Comic Couples We Love: The Tragedy Of Rusty & Skids

Another great thing about Louise Simonson‘s X-Factor is the way she established two parallel casts of characters in the series. There was the titular X-Factor, composed of the original X-Men (Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Angel, Beast and Iceman). But there was also the collection of their young mutant trainees/wards, the teenaged Rusty, Skids, Rictor and Boom-Boom, along with the pre-teen Artie and Leech (and sometimes Wiz-Kid).

While the adult X-Factor headlined the series and got most of the superhero action, the teen trainees received their fair share of page time along the way, kind of like if the New Mutants were perpetual guest-stars in Uncanny X-Men instead of having their own book. And just like the titular heroes had Cyclops and Marvel Girl as the romance at the heart of their group, the X-Factor trainees had Rusty and Skids.

The fire-generating Rusty Collins debuted in X-Factor #1, the first young mutant taken in as part of the book’s ill-advised (in both Doylist and Watsonian terms) initial premise of a group of mutants posing as mutant hunters. While serving in the US Navy, Rusty’s powers activated and he accidentally burned a woman, putting him on the run before being taken in by X-Factor. Sally “Skids” Blevins debuted a few months later, in X-Factor #7 (Simonson’s second issue of the series). One of the Morlocks — a group of outcast mutants living in the sewers beneath Manhattan – Skids generates a forcefield that is difficult for her to turn off. She and Rusty meet cute when Skids helps Rusty escape from Freedom Force, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants-turned-federal agents.

Some of best comic book romances have a touch of irony to them — Gambit, who seems like the kind of guy who touches everything, falls in love with the untouchable Rogue; the reserved, taciturn Cyclops keeps falling for women who can read his mind — and Rusty and Skids are no exception. He’s afraid of burning anyone he gets close to, she has a forcefield against which harmful things like fire “skid” off. It’s a match made in dramatic heaven!

And for the most part, it was. In part because they never really rose above the level of supporting characters, most of Rusty and Skids tenure in X-Factor has the couple pleasantly in love. There are challenges — such as when Rusty refused to register with the government in accordance with the Mutant Registration Act and remanded himself to Naval prison for his actions in his first appearance — but the pair’s relationship isn’t defined by the kind of soap operatic drama that is all too common in superhero relationships.

Eventually, the X-Factor kids, including Rusty and Skids, spun off into their own miniseries (the first X-Terminators, part of 1989’s “Inferno” crossover event) and from there, join up with the New Mutants, getting integrated into the regular cast of their series, leaving X-Factor behind (by then, Simonson was writing both books). And that’s when things started to go bad for Rusty and Skids.

New Mutants at that point already had a large cast, and the addition of four new members in Rusty, Skids, Rictor and Boom-Boom only added to that. Thus, when the New Mutants ended up in Asgard for a long, multi-party story, Rusty and Skids were left behind on Earth, once again relegated to subplot pages while Rictor and Boom-Boom got to hang out with the “core” New Mutants cast in the A-plot.

Shortly thereafter, then-superstar artist and presumed podophobe Rob Liefeld joined Simonson on New Mutants, and set about rejiggering the cast as he gained more control over the direction of the series (eventually leading to its transformation into the first X-Force). In his second issue as regular penciler, Rusty and Skids are written out of the series as their Earthbound B-plot lands them in government custody, at which point they are broken out by — and in gratitude, end up joining — the new villain team, the Mutant Liberation Front.

Whatever plans — if any — Liefeld had for Rusty and Skids as members of the MLF never came to fruition. The MLF made two more prominent appearances under Liefeld’s pen (once in New Mutants, once in X-Force) before he left Marvel to join a group of fellow superstar artists in the formation of Image Comics. In the wake of the Sturm und Drang of the Image Exodus, Rusty and Skids appeared twice more: once as part of the MLF in the linewide “X-Cutioner’s Song” crossover (which, in part, effectively closed the book on Liefeld’s initial iteration of the group) and then briefly in X-Force, in which Magneto revealed they’d been brainwashed into staying with the MLF, leading them to … join Magneto’s group of villains, the Acolytes. The next time they appeared, shortly after “Age of Apocalypse”, Rusty is killed by the reality-hopping and poorly-named villain Holocaust, after which Skids disappeared into comic book limbo.

Over the ensuing decades, the pair would make a few more appearances. Skids turned back up with the Morlocks, and was a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent briefly. Rusty eventually got resurrected, first briefly by Selene in “Necrosha X” and then for a slightly longer time on Krakoa, only to suffer the twin indignities of being the nominal inspiration for “Russell Collins” in Deadpool 2 and being killed off in the first issue of Mark Russell’s X-Factor.

But they haven’t appeared on page together since the early ’90s, their once-foundational romance yet to be revisited or rekindled. A tragic end to a couple that was once the beating heart of X-Factor‘s sub-cast of young mutants.