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FOR PART 1 OF BALLADEER’S BLOG’S EXAMINATION OF MARVEL’S SUPERHEROINE MANTIS CLICK HERE 

GIANT-SIZE AVENGERS Volume 1, Number 3 ( February 1975)  What Time Hath Put Asunder …

I will point out once again that the creative team at The Avengers did the best job of incorporating these short-lived “Giant Size” quarterlies into their ongoing storyline. And it certainly helped that they had a complex serial like the Celestial Madonna Saga running at the time that Marvel experimented with these Giant Size issues every 3 months. 

We pick up where we left off: in the labyrinthine catacombs beneath the castle of Immortus, the ruler of the realm of Limbo. That realm exists outside of the time-stream itself, making it the ideal battleground for Kang the Conqueror’s latest attempt to possess the Avenger named Mantis, the Celestial Madonna, and through their offspring have control of all space and time.  

Mantis and her fellow Avengers – Thor, Iron Man, Hawkeye and the Vision – had been battling Kang’s Legion of the Unliving. That group consisted of six supervillains that Kang plucked from the time-stream mere nanoseconds before their violent deaths. If they help him obtain Mantis and kill the rest of the Avengers he’ll let them live. If not, he’ll simply return them to meet their deaths.

Mantis, led by the Vision’s scream of agony, found him lying near death after his battle with a member of Kang’s Legion. 

WHAT TIME HATH PUT ASUNDER …

Synopsis: Mantis cradles the Vision’s dying body like she did with her lover the Swordsman several days earlier when he died at Kang’s hands. The Vision cannot move his android body and is delirious with pain.

He recounts to the now-weeping Mantis how he fought the Silver Surfer’s immensely powerful old foe the Ghost – one of Kang’s Legion of the Unliving. Even the Vision’s devastating tactic of plunging his intangible arm inside the Ghost’s torso and partially solidifying it could not defeat the villain.

That soldier of Kang then used the Vision’s own tactic against him, with the result that the Vision suffered so much damage from his foe’s arm that he is near death, while the Ghost simply vanished from the area.  

With his tale done the delirious Vision hallucinates that his beloved Wanda, the Scarlet Witch is the woman with him as he dies, not Mantis. Mantis redeems herself a bit more by painfully letting the Vision believe the happy but false impression.

(Wanda is really back at Avengers Mansion, still being tutored by the sorceress Agatha Harkness.)     

Soon Mantis’ grief is interrupted as she is attacked from behind by Midnight, the evil half-brother of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu. Kang had plucked Midnight from his death hoping that Midnight’s martial arts skills would enable him to bring in Mantis alive to become Kang’s bride.

Mantis and Midnight do battle again, this time to the finish since their first battle was interrupted. The Vietnamese Avenger defeats the black-clad villain despite his use of weapons like Ninja Stars and nunchuku.

Again she wonders how her human weaknesses like the anger she just showed fighting Midnight qualify her to be the Celestial Madonna. Before she can pursue those thoughts she realizes the Vision’s dead body has been taken away by an unknown party.

Try though she may she cannot find the culprit in the confusing maze of tunnels and corridors. We readers get to see which member of the Legion of the Unliving absconded with the Vision’s corpse, however. Continue reading →