Art by Marc Silvestri and Josef Rubinstein
- Name: Sally Blevins
- Code Names: Skids
- First Appearance: X-Factor #7 (Aug 1986)
- Powers: Personal Force Field
- Teams Affiliation: Morlocks, X-Terminators, New Mutants, Mutant Liberation Front, Acolytes, SHIELD
About
Community is one of the most important things in a person’s life, and I am not talking about the Dan Harmon show. That sense of belonging, having a role, having a place, it’s essential to the human experience. You don’t have to be the leader, the strongest, the smartest, the prettiest, you just have to be you. When you are missing that aspect of community, you miss the chance to grow, to have your ideas challenged, and to improve the lives of others just by existing. Sally Blevins was a character always looking for a community. Like many of us she needed something to be a part of to feel whole, and in doing so a very engaging X-Man was born.
Created by Louis Simonson and Jackson Guice, Sally came from a horrific beginning. Her father was an abusive man, exploding at his family for small offences. Teenage Sally always tried to look stylish and she found the perfect accent to her ensemble, a bold pearl necklace. Her mother thought the pearls were beautiful but her father thought they made her look like a whore. He was enraged that his wife would let their teenage daughter dress so inappropriately and viciously beat her in front of Sally. This wasn’t anything Sally hadn’t seen before but something was different tonight, he wasn’t stopping like he normally did. Sally cried out for him to stop, her mother lying bloodied on the floor, but he only turned his attention to the girl. He shot his fist forward but it just slipped right away from Sally, her mutant ability to generate a force field had awakened.
Art by David Mazzucchelli, Josef Rubinstein, and Petra Scotese
Her father was terrified; he gave birth to a freak. With the miraculous advent of her powers, Sally Blevins found the strength to stand up to her father and chased him from the home. Sally rushed to her mother’s side. She was bruised and bloodied but told her daughter the pick up the broken pearls and leave, to have a better life than she could give Sally. She tried to pick up her mother and get her medical attention but she couldn’t get a grip. As her mother slipped out of Sally’s arms and out of the realm of the living she told her again, run away. Her old life in shambles, Sally left and never looked back.
Being a mutant wasn’t popular, so Sally had to keep running till she found people who understood her, the Morlocks. She wasn’t like the rest of them. She was cute, upbeat, and had a sense of style that was more Cyndi Lauper then The Warriors. Still the sewers of New York became her home and she protected it, even at the expense of her fellow mutants. When the radioactive Glowworm and Bulk tried to find solace with the Morlocks, Sally was the one to chase them off to protect her people. She felt like she belonged there and even took a Morlock name, Skids. Life wasn’t perfect but she had settled into a routine, into her new normal. Enter Rusty Collins.
Art by Terry Shoemaker, Joe Rubinstien, and Petra Soctese
Rusty was a mutant, the first recruit of X-Factor in fact. He was also wanted by the US Navy due to an incident that happened right as his pyrokinitic powers emerged, and Uncle Sam had come to collect in the form of Freedom Force. Skids was upset seeing another mutant being attacked and saved the cute red head as she whisked him off to the Morlock tunnels. His flames couldn’t pierce her shield, but his sultry glances melted her soul. She had suddenly found the love of her life and things would never be the same again.
She followed Rusty back to X-Factor headquarters and was convinced to stay. There she was able to develop some sort of control over her powers, even gaining enough skill to touch another person. She bonded with her fellow students and took an active role in better developing mutant/human relations. When the leaders of X-Factor decided that their wards needed to learn more than just controlling their mutant powers, like math for example, they thought it best to send the kids to a boarding school. Worse, Rusty came to the realization that mutants couldn’t become equals with humans if they treated themselves as above the law, and turned himself into the military police. The community Skids had worked so hard to build was rapidly falling apart.
Art by Jon Bogdanove, Al Milgrom, and Petra Scotese
When demons kidnapped fellow X-Factor wards Artie and Leech (who I can’t wait to do one of these about, and yes they get written about and ranked together) Skids sprang into action. She, alongside Boom Boom, Rictor, and their new classmate Taki, busted Rusty out of prison and traversed into the Inferno enveloped New York to rescue their young friends. Along the way they teamed up with the New Mutants and started a friendship that would bond the two groups forever. They were successful in rescuing their companions and, as the Xavier Institute was destroyed in the aftermath of Inferno, the teams decided to merge together. Skids’ little community was getting bigger and bigger.
Art by Jon Bogdanove, Al Milgrom, and Petra Scotese
Freedom Force wasn’t done with Rusty and attempted to capture him again, but Sally was unwilling to see the love of her life ripped from her. It was in vain and she only ended up getting imprisoned as well. There Skids became disillusioned, she was just doing what she thought was right and the government locked her up. She heard of a group known as the Mutant Liberation Front, they seemed like freedom fighters, proactive for mutants where X-Factor was reactive. The MLF broke into the facility where Rusty and Skids were being held and the two decide to join them. This decision turned for the worse when they discovered the identity of the MLF’s leader, the villainous and spikey Strife. The couple was brainwashed and forced to serve Strife’s will.
Art by Rob Liefeld, Bob Wiacek, and M. Rockwitz
Skids followed diligently, even attacking her former New Mutants teammates and their new team, X-Force. When the Mutant Liberation Force was defeated in the X-Cutioner’s Song, X-Force took their brainwashed friends in. This arrangement didn’t last long and the two welcomed the opportunity to follow Exodus to Avalon. Exodus took them to his savior, Magneto who had a strong distaste for brainwashing and used his vague magnetic abilities to heal Rusty and Skids. They felt a sense of responsibility to Magneto and the community he was building on Avalon. They decided to stay and join his Acolytes, serving a new master.
Eventually Avalon was attacked by Holocaust. The mutant was weak and needed to absorb a massive amount of energy, and Rusty was the closest target. Holocaust killed the boy, destroyed Avalon, and flung Skids towards Earth. With the help of her former teacher, Jean Grey, Skids used her force field to survive the fall. The love of her life dead and her new home destroyed, Skids abandoned the superhero life and tried to be a normal college student. She returned to join Sunspot’s branch of the X-Corporation for a brief time but eventually left to try a pursue a normal life.
Art by Paul Smith, Matt Ryan, and Kevin Somers
Skids was one of the few mutants to retain her abilities after M-Day, much to her dismay. She aligned herself with Apocalypse when he attacked the mutant camp on the lawn of the Xavier Institute but was stopped by her friends before she could do anything she would regret. When the Morlock Masque began his terrorist attacks, Skids followed him. Masque thought he was fulfilling a prophecy from a precognitive Morlock and believed he was chosen to wage a war between mutants and humans. When the X-Men intervened, Skids was forced to reveal that she was actually an undercover SHIELD agent working the case and she assisted the X-Men in taking Masque down. Before anyone could notice Skids snuck away with the book of prophecy. She met her true master in a cemetery and said the book said big things about him and she handed it over to Magneto. She has not been seen since.
Art by Salvador Larroca and Jason Keith
Must Read
Skids was always at best with the X-Factor kids and Louise Simonson’s run on that book is an underrated classic. The development those kids got, especially between the Mutant Massacre and Inferno was fabulous. It was enough to make you scratch your head at why these students felt so real while New Mutants at the time was lacking. While it is poorly collected I would urge you to read the first 30 some issue of this series if you haven’t already. You can find it is b&w news stock in the Marvel Essential’s collections and in bits and pieces on Marvel Unlimited.
Art by Walter Simonson and Josef Rubinstein
Ranking
Sally Blevins has had some good and she has had some bad. I personally love her early work with X-Factor but everything afterwards it just a mess. Maybe it is just because her powers aren’t that interesting once she can control them or because she spent so much time as a reluctant villain but she just didn’t have staying power. Plus giving her anything to wear except fabulous 80’s fashion was a monumental mistake. She has to rank below fellow X-Factor kid Boom Boom for sheer personality and staying power. Looking at the other X-Kids below her we have Goldballs, Glob, Mercury, Armor, and Elixir. She is much less memorable than the two boys up top, and I enjoyed Mercury’s stories much more as a whole. Armor is another character who had one great run and not much else but she gets the nod thanks to Astonishing being as good as it is. I would be way more excited to see classic Skids over Elixir and because of that she ranks as the new number 19 in the Xavier Files.
Skids was requested by /u/RembrandtEpsilon on reddit and Scott from the Patreon. Thanks for the request guys! If you want to cut to the front of the line like Scott, we just started a Patreon if you want to support it and get a line cutting reward. Our first goal is only $15 and it gets rid of those ads and makes the hosting for Xavier Files entirely reader supported.
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Zachary Jenkins co-hosts the podcast Battle of the Atom and is the former editor-in-chief of ComicsXF. Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside all this.
