When I asked Scott Lobdell for a ‘brief' comment on Skin, a character he co-created years ago, he was nice enough to give me a lot of information on what plans he and Chris Bachalo had intended for Skin! Here is what he sent me on January 13th of the year 2000...

"While I have no regrets about leaving Generation X, one of the things that makes me sad is watching SKIN not come into his own powerwise. I can still remember when Chris [Bachalo] called up with the idea... ‘He's this cool character from the Barrio who has too much skin!' Skin? Umm.... okay, what does he do with it? ‘Skin is really cool - - it can blister and callous - - callous really hard, like he can make his skin like armor... or skin can change color, so like it [is] grey while it is extended, but he should be able to almost be chameleon like...' He totally convinced me instantly, and then I made the ‘mistake' of convincing him that we should unspool SKIN's powers gradually... that we should make full use of the school nature of the series and start him out with almost NO control, and then eventually take this guy with what looks like one of the most useless poweers in the world and ultimately make him one of the most powerful members of the team. (You can see in Chris's earliest sketches that Skin looked almost elaphantine.) I say it was a mistake, only in that we never got around to doing it... and now that we're gone, it doesn't seem like anyone is taking the naturally leaps of logic to expand his powers. Think of him like MYSTIQUE, but instead he'd have to actually ‘sculpt' himself each time."

"Also, we tried to always make it clear that it is only his SKIN that he has control over. It seems to me that some people who have written him have thought of him as a bargain basement MR. FANTASTIC. We always assumed that the only way he'd be able to use his skin would be the way that Indiana Jones could use his whip. There shouldn't be mucles in his distended fingers, just skin."

"I mentioned in interviews before how CHAMBER was the first character I brought to the group... and how odd Chris thought it was at first. But it is clear he rebounded instantly and trumped me with the creation of Skin. Who else but Chris Bachalo could have created arguably the Oddest Powered Character In the History of the X-Men! Go Chris!"

Other notable tid-bits from Scott Lobdell :