Spiral (character)
fictional character in Marvel Comics
Spiral (Rita Wayword) is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, usually those featuring the X-Men family of characters. Created by writer Ann Nocenti and artist Art Adams, the character first appeared in Longshot #1 (September 1985). Spiral was a human stunt-woman, before being enslaved and transformed into a six-armed sorcerer by Mojo.
Spiral was established as a lieutenant for Longshot's archenemy, Mojo. Prior to Longshot joining the X-Men, Spiral also became a recurring adversary of the various X-Men subgroups, as well as serving as the archenemy-turned-ally of X-Men member Psylocke. She later joined a team of X-Force led by X-Men member Storm.
Publication history
Spiral first appeared in issue #1 of the 1985 Longshot miniseries by Ann Nocenti and Art Adams (though her alter ego Ricochet Rita did not debut until the second issue of the series), and subsequently appeared two months later as a member of Mystique's Freedom Force team in Uncanny X-Men #199. Spiral began as one of 20 minor characters that Adams designed on a character sheet as the pursuers of the character Longshot. Her six arms were inspired by deities in Hindu mythology. Although Adams gave little thought to Spiral, as he had developed ideas for the other characters he had drawn on the sheet, Nocenti decided to make her a major character, and gave her the name Spiral.
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This entry incorporates text from “Spiral (character)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.