Spiral Zone

Spiral Zone
Spiral Zone title card
Genre	Animation Action
Created by	Diana Dru Botsford
Developed by	Fettes Grey (pseudonym for J. Michael Straczynski)
Written by	Mark Edward Edens Michael Edens Michael Reaves Steve Perry Diana Dru Botsford
Starring	Mona Marshall Frank Welker Dan Gilvezan Michael Bell Hal Rayle Denny Delk Neil Ross
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	65
Production
Executive producer(s)	Edd Griles Donald Kushner Peter Locke Mark Ludke Ray Volpe
Producer(s)	Diana Dru Botsford
Running time	20 min.
Production company(s)	Atlantic/Kushner-Locke The Maltese Companies Orbis Communications
Distributor	Hasbro Studios StudioCanal
Release
Original network	first-run syndication
Original release	September 21 – December 18, 1987

Spiral Zone is a 1987 American science-fiction animated series produced by Atlantic/Kushner-Locke. Based in part from a toy line made by Japanese company Bandai, the series focused on an international group of soldiers fighting to free the world from a scientist who controls much of the Earth's surface. It only ran for one season, with a total count of 65 episodes.

Tonka acquired the license from Bandai and created a different treatment to the series, plus a short-lived toy line.

On June 18, 2007, a renegade military scientist, Dr. James Bent, uses a hijacked space shuttle to drop his deadly Zone Generators across half of the Earth, a region called the Spiral Zone due to its shape.

Millions of people are trapped in the dark mists of the Spiral Zone and transformed into "Zoners" with lifeless yellow eyes and strange red patches on their skin. Because they have no will to resist, Bent - now known as Overlord - makes them his slave army and controls them from the Chrysler Building in New York City.

His followers are known as the Black Widows: Bandit, Duchess Dire, Razorback, and Reaper. They are immune to the Zone because of a special device called the Widow Maker. However, due to prolonged exposure to the Zone, they also share the same effects as normal people caught inside the Zone, which has dark skies and Zone spores growing in many places. Bent seeks to conquer the world by bringing everyone under control with the Zone Generators. The Zones feed off human energy, which is why Bent does not kill anyone inside.

With major cities Zoned, the nations of the world put aside their own differences to fight the Black Widows. However, only five soldiers using special suits to protect themselves from the Zone could do it. While easy to destroy, Zone Generators are impossible to capture because of booby traps. Overlord would drop more generators on remaining military and civilian centers and force the Zone Riders into a standoff.

Bent not only invents the Zone Generators but also an antidote process giving him immunity to the bacteria. He uses this process on his small group of soldiers. While immune to the mind-altering effects, each Black Widow still has lesions on their skin and have yellow dilated eyes.

Later in the series, French scientist Jean Duprey and truck driver Richard Welt join the Black Widows. They were code named Crook and Raw Meat, respectively.