Art by Terry and Rachel Dodson

Name : Santo Vaccarro

: Santo Vaccarro Code Names : Rockslide

: Rockslide First Appearance: New Mutants #3 (September ’03)

New Mutants #3 (September ’03) Powers : General rock monster powers

: General rock monster powers Teams Affiliation: X-Men, Hellions, X-Dudes

About

My first experience listening to Coheed & Cambria came from watching the music video for “A Favor House Atlantic” on Fuse. I was not a fan. That first impression stuck with me, even when they gained popularity with the track “Welcome Home”. I just couldn’t shake out all my internalized dislike for the band and their music. His interest piqued by their singles, my dad bought the band’s first 3 albums and told me, “Zack, you have got to listen to this.” I wasn’t sold but I figured I could give it another shot. I popped In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 into my CD player and the title track floored me. This is what I was hating? My first impression was so wrong and it took really taking the time to listen for me to see that. People, sometimes, give very poor first impressions and with guys like the X-Man Rockslide, it is worth it to give them another chance.

Santo Vaccarro was a bully. A mutant kid who looked like a recolored version of The Thing, he showed impressive enough control over his powers that Emma Frost handpicked him to join the training squad, The Hellions. He knew his size and strength allowed him to tower over some other students, like the New Mutants. Alongside his close friend, Jullian Keller, he made sure that The Hellions were the best squad at the school, and more than that be made sure everyone knew it. Santo helped the Hellions win the end of year field day events and the squad ended the year in celebration.

Art by Clayton Henry, Mark Morales, and Wil Quintana

The Hellions decided to spend the summer at Julian’s place in LA and the group contacted a man known as the Kingmaker. The Kingmaker offered them each one wish, whatever their hearts desired, but he was a quid pro quo kinda guy and wanted to be repaid in favors. Santo jumped at the opportunity and decided become a professional wrestler because of course he would. They soon realized the cost of these wishes when the Kingmaker enlisted them to steal a bio-weapon for Dr. Octopus. The kids couldn’t go through with being terrorists, even if it meant losing their hearts desires and they turned the weapon and the Kingmaker over to SHIELD. Santo was blacklisted from the wrestling circuit but at least he knew he was more than just a villain in the making.

Art by Clayton Henry, Mark Morales, and Wil Quintana

He got his chance to shine when the Decimation hit the Xavier Institute. Around this time, Marvel editors realized that all of the best characters from the New X-Men book were on the Hellion, not the New Mutants and the focus really shifted to characters like Rockslide and Mercury. Only twenty-three students kept their powers after M-Day and Emma Frost decided that the reminder would battle for seven spots on the New X-Men training squad. Eagar to prove himself, Santo jumped at the opportunity and easily found his way onto the new team. The joy was short lived as the school was rocked by a savage assault from the Purifiers that killed forty-two for their depowered classmates, including the former Hellion Tag. This shook Rockslide to his core and he vowed the better himself and make sure he used his great power to save as many as he could.

Art by Mark Brooks, Jamie Mendoza, and Brian Reber

The New X-Men often went out of their way to try and deal with perceived threats to the School, as they did when they tracked down the Sentinel Nimrod. In the ensuing fight, Rockslide was obliterated and discovered the extent of his powers. He could reform his body from dust and got a killer redesign in the process. After a similar event happened in Limbo during the “Quest for Magik”, Beast theorized that Rockslide actually existed as an entity without a body, which weirded Santo out. He became closer and closer with his other students, turning away from being the muscle for Hellion and getting very close with Anole. He tested his strength, and lost, against Hulk during World War Hulk and held against the Predator X in the Messiah CompleX.

Art by Skottie Young and Jean-Francois Beaulieu

When the X-Men disbanded briefly, Rockslide was recruited by Cyclops (and by Cyclops I mean Donald Pierce in disguise) to join his new Young X-Men squad. This series didn’t really accomplish anything except eventually get Santo to San Francisco with the rest of the now reformed X-Men but it gave him and Anole more of an opportunity to team up. The buddies went on to patrol the city as the X-Dudes and Rockslide got controlled by Mr. Negative (and by controlled I mean faked it as an elaborate stunt to get Anole to admit that they were best friends). They continued paling around until the X-Men had their Schism and the bro’s decided to go back to school and try and live as students, not soldiers.

Art by Derec Donovan and Andres Mossa

Rockslide enjoyed being back at the school. He kept training alongside Anole and came to terms with what his mutation would mean. He would occasionally go alongside some of his other mutants on missions but stayed out of battles, for the most part, he had seen enough of his buddies killed. He was assigned to Spider-Man’s special class where he started to reconnect with Hellion. Better than that, Rockslide got to be trained by a legit A-List superhero. He had gone from a mutant supremacist in training to a mentee to the greatest pure hero in the Marvel Universe.

Art by Rafa Sandoval

Must Read

Rockslide grew on me. At first, he was a generic background student acting like an 80‘s high school movie bully, but over time he became a big loveable dork who was fiercely loyal. He actually reminds me a ton of Harold from the show Hey Arnold! While he has appeared in a lot of books that I know people have a strong affection for, I think that what Chris Yost did with the character in X-Men: To Serve and Protect was a great distillation of what works about Santo. Him and Anole being friends and beating up street thugs is exactly what he needed to really hit home for me.

Art by Nick Bradshaw

Ranking

Rockslide and his friendship with Hellion remind me of a very comparable couple I already have on this list, Glob Herman and Kid Omega who sit at 23 and 17 respectively. Both are a psychic and their buddy who acts as the brawn, but I’ll tell you what, I like Quire a ton more than Hellion and there is a reason Globby was the second character I wanted to write about. Both characters have more heart and flexibility than Santo so he has to rank below them. Right below that we have Warlock, who I freaking love, and Mercury, who I think is less interesting than Rockslide. That settles it and places Rockslide as the new 25 in the Xavier Files.

Rockslide was requested by /u/Edditch on Reddit and voted on by readers like you. Thanks for the request. If you want to cut to the front of the line, we have a Patreon if you want to support it and get a line cutting reward for just a $1 pledge. We just hit our first goal and just need $8 for me to start reviewing every X-Book each week. Oh and we also have exclusive physical items so check those out!

If you have a request just submit it at the bottom of this article and I will add it to the list!

Click here if you want to see the full ranked list, with links to every entry in the Xavier Files so far.

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Next week you get to vote and I get to write and because I am busy I am going to just pick 4 off the list that I can do without a ton of research. Get Voting!

Who should I write about next week? — Xavier Files (@XavierFiles) November 2, 2016

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