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Mantra was a comic book series published by Malibu Comics in the mid 1990s until it was purchased by Marvel Comics, leading to the cancellation of the title after 24 issues.
Mantra was the name of the lead character, an Ultra (superhero) within Malibu's Ultraverse line of comics. An eternal warrior named Lukasz and his compatriots fought the villain Boneyard and when the soldiers would die they would be reborn, until a turn of events led to Archimage, Lukasz' leader, was captured, leading to a final reincarnation for one soldier, Lukasz himself. Lukasz was put into the body of a woman, Eden Blake, the first time he'd not been a man in the 1500 years he'd been fighting, and soon found that Blake, among her natural beauty, also possessed magic powers—an alluring armor, activated when she'd chant a specific phrase including the word 'mantra', leading to the media dubbing her as such.
The Marvel-led Malibu began publication of a second volume with a new Mantra, removing the magic from Eden/Lukasz and casting it onto a minor character from the first series named Lauren Sherwood, a young blonde woman Marvel hoped would be more enticing to readers. The series lasted only 7 issues after the reactionary backlash and exodus from the original series' fans did not continue its readership.
Before the second volume of the series was released rumours and speculation surrounded much of the Ultraverse and how it would interact, if at all, with the Marvel Universe. A piece of promotional art was released showing the Eden Blake Mantra in a group shot with the Fantastic Four, merging the universes much like the latter Amalgam Comics did with Marvel and DC Comics a few years later. In this Four, member Ben Grimm wasn't stuck in the orange rock body of The Thing, but instead as Mantra. Though the rendition of Mantra in the art was much less feminine and more butch and muscular, though in the pages of the Avengers/Ultraforce crossover she was rendered in the usual familiar feminine manner.
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