Co-Creator of Guardians of the Galaxy Steve Englehart recently spoke with Polygon and said that Mantis isn’t the character he created, asserting that while “the Mantis on the screen was entertaining…[she] has nothing to do with Mantis.”
“I really don’t know why you would take a character who is as distinctive as Mantis is and do a completely different character and still call her Mantis,” said Englehart. “I liked her, but that’s not Mantis.”
Englehart co-created the character with artist Don Heck, first appearing in Avengers #112 in 1973. She is portrayed as “the Celestial Madonna” and is trained as a skilled martial artist, one who has a more varied emotional palette in the comics. He added, “I will say that I liked the film quite a bit overall, they’re doing good stuff and I enjoyed my night at the movies so long as I turned my brain off to the fact that that’s not Mantis up there.”