Following in the footsteps of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Jericho, and other series taken away from loyal fans too soon, Sam Raimi’s nineties sleeper M.A.N.T.I.S. will also be seeing a second life as a comic series.
Picking up right where Fox’s cancellation axe landed, M.A.N.T.I.S. Season Two #1, written by former show writer Sam Hamm and drawn by Greg Land, will continue the following adventures of crippled, acronym loving superscientist Miles Hawkins who notoriously died in the final minutes of the show’s series finale.
“OUR Miles did, in fact, die at the end of the show, but as fans on the internet have argued for over a decade, an alternate Miles from 1994 STILL exists in 2026, living in a mysterious future altered by the previous Miles’ timeline changes. ”
Hamm tried to further explain the time travel logic that backs up this rather tenuous loophole in the minutiae that is M.A.N.T.I.S. mythology, but for fans of the underrated character, logic has never mattered much.
“I used to talk to JJ about it everyday on set,” former M.A.N.T.I.S. star Carl Lumbly said. The “JJ” in question is of course JJ Abrams, creator of the hit show ALIAS Lumbly used to perform on. It’s widely believed that M.A.N.T.I.S. was highly influential on JJ’s work.
A lot of the ground that Hamm and co. had planned to cover in the series over time has long since been accomplished by shows like LOST and FRINGE, both Abrams creations. Has the time for M.A.N.T.I.S. passed us by?
“Oh, almost certainly,” Hamm added. “But irrelevance has never stopped us before.”