Mantis. One of my all time favorite Marvel characters, and a big hole in my collection. If there's one MTIO team-up which I would have loved to have seen happen, it would have been Mantis. She had a great run in Avengers, and though I've occasionally seen a few of those pages sneak past, they've never been of a high enough quality for me to make a stab at them. However, I also enjoyed her short run in the Silver Surfer, so when this Ron Lim page appeared for a reasonable price, I jumped at it.
     Mantis was apparently killed in a Silver Surfer issue, and this five page back-up story in the Surfer Annual prefaced her brief return to the Avengers, albeit in the pages of West Coast Avengers. Years later this was retconned by her original creator (Steve Englehart) to make her a "shadow" Mantis, one of several pieces of herself which were fragmented elsewhere - Mr. Englehart was unhappy with the way she was portrayed here and decided to more or less erase her from continuity (and from the minds of her friends). The curious thing was that he himself wrote this story, and, for that matter, virtually every appearance of Mantis!
     This came off of EBay in March, 2007. I appear to be a repeat buyer with this gentleman- I purchased a MTIO 39 page and a MTIO 46 page from him over a span of several years.