Mantis



From Avenger to cosmic traveler to the legendary Celestial Madonna, Mantis is perhaps one of the most well-traveled characters in the Marvel Universe.

Origin
The German/Vietnamese child of Gustav and Lau Brandt, the girl who would become Mantis was given up to the alien Priests of Pama, a sect of the Kree who believed in the "Celestial Madonna", a legendary being who would give birth to the Celestial Messiah, deemed to be "the most important being in the universe." Excelling in her martial arts studies with the Priests, gaining a heightened control over her physiology in the process, Mantis has her memories erased when she becomes an adult and sent back to Earth in order to gain life experience. Becoming a barmaid/prostitute in a Vietnamese bar, she meets the Swordsman, Jacques Duquesne, and accompanies him back to the United States after helping him regain his self-respect. Joining the Avengers alongside him, Mantis soon became involved in many of the team's adventures, motivated partially by her growing sexual interest in the Vision. As it was, Mantis was unaware of the Swordsman's love for her, and only realized (and reciprocated) it during his deathbed confession after being mortally wounded by Kang the Conquerer in his own quest for the Madonna. Shortly thereafter, Mantis discovers that she is, as was suspected, the Celestial Madonna, and leaves Earth with the planet's eldest Cotati in order to give birth to the Celestial Messiah.

Bearing the child, whom she names "Sequoia", Mantis (now calling herself "Mandy Celestine") is compelled to give up the child to the Priests of Pama, joining the Silver Surfer in his adventures shortly thereafter, and even beginning a relationship with the former herald of Galactus. Growing increasingly dissatisfied with her life, particularly after her powers began to alter, Mantis is caught in a massive explosion and presumed dead by the Surfer. In fact, Mantis survives the blast, but the stresses placed upon her in recent years literally cause her to fragment into multiple versions of herself, each bearing a different aspect of her personality and fragmentary portions of her memories. One such portion becomes a member of the West Coast Avengers for a time, before leaving the team to raise her son.

Eventually, Mantis manages to recover and merge all the fragments of her personality, leaving her whole once more in time to help the Avengers stop Thanos from killing her son. During this period, she resumes her pursuit of the Vision, but eventually ceases upon realizing that the connection between the Vision and the Scarlet Witch are genuine and strong, despite their estrangement.

Power and Abilities
Mantis also known as the Celestial Madonna, and by that title trained by the Priests of Pama, aliens of Kree origin. Intense and vigorous training under the Priests of Pana, Mantis had learned to develop "complete control" over her bodily functions and physiology, which essentially granted enhanced agility, reflexes, speed, strength stamina and higher than usual control over her nervous system blood flow, breathing and respiration. Furthermore she is capable of willing herself to recuperate quickly after being injured.

Mantis also has extraordinary ability in the martial arts that have been developed and perfected over thousands of years by the Priests of Pama. These fighting methods place particular emphasis on the manipulation of pressure points and nerve endings on the bodies of one's opponents. Thus, by knowing the right areas of the body to strike, Mantis could stun even a being as powerful as Thor even though she herself had no superhuman strength.

To travel in space, Mantis 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. Mantis also possesses strong telepathic, telekinetic and pyrokinetic abilities, as most recently demonstrated in the Annihilation: Conquest event, alongside a measure of precognition.