Ahhh... I didn't realize Englehart had THAT long an Avengers run... I think in my head I thought some of that stuff was Roy Thomas. Some of that is pretty good.

The 70s is really the decade I've read the least of, I realize now.

One of the things I've always been impressed with Englehart's writing is how he finds ways to tie continuity elements together without it seeming like a lecture. There's been some misses in that regard-- Millenium, the last few issues of his WCA-- but all in all, he tends to enrich the stories he's referring to. There's not a lot of other writers who really have that gift, and these days, it really seems like a lost art. (Busiek, Ostrander, Matt Wagner, sometimes James Robinson are among the very few contemporary writers who seem to have that gift.)

Mantis wasn't perfect - no character is - but she was an integral part of what most Avengers readers would rank as one of if not the top Avengers epics of all time, a story that wouldn't have been the same if she had been a more easily likeable character from the start.

To Cei-U's charge of cruelty, etc in Mantis's case, I'd respond that she was shown to acknowledge her errors, to show remorse for and learn from them. That in itself made her interesting, especially in the context of the Celestial Madonna story.

To the charge of bitchiness in Moondragon's case, I'd say that what some readers saw as bitchiness, I saw as a mixture of alien mentality with a sort of cold formality, and, yes, some aristocratic haughtiness, that didn't usually elicit the same kind of criticism in male characters.

As for the Scarlet Witch, to be honest, my memory of the details of Englehart's SW are a bit hazy, but she too was kind of distant and "foreign" to everyone but her brother in her earliest appearances, wasn't she? I liked the scene where she more or less told Hawkeye to keep quiet if he didn't know what he was talking about, one time when Hawkeye challenged Captain America's leadership - this was probably still in the Stan Lee era. If Englehart brought some of that back, I'd probably see it as an improvement over the annoyingly limp and weepy SW I seem to recall from Roy Thomas's Avengers.

I am VERY fond of Steve Englehart's '70s work. His '80s work can go sit on a pole and rotate.

I swear, it's like he had a stroke and never told anyone or something.

Yeah!

I really liked Mantis (the Swordsman too) , and I was happy to see her wherever she popped up. 

Mantis was key to the Celestial Madonna storyline, which is pretty much the only thing that justifies her existence.

Beyond that, however.

A) Her tremendously annoying speech pattern grew really old after about one panel

B) She was introduced in the most Mary Sue possible way, with the obnoxious trope of establishing how awesome she is by having her defeat everyone else, no matter how preposterous such a thing is. I'm pretty sure she defeated Thor with a nerve pinch. Thor, defeated by Kung Fu. Because, obviously.

C) Englehart's insistence on dragging her around with him to every damn title he worked on for the next 40 years regardless of what universe he was writing in or whether she had any role at all in the story was essentially just trolling comic fans. It's taking the self-indulgence of 70's comic writers and blowing it out to a whole new epic level pretty much untouched by anyone else. Earth-Prime Cary Bates thinks it was over the top.

She's just a black mark on his record as far as I'm concerned. Any time Englehart was on a series, I'd think, well, this will be good for a while until he drags Mantis into it. As Ben Franklin famously said, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes and Steve Englehart shoehorning Mantis into every story."

It's Marvel Team-Up #27.

Cei-U!
I summon the ID!