Mantra Mondays: Mantra #12

I have to ponder sometimes just if the creative team was being directed by an outside hand or if they just worked in a fast paced way?  This is an Anniversary Issue.  Mantra had survived to the one year mark.  They were wrapping up a major crossover story that involved Mantra's main foe, Boneyard, yet, the story is really flat.  Where is the passion and heart of a great story?  It is missing.

The concept is a fantastic one and it just always seems to become a different thing.  Instead of this being about a warrior taking his circumstances and becoming flexible and adaptive Lukasz just whines.  He whines constantly.  It might have been OK for the first five issues or so, but after a year this book should have evolved and become about the spirit being the best part of a person and not the gender or body.  So many times that is almost there.   In the Strangers part of this tale as Spectral discusses spirit and meaning of one's life to Mantra.  Here where Electrocute kisses Mantra and the implications are too much for Lukasz.  That moment is ruined by his incessant whining.

Still, Boneyard is faced.  Grenade is a putz.  The wives and Notch are peripheral nothings.  Demons, a breach, and Atom Bob freed is what you get.  Oh, yeah, the Sword of Fangs does bite deep into one character.  So it lasted a year, but it could have been a better trip.  I have read ahead, so it gets better.

BDS