Silver Surfer finding himself falling in love with Mantis. But Mantis (whose body was now green and had begun to manifest new powers of invulnerability that allowed her to survive in space due to side affects of her pregnancy) was growing much more bitter with her life and the way she was forced to abandon her child. This came to a head when Mantis was caught in an explosion and was presumed dead by Silver Surfer. In truth, she had survived but the strain of the previous years caused her to literally split into multiple versions of herself, each representing conflicting aspects of her mind that could no longer co-exist inside her mind.

The fragments arrived on Earth and one version of Mantis rejoined the West Coast Avengers team, with portions of her memories missing. Steve Englehart intended the storyline involving Mantis and her amnesia to be his next major plotline but editorial problems caused him to quit the series, with the plotline resolved hastily through Mantis discovering, through the temporarily resurrected corpse of the Swordsman, that her psyche had shattered and that she needed to find her counterparts in order to restore her memories.

Aside from mentions by Silver Surfer, Mantis did not reappear until 1995's controversial Avengers crossover story "The Crossing". In "The Crossing", Mantis returned as the villainous bride of Kang the Conqueror with the intentions of bringing death to the Avengers, her father Libra (who by now was going by the name "Moonraker" as part of Force Works, and the Cotati alien who had possessed the Swordsman's body and married/impregnated her. Her anger at her father (who she had vivisected) and the Cotati centered around their "defilement" of her and that she hated the Avengers for believing their manipulative lies.

The storyline was controversial, so much so that Kurt Busiek ultimately retconned the Mantis who appeared in the story as being a Space Phantom brainwashed into thinking he was Mantis.

Eventually, Mantis reappeared in the Steve Englehart written "Avengers: Celestial Quest" mini-series. She returns to Earth and merges with her remaining fragmented portions of her personality (which we learn represent "freak, mother, prostitute, mystic and Avenger") after the first four are killed by Thanos (later retroactively declared to be a clone of the real Thanos). The final Mantis was merged with them to become a "complete" Mantis for the first time since her dispersion. Thus reformed, she and a group of the Avengers went into space to stop "Thanos" from killing her son, who by this time was a rebellious teenager desperate to leave the isolation of the Coati homeworld and travel the stars. Mantis flirted with Vision (with it implied that she had sex with him) during the adventure but ultimately ended the flirting when she realized that Vision had feelings for his estranged wife Scarlet Witch, who was jealous of Mantis and Vision's friendship.Mantis took part also to Avengers Disassembled.

Heroes Reborn Mantis
In the Heroes Reborn reality, the alternate version of Mantis was the woman Kang the Conqueror loved, and Kang's motives to attack the 20th Century and the Avengers was show that he was worthy of her love. Mantis recognized her love for Kang after he was killed by Loki, who killed her shortly after.

Powers
Mantis was trained to have total control over her body, and had almost superhuman reflexes, thus making her an outstanding martial artist. She could instinctively sense weak points in an opponent and knock out any opponent (even Thor). Her control over her body was so powerful, that if she was injured, she could quickly heal her injuries through sheer force of will. She also had psychic empathy, a telepathic power that allowed her to sense the emotions of others. This ability enabled her to communicate with the plant-like Cotati. To travel in space, Mantis astrally projected her consciousness from her body, allowing her to travel interplanetary distances. She would recreate a body for herself out of the destination planet's local vegetation. Her fighting skills remained intact, and her empathic abilities were heightened to a superhuman degree and extended to the planet's flora and biosphere. She could control the vegetation within her vicinity.