The Wounded World, a story of Mantra, Chapter 1

THE WOUNDED WORLD

By Aladdin 

Edited by Christopher Leeson

Originally written 2006

Revised Sept. 21, 2018
Revised April 26, 2020

A NOTE FROM CHRISTOPHER LEESON

I never enjoyed a comic-book series better than I did Malibu Comic's MANTRA, one of its Ultraverse titles. It ended in 1996 due to a series of bad business and creative decisions, first on the part of the management staff of Malibu Comics, and then by the leadership of Marvel Comics, which had only lately purchased it.

Mantra vanished along with the rest of the Ultraverse.  Out of all the darkness, there came a faint light five years later.  The stories of Aladdin started to appear, new tales of Mantra (published at Fictionmania.tv) which were professional in quality and presented a Mantra that ran true to the original. But Mantra's revival in fan-fiction was to be sadly brief. 

In all, Aladdin completed five stories inspired by Mantra's adventures. The last of them was Part I of a two part adventure called “The Wounded World.” It was intended to be concluded with a follow up, “The Twilight of the Gods.” Unfortunately, the pesky business of making a living foiled Aladdin's intention to bring out the latter story, at least to date. The text of “Twilight of the Gods” does exist, fortunately, as something between a rough draft and a very detailed outline. 

As an admirer of Aladdin's work, I made contact with the author. I must have made a pest of myself, urging Aladdin to, somehow, find time enough to finish the uncompleted novel. I was told that work has been keeping him pinned down. Nonetheless, he held out a hope that he could eventually go back to fan writing after retirement. Finally, I could wait no long and made the best of Ultraverse fan writers an offer. I would finish and revise “Twilight of the Gods” myself, if he pledged to give me as much editing and creative advice as he had time for. The last part was important; I wanted to turn out a finished product that held on to as much of Aladdin's original vision as possible. In exchange, we would be considered joint authors. It was an immense vote of confidence that Aladdin said "Yes." 

Consequently, I have started working on The Twilight of the Gods, based upon Aladdin's original work. It will be slow going, considering that I am currently working on the next "Eerie, AZ" novella, The Belle of Eerie, Arizona. The latter I hope to have ready for posting in about a year.

Okay, given that background, why, one might ask, am I offering what amounts to a third project, The Wounded World, starting today?

The reason is not so simple. Aladdin and I agree that readers would find Twilight of the Gods hard to understand if readers do not first get familiar with events of The Wounded World, which sets up the universe-shattering conflicts that Mantra struggles to resolve in The Twilight of the Gods. So, while I am putting most of my time into writing and editing the other two books, I'll also be doing some rather light editing on The Wounded World and posting it chapter by chapter into my personal TFTGS space.

The effort will take more than a year, but should leave me time enough to work on the other books also. Readers of TFTGS will be presented with a roughly 10-page chapter each month. My readers at TFTGS will already be familiar with this posting method.  Anyway, segmented adventures should be familiar enough to comic book fans.

As editor, I have made this pledge to Aladdin: That he will have approval rights over all modifications done to his original work. Incidentally, that is the best relationship that all authors and editors should seek to achieve. Too often, editorial ego gets in the way of smooth cooperation. Bad editing is more the rule than the exception. I will make it a priority to change that.

Now a word from Aladdin himself.