SYNOPSIS

Miles Hawkins was an angry but brilliant black scientist and owner of Hawkins Technology, Inc. He had been left paralyzed from the waist down after being shot by a corrupt cop working for a sinister industrialist. With the aid of his close friend and associate John, he developed an exoskeleton-like suit that enabled him to walk. While wearing the M.A.N.T.I.S. (Mechanically Automated NeuroTransmitter Interactive System), he had superhuman strength and speed and also resembled a praying mantis.

Miles had a secret headquarters/lab located deep underneath his isolated home on the coast outside Port Columbia. It was from here that he launched the Chrysalis, a craft that looked like a car and could hover like a helicopter. John and Taylor, a bicycle delivery boy who had become Miles' legman, were the only two people who knew his true identity.

As the Mantis, he fought corruption and crime, using a weapon that fired special darts that left those hit by them in temporary paralytic shock. A task force was formed by the police because they considered him a vigilante. Beautiful Leora Maxwell was a member of the task force, but when she eventually found out that the Mantis was Miles, she decided to work with him rather than arrest him.