In Death is Not the End, we spotlight the outlandish explanations for comic book characters (mostly super-villains) surviving seeming certain death.

After last week's column, reader Hector N. wrote in to ask me to feature Colossus, so here we are (I had spotlighted his death as an Abandoned an' Foesaked some years ago)!

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 discovered a cure for the virus (which had taken the life of Colossus' younger sister), but also learned 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 put the cure aside for the time being. Colossus, though, had other plans...

When Dr. Reyes recovered, she tried to save him...

So Colossus was about as dead as you can get.

The next issue, "X-Men" #110, we saw that they took it one step further, as we followed Kitty Pryde as she took the cremated ashes of her former boyfriend back to Russia to spread....

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

At the end of the issue, Colossus asked if death had finally arrived for him...

The following issue, we discovered how the original death was explained away...

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

Thanks for the suggestion, Hector! If anyone else has an idea for a notable character whose death was reversed, feel free to drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!