Every week, we will be examining comic book stories and ideas that were not only abandoned, but also had the stories/plots specifically "overturned" by a later writer (as if they were a legal precedent). Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of The Abandoned An' Forsaked. Feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.

This is the second of a series of special Abadoned an' Forsaked editions specifically spotlighting notable overturned comic book deaths. I call it "Death is Not the End." This week we see how Colossus died, was cremated and then got better.

In 2001, Scott Lobdell was brought back to the X-Books to bridge the gap between the end of Chris Claremont's run on the two main X-Men titles and Grant Morrison's run on New X-Men. Part of Lobdell's mandate was to resolve the Legacy Virus storyline, where mutants were dying from a mysterious disease. In Uncanny X-Men #390, Beast discovers a cure for the virus (which had taken the life of Colossus' younger sister), but also learns that for the cure to work, some mutant would have to use their mutant power and activate the cure. The downside is that in doing so, the mutant in question would die. Naturally, Beast puts the cure aside for the time being. Colossus, though, has other plans...

When Dr. Reyes recovers, she tries to save him...

So Colossus is about as dead as you can get.

However, the next issue, X-Men #110, we follow Kitty Pryde as she takes the cremated ashes of her former boyfriend back to Russia to spread....

(click on the double page spread to enlarge)

Clearly, the above intent was to say, "See, he's dead dead dead dead DEAD. Dude was even cremated!"

However, as it turned out, he was NOT dead and was NOT cremated.

We discover at the end of Joss Whedon and John Cassaday's Astonishing X-Men #4 that Colossus is very much still alive...

At the end of the issue, Colossus asks if death has finally arrived for him...

The following issue, we discover how the original death has been forsaken...

So yeah, that's how an X-Man managed to get past cremation.