At Women Write About Comics, Clara Mae talks about Mantis–her history as a character and how she was portrayed in James Gunn’s Guardians Of The Galaxy 2. “When it was announced that director James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy 2 would feature Pom Klementieff as Mantis, I was cautiously excited. In the past I had criticized Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy for its moments of casual misogyny, but overall found the film to be a nice change of pace after the middling Thor: The Dark World and Iron Man 3. And Mantis represented a huge opportunity: while Asian women had made gains in Marvel’s TV and Netflix properties, aside from Dr. Helen Cho in Age of Ultron they were missing from the films. Mantis would be the first Asian woman to star as a lead character in the MCU, and actress Pom Klementieff had the mixed martial arts experience (learned since her time filming Old Boy with Josh Brolin) to pull off a martial arts-heavy character like Mantis. I had my reservations about GOTG2, but for Mantis I was willing to give Gunn the benefit of the doubt. Readers, that was my mistake.”