The mystery woman known only as Mantis traces the steps to places in her memories, asking questions and attempting to find people she remembers, throughout the Vietnamese capitol of Saigon. To her increasing despair, she is told she could not have been at one house when she thought; it was built but two years ago. No one in her past can be found. What future, then, awaits this woman, if everything before her now-deceased lover was a lie? Hawkeye the Archer asks the Vision about her story even while helping Thor and Iron Man in their support of her quest. He tells of the finely-attuned, mystically-aware, aloof adventuress who came here, swearing angrily that the Libra of the Zodiac crime-lords is not her father, while he told her of the Priests of Pama, who he found while blindly staggering away with her in his arms after her mother’s murder by her uncle. The mystery of the Star Stalker and the arrival of Kang the Conqueror both further suggest she is someone...

ACT FIVE: Origins and journeys outside time! Original Vision The Swordsman is dead...soon to be buried. The woman he loved, martial arts mistress Mantis, questions her decisions, regretfully, and asks to take his body to Viet Nam for burial. The Avengers, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, kindly, supportively join her. While the Scarlet Witch needs to stay and study with her mentor, Thor asks her love, the synthezoid known as the Vision---to her dismay; “no, Vision, please don’t go with that man-trap---no matter HOW sorry she seems!” she thinks. He declines; three times now, including their recent battle with Kang the Conqueror, he has frozen in battle and is “no longer a credit to the Avengers.” On this account, however, Iron Man and the rest insist he is wrong. Thor points out Wanda will be sequestered; he will be alone. In solidarity with his team mates, he reluctantly agrees, without realizing his love Wanda’s fears. The Swordsman’s funeral is held in the g...

Pyramids, high adventure, and bittersweet romance! DEATH OF A SWORDSMAN! Sponsored by Integr8d Soul Productions. Order "Devils and Angels" or "Puzzle Girl" in black ($13 plus shipping) or white ($11 plus shipping) by sending money and message (size, color, design) to luelyron@gmail.com for PayPal, or write there for the address if you want to send a check! Devils and Angels is the cover to D'n'A: The Mountain, our b & w comic! It's only $3.25. New issue is on the drawing board now! So, Mantis, the mystic martial arts mistress, has turned to the Vision, the cerebral synthezoid heart of Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the Avengers. She suggests their situations are exactly alike: they each have questions about the truth of their natures, and almost complete control and attunement with their bodies. While hex casting mutant the Scarlet Witch secretly battles for her life under the tutelage of Agatha Harkness, Mantis tells Vision the...

Sponsored by Integr8d Soul Productions. Order "Devils and Angels" or "Puzzle Girl" in black ($13 plus shipping) or white ($11 plus shipping) by sending money and message (size, color, design) to luelyron@gmail.com for PayPal, or write there for the address if you want to send a check! Devils and Angels is the cover to D'n'A: The Mountain, our b & w comic! It's only $3.25. Act the Fourth: Death of a Swordsman by Lue Lyron By AVENGERS #128, it’s apparent that everyone feels they need someone else. Scarlet Witch: needs this new teacher to take over her life, risk her life, challenge her powers and her fundamental doubts in her abilities to recharge between hexes more quickly, and establish a relationship with nature (at the same time that her science spawned boyfriend seems to flake). Vision: this android---this man---needs to tell Scarlet Witch, Wanda, he loves her, and needs to tell Mantis he admires her, and needs some as...

When he joins the call for ‘every Avenger that ever was’ in the anniversary #100, before he returns with Mantis in AVENGERS #114, the Swordsman is still openly considered a criminal. Captain America asks, “last I heard, weren’t you in prison?” “A technicality.” He admits how he got call, along with his typical bluster: he stole one of their planes, he says, and overheard the call on the radio. Nonetheless, Thor invites him to fight for Earth, anyway. Since the beginning, there’s been a similarity to his student Hawkeye, the Archer, in skill set with a weapon and proving himself to others. Hawkeye learned the bow and arrow at the Swordsman’s side, and was the first to find out he was a rotten crook, stealing the box office for their carnival and then cutting a tightrope with Hawkeye on it, escaping, leaving him to fall. In fact, we find out Hawkeye’s real name, Clint Barton, in AVENGERS #65, when his brother returns---so ashamed is he of the crimes committed in the f...

I'll have a new piece together quickly, but in this space, I'm going to simply say I came to see Englehart's romantic quadrangle storyline in the form of a five act play. The first act begins with the Human Bombs attempting to assassinate the Vision, inflaming Wanda's mistrust of human kind and increasing her sense of isolation and identification with the Vision. Then the Swordsman and Mantis are introduced through the next scenes, earning their place in the Avengers. The second act centers around Mantis' identity mystery and sets up the rupture in existing relationships and possibility of a new one. The third act embodies the conflict as it rears its head. Wanda also begins a new, deep, and isolated relationship: with her new mentor, Agatha Harkness. This is where my next piece picks up. The fourth act features a tragedy. The fifth act resolves like a traditional comedy: with marriage! After these next three pieces, I'll be lucky to keep...

Sponsored by Integr8d Soul Productions. Order "Devils and Angels" or "Puzzle Girl" in black ($13 plus shipping) or white ($11 plus shipping) by sending money and message (size, color, design) to luelyron@gmail.com for PayPal, or write there for the address if you want to send a check! Devils and Angels is the cover to D'n'A: The Mountain, our b & w modern supernatural comic! It's only $3.25. 4-way Street So, as the team returns in #119 from a battle they had almost no chance to win (see Scarlet Witch’s post, Avengers/ Defenders War), Mantis senses Swordsman’s pain, but he makes light of it with bluster. Black Panther’s questions about Mantis turn out to be based on his respect for her training, but she says her past is nothing of note. Suddenly she pitches forward—her “Mantis Sense”?---warning of mystic vibrations of great danger in Rutland, Vermont. So quickly, the team is off to what becomes a costumed parade/ party / battle w...