Read more about Longshot at: Wikipedia Official Site: Marvel Longshot is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic book published by Marvel Comics, most commonly in association with the X-Men. Created by writer Ann Nocenti and artist Art Adams, he first appeared in Longshot #1 (September 1985), the first issue of a six-issue miniseries that represents the first major work of both Nocenti and Adams. The Longshot series established Longshot as an amnesiac fugitive from another dimension who discovers that he has favorable probability outcomes, or "good luck," that protect him when his motives are pure, and that he was a paradox genetically engineered clone of his future son, raised to be a slave who led a rebellion on his dystopian world against his former master and enemy, Mojo. The character subsequently becomes a recurring fixture in the various X-Men related books, which see him as a member of the X-Men from 1986 to 1989, a member of Tony Bedard and Chris Claremont's Exiles teams, and a member of the third incarnation of X-Factor from 2008 - 2013, as well as in his own solo adventures. Versions of the character have also appeared in the Ultimate Marvel line of books, and television and video games. Explaining the concept of the character, which Nocenti borrowed from existentialist writers, she states, "Longshot is the idea of stripping someone of everything that they are. I never read comics, so the idea of a hero to me was different. I couldn't think of it in terms of a 'super hero' hero. I thought of it more as a conceptual hero. Not having a comic book background, I tend to come up with the metaphysics before I come up with the characters. I knew that I wanted to deal with the metaphysics of luck. It was a concept that interested me...what luck is, what probability is, how you could shift probabilities towards yourself. What are the repercussions of that? So, I did a character centered around that idea." Nocenti describes Longshot's state at the beginning of the miniseries by referring to him as "a clean slate. He has no memories, no past, no name, no nothing...In a sense, what I was trying to do was strip someone down to where he had none of the crutches that we normally have. Memory, in a way, is a crutch, or your name, or what you believe you are. So, Longshot's odyssey begins with some very basic questions: Who is he? Why is he here? Ultimately, he goes on a quest for his past and finds it in search of him." A design for the character of Longshot was put forward by Carl Potts, who outfitted the character in a jumpsuit that Adams thought to be reminiscent of the Starfleet uniforms from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Nocenti suggested that Longshot look distinct from other superheroes. She prescribed that he be an alien, have only four fingers on each hand, and has an unusual spine, though this last trait was not mentioned in the comics. Adams created his own design, and wanting to distinguish the character visually, based his mullet haircut on that of musician Limahl, as no other major Marvel character had such a haircut. Nocenti came up with the idea of having Longshot's left eye glow when he uses his power for noble causes: "I was living in a loft on 26th and Sixth and we had a one-eyed cat. I'd go out at night and I'd see this one eye [glowing in the dark]."
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Longshot
