The real spiral here is probably the sales numbers.

I'm still waiting for my new Marvel Legends Spiral to ship: it's by all accounts, a pretty well done figure. Particularly since her old one wasn't that great; although I think I probably still have it in the garage. Still, it seemed like a good excuse to pull this one from the quarter bins: from 1997, Excalibur #109, "Dragon Moon Rising" Written by Ben Raab, pencils by Salvador Larroca, inks by Scott Koblish.

Post-Onslaught, Excalibur was still thinking about how to fill the void left by all the heroes that got shipped over to Image, but they aren't off to a great start as Nightcrawler blows up Cerebro while trying to repair it. (Do most failed computer repairs explode like that? They damn well do in X-Men comics!) Kurt is also fretting about how to get Moira MacTaggert's mind off her troubles: namely, that she still hadn't found a cure for the Legacy Virus she had also contracted. Kurt's teammates, meanwhile, are themselves fretting since his girlfriend and their occasional teammate Amanda Sefton seemed to have flaked out and bailed. But, enough of that, as Spiral appears! She's apparently captured Meggan, so Kurt clashes swords with her, but with only three swords to her four, gets punched out. Pete Wisdom distracts Spiral, so Kitty can grab her and phase her through the floor, then checks on Meggan, who claims to see an invisible man with a warning about Brian, and takes off. While everyone gives chase to Spiral, in Hong Kong, the Dragons of the Crimson Dawn examine the captive Brian Braddock. I forget if he was Captain Britain again at this point, or still going by...ugh...Britanic. Seriously, that's gotta be a placeholder name that made it to the final. Brian tries to make a showing of it, since he doesn't know what happened to Meggan, but he's lost his can-do attitude, since he knew he was losing power by not being in Britain.

Also placeholders: the Dragons. I feel like everybody vaguely remembers them from a couple Joe Madureira issues of Uncanny, and Psylocke had a red kinda mark over her eye afterwards? Wolverine got a ninja Wolvie action figure outta the deal? Well, the Dragons themselves have made five appearances, total, three of which were this run in Excalibur! I know they have names but don't recall them or care to look, but one of them looks like kung-fu Tharg. Also, the pages set in Hong Kong have borders in the style of a Chinese restaurant's menu circa 30 years ago.

I actually had to look if my copy was missing pages, since the scene shifts back from Hong Kong to Spiral vs. Wolfsbane, but wasn't she fighting Kitty? Yeah, there are pages out of order. The whole comic actually reads kind of choppy anyway if you get a copy; in the middle of the book there's a big three-page ad for Howard Mackie and John Romita Jr.'s run on Peter Parker, Spider-Man. Kurt manages to get the upper hand on Spiral, who then explains she no longer works for Mojo, and was there because she needed their help to save herself: she had run into the Dragons in her extradimensional Wildways, and had been given the same red brand Psylocke had. She was trying to get out from under them, and didn't want them to get Brian's power. Kitty and Colossus know they can't trust Spiral, but Meggan begs them to let her try, since she and Brian were about to be--married! A long time coming. With some cheesy lines, Kurt agrees to the mission, and the team is teleported to Hong Kong... 

Ugh. Following Warren Ellis would be a tough go for anyone, but Ben Raab wrote several books at Marvel about that time and I didn't like any of them; like the last issue of Spider-Man 2099. (In his defense; he co-wrote that one after regular writer Peter David quit, so he could've been on the spot there.) He's done more work for TV in recent years. Larroca had one more issue on Excalibur, and then the book gets really hit-or-miss on the art for a little over another year, when Excalibur would be cancelled with #125, and Kurt, Kitty, and Piotr would be rolled back into the X-Men. Phooey.