10 Most Tragic Deaths In The History Of Marvel Comics

9. Colossus

The strangest superheroes of them all are not strangers to heroic sacrifices. In Giant Size X-Men #1 they immediately lost one of their new members, Thunderbird, who died taking down a plane that was attacking the rookie team. Nearly everybody who has fronted Charles Xavier's rag-tag group of mutants has fallen at some point, eventually resurrected through psychic, cosmic or magical means. Death is at its most fluid and common in the X-Men books, but that didn't stop us from being totally grief stricken at the passing of Peter Rasputin, better known as the hulking metal-covered Colossus.

Colossus was part of the Giant Size X-Men team, too, introduced in the comics way back in 1975. From there readers had watched him grow from a simple Russian farmhand amazed both by his powers and his new American home, having crushes on Storm and writing letters to his parents back home, to a fully-fledged X-Man who had sort-of relationship with fellow teammate Kitty Pryde, welcomed his little sister Illyana (better known as Magick) to the School For Gifted Youngsters, and survived the numerous catastrophes and crossovers the teams have been put through.

All of them except the Legacy Virus. A slightly ill-thought-out metaphor for the AIDs epidemic of the eighties and nineties, the Virus was one that targeted the mutant gene specifically, and was fatal in almost all cases. It killed off a fair bunch of minor X-Men supporting characters including Illyana, and went on for years until Beast managed to synthesize a cure. Unfortunately it could could only be made airborne with the death of its first user; with his personal stake and heroic heart, Colossus injected himself with the cure, and saved thousands of lives at the cost of his own. PRETTY SAD, GUYS.