Featuring the following heroine!

Mantis

AKA: The Celestial Madonna. Or, when she's visiting the JLA over at the Distinguished Competition, Willow. And, according to Vaughn Rhoades, she's known as Lorelei when she's over at Eclipse Comics (check out Scorpio Rose 2).

First appearance: Avengers 114, after shadowy cameos in 112 and 113.

Favorite quote: "Bring harm to this one's man at your own peril, rash one!" (To Kang in Avengers Giant Size 2 as the Conqueror threatened the Vision. When the Scarlet Witch objected, one of the best cat fights in comics history started).

Team affiliation: Mantis has hung out with the Avengers and the Fantastic Four, although she didn't actively belong to either group. After the death of the Swordsman, she wed his body, reanimated by a member of the Cotati plant race (just go with me on this). When they split up, Mantis became involved with the Silver Surfer. At some unspecified point before The Crossing, she married Kang the Conqueror (maybe that should be, she married a Kang the Conqueror...)

Powers: The ability to give birth to The One. Oh, and she's the most skilled martial artist in the universe. And she is strongly intuitive. And she represents the ultimate meld of the physical with the mental. But everyone always forgets about all those other things.

Favorite Storyline: Captain Marvel 33, where her perfect control of mind and body, coupled with her empathic ability, devised a plan that saved a Universe. Natch, Mar-Vell got all the credit for it. In addition, Mantis was The Other Woman in my all-time favorite story, the romance between the Vision and the Scarlet Witch.

Least Favorite Storyline: Whatever the heck just happened during the much-ballyhooed, virtually unreadable Crossing. Not that Mantis destroying the Avengers or hooking up with Kang was necessarily out of character; she was once the most hated character in Marveldom, and with good reason; the story was simply incoherent. It was never clear if she was after the Vision for rejecting her, or after Wanda for grabbing the Vision, or trying to regain custody of her half-plant child, or wanting revenge against Iron Man for...I have no idea why she would want revenge against Iron Man. That was part of the problem with the Crossing. The character utterly destroyed by Kang and Mantis was one they had no particular gripe against, other than the usual nebulous gripes bad guys have against good guys. Go figure.