Rusty Collins has a rough introduction to the mutant world. He’s a young sailor when his fire powers emerge, and somebody gets badly hurt before he even understands what’s happe…

Rusty Collins has a rough introduction to the mutant world. He’s a young sailor when his fire powers emerge, and somebody gets badly hurt before he even understands what’s happening. So by the time X-Factor gets involved, he’s already frightened of himself and being treated as a threat. That puts him in a very different position from someone who discovers a power, practices with it, and eventually decides to become a superhero. Rusty has to learn how to live with what happened while the consequences are still following him around. Getting better at controlling fire doesn’t automatically settle the legal problems or undo the injury he caused. He also arrives right at the beginning of the original X-Factor setup, when the team is publicly pretending to hunt mutants so they can secretly help them. Rusty makes the problem with that arrangement pretty obvious. He needs somewhere safe to learn, but the people offering that help are also advertising the idea that mutants are something the public should call somebody to remove. There’s a real difference between saying you want to protect young mutants and working out what protection actually means for somebody like him. He needs training, people who won’t panic when they look at him, and a chance to take responsibility without being written off completely. And his concern for the woman he burned doesn’t disappear once the opening story is over. In X-Factor #16, he’s willing to let Masque disfigure him if Masque will repair the damage to her face. That’s an extreme decision, but it shows how heavily he’s still carrying the accident. He’s looking for something he can actually do about it, even if the price comes out of his own body.