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Mantra comics
From: guest , 105 months, post #1
Hi
I cant seem to find any links to download Mantra comics anywhere, I am looking for issues 17-20, if any of you could help I'd be very grateful.

From: Holly Dunn , 105 months, post #2
Were there that many? I thought the comic label went belly up early into that series.

From: guest , 105 months, post #3
Direct links are not allowed, but the full Mantra run is available in torrent form. Mantra is part of the Ultraverse; if you Google "ultraverse" and "torrent", you can find every comic set in the Ultraverse, including Mantra.

From: Dale Ribbons , 105 months, post #4
In response to Holly Dunn: I know the Mantra series reached at least 22 issues as I just bought # 22 at a used bookstore.

From: Holly Dunn , 105 months, post #5
ah. cool. ty for the info Dale.

From: Random , 105 months, post #6
Mantra vol1 reached 24 issues, plus one Giant Size issue, plus a two issue mini-series. She also had numerous appearances in other Ultraverse comics of the time(they were really pushing the shared universe thing at the time). I think she only showed up in the first couple of vol2 of Mantra(after the Marvel purchase).

From: Holly Dunn , 105 months, post #7
It's been a long time since AI have seen Mantra, but didn't the Ultraverse fold, someone bought them, and they replaced the male soul in Mantra with a female one? It seemed like there were only about 8 or 10 TG Mantra comics if I can remember that far back. Please correct me if I am misremembering (though misremembering will qualify me to run for Congress in 2016.)

From: guest , 105 months, post #8
That's mostly correct, Holly, except that the series ran for 24 issues before it was rebooted with a new born-female character.

There's a page here, made by a TG fan, with a ton of information if anyone's interested:

http://www.mantraverse.com/

From: Random , 105 months, post #9
There were the 24 vol1 Mantra comics that contained the TG character(for the most part. There was a brief time in the comic where he managed to give back the body to the original owner and moved his soul into a clone body or something, but stuff happened and he ended up as a woman again). Then, IIRC, Malibu got bought by Marvel, and they tried to connect the Ultraverse into the Marvel continuity, and when they restarted Mantra they had the original Mantra give up her powers to her student/secretary/something. That was vol2, and that didn't last that long.

From: guest (charliesorrell) , 105 months, post #10
marvel comics(which i love) killed Mantra. so much potential there...........

From: guest (Aladdin) , 105 months, post #11
Mantra is one of my favorite subjects. I've had hours of phone interviews with Malibu people who worked on MANTRA. Mike Barr was particularly generous with his time. I did this research in order to build the "book" that would allow a person to write the most informed fan fiction he possibly could. (My stories so far are at Fictionmania (and a couple of the early ones at Mantraverse), and I have another full length fan novel in the writing.

Back then I asked a lot of questions about how the new Mantra related to the old Mantra. Not even the author knows what took the old Mantra's powers away (he did it because he was told to get her out of the comic book. The former editor said it was done to replace her with a less sexually controversial character. (What controversy? He didn't even realize that Dax was a successful character in Malibu's licensed series in "Deep Space 9"). Maybe Mantra would be more acceptable to editors today, with societal evolution (Even in 1995 Malibu ignored the fact that Mantra always ranked at or near the very top of their sales).

But the new Mantra, Lauren, did not gain Mantra's powers. She was born with her own posers, like Eden Blake (old Mantra) was. A demon decided to use Lauren as a weapon against Mantra and stimulated her latent powers. After Lauren reconciled with Mantra and the demon was banished, her powers became latent again. During the night of Black September something, either from a self-protective response, or in response to the wild magic that was abroad that night, Lauren's powers came back suddenly. With Eden's powers suppressed after an injury, Eden let Lauren do her own thing while she tried to make the best of the life left to her. She acted as a friend and mentor to Lauren until Mike Barr left the company. She made one last personal appearance in a Malibu micro-story in a late Ultraverse issue.

The new crew that took over when the old Malibu gang was fired by Marvel soon realized that Black September was a terrible mistake and their plan was to minimize it and make it pretty much irrelevant to their ongoing Ultraverse. Unfortunately, the number of comics they had to work with were very few and they could not move the restoration along very quickly. Then, at the start of 1997, Marvel shut down the whole line. The chief editor has since made public excuses why they don't revive the Ultraverse, claiming that to pay royalties under the old contracts would be too expensive. But some of the most successful Marvel Comics have been published under the royalty system, such as Conan the Barbarian. Royalties didn't stop them from publishing the Amanda Blake stories. There is something else at the root of the intransient attitude of the Marvel editorship. The Marvel staff as a whole was very hostile to the Malibu staff back in 1995-1996. They didn't want to work with Malibu as an equal. When Malibu wanted to bring in some Marvel characters, all they got (until it was too late) was the Black Knight. The Black who?

One might have hoped that the Disney connection might have overruled such prejudice, but nothing has happened. But that follows a pattern. What has Disney done with the great Crossgen line since they bought it? With all their money, no one could meet the price that they'd be asking to set these super comic lines free, I'm sure.

From: guest (Kara) , 105 months, post #12
Actually, I seem to recall Malibu using the Marvel version of Loki in a few crossovers...and magic-wise, he was a top-tier villain.

From: guest (Aladddin) , 105 months, post #13
True. But as I said, "until it was too late." According to my information, the then-top management at Marvel was committed to the success of Malibu, because the purchase had been their own project. They wanted a good outcome to make themselves look good. Marvel corporate schemers never seemed to realize at the outset that the purchase would never work. The reason that many fans were reading Malibu and not Marvel was that they couldn't stand Marvel (and maybe DC, too.) When Marvel barged into Malibu, many of these fans were appalled and dropped their support for the whole line. Those fans who still followed the UV blamed everything that they didn't like in the developing Malibu universe on Marvel interference/dictation. This wasn't true the true state of affairs. Like, the changes in the Freaks were made not because of Marvel personnel or directives; the changes were made because Freaks was one of the titles that was suffering in the bad market that followed the collapse of the comic collector market. Whether the changes in Freaks were good or bad, it didn't matter to many fans. They suspected (even assumed) that Marvel was behind it, and they shunned the Freaks in protest.

As the sale of Malibu comics shrank, there was increasing pressure put on the Malibu management to improve things. Marvel was not worrying about any specific plot line, such as Mantra being a male soul in a female body. The bottom line was the only thing that mattered to New York. What the Rosenberg, Ulm, Mason and the others should have done was to go to the Malibu creator staff, put their cards on the table, and ask for their help. But this was not done. Instead the publishers, who had never created or written any successful comic book, decided that they knew how to craft better story ideas than Malibu's team of experts. They would have an attention-grabbing "big event". It was called Black September.

What BS really seemed to be was an excuse to rewrite the whole Ultraverse, seeking to fix any perceived problem without any regard to the established history of the universe. The problem was, what they perceived to be wrong was misguided. It was all the result of a bad market combined with an unpopular merger. And even if they had known what the problems were, the solutions they offered were ridiculous.

A couple of great UltraForce characters were banished (like Contrary and Hardcase) and two newly minted nobody heroes were plugged into the UF, as if they had always been there. Mantra, one of the most popular comics and characters, was deactivated for being controversial and an untried teen heroine was put in her place, seemingly calculated to be like every other teen heroine that had been stultifying comic book readers for decades. Most ongoing titles were cancelled and their creators were not given new assignments, but were laid off. No-names were brought in from nowhere to write new comic titles. There was a new comic, SIREN, but why was this mess foisted on the UV? Siren was only a background character the UF before, and her short-lived comic showed that she should have stayed a background character. Nightman was allowed to limp on for a half dozen more issues, but it apparently was never intended to continue on longer. Why not? The things that unfolded with the consumation of Black September were unremittedly painful and conceptually awful.

You cite the appearance of Loki, Kara. That was a late move, like the appearance of the Avengers in the last days of the Ultraverse. It was a desperate measure to draw attention to Malibu. Apparently, the Marvel leadership had ended the stubborn resistance of Marvel editors by fiat and and handed the characters that Malibu wanted over to their use. It was like handing out the parachutes when the plane is already reaching sea level. "Black September" was ginned up as a revolutionary change and the Avengers/Loki were meant to dress up the days leading up to it. These Marvel characters vanished from the UV when the changes of Black September were actually established, in the September 1995 issues.

After that point, hardly any of the old Malibu fan base was still reading. The Marvelization of the Malbu univese had not drawn in Marvel reader because these fans couldn't spread their discretionary income far enough to include a whole additional comic line.

With Malibu readership now in ashes, the friendly Marvel leadership (those who had wanted the merger) were fired. The new management turned against the original deal and saw Malibu only as a source of red ink that had to be gotten rid of. At Malibu the blood letting was complete. No major exec was kept. A lower echelon editor from a non-Ultraverse line of Malibu was promoted, but the general layoffs were so brutal, especially among the writing staff, that the offices were left almost empty. This wasn't reorganization; it was wanton destruction. They actually had to hire new people to bring the staff up to the level of a skeleton crew. For several months the label was allowed to limp along with only 3 or 4 titles, until the end of 1996 when the final kill order was issued in New York. Marvel itself was in bankruptcy and Malibu was considered only part of the dead weight that had to go.

I really enjoyed the appearance of Loki in Mantra Magazine. It was one of Mantra's best issues. That issue, written by Mike Barr, showed what the new union of Malibu with Marvel could have been, should have been. But it was the product of Malibu's amazing creators. Except for the doomed leadership at Marvel, the Marvel rank and file never showed Malibu anything except scorn. Why? I think it was a club mentality. Old blood doesn't like new blood. Dumb and lazy Marvel was too big to fail; brilliant, innovative Malibu wasn't.

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