8 X-Men Characters You Didn't Realise Had Died

Colossus gave his life in an effort to save all mutants by injecting himself with a cure for the Legacy Virus, a disease that was killing mutantkind throughout the '90s. It was a gripping sacrifice in a time where the stakes couldn't have been higher. So how can one of the most emotional and moving X-deaths of all time become forgettable? Easily, it was published in 2001.

The 1990s were a dark decade for comics and are infamous for the bevy of bad storylines produced. In 2001, X-Men comics were still stuck in some fairly lacklustre story cycles (though that would soon change). Many readers left the scene to avoid it all, and because of this, many never realized Colossus was gone for a brief stint in the early 2000s.

Doubling down on the forgettability of it all is the fact that his sacrifice is rarely talked about after his resurrection in Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men. It seems kind of weird that no one ever really thanks Colossus within the pages of the comics, so maybe his teammates forgot he was gone too?