Colossus (character)

• 1. Introduction

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  Colossus, whose full name is Piotr Nikolayevich Rasputin, began life as a homework assignment. In May 1975, editor Roy Thomas was in charge of reviving the X-Men for Giant-Size X-Men #1. He sent the creative team home with one instruction: invent some characters for the new lineup. What came back was a Russian mutant who is quiet, honest and virtuous. He is also a gifted artist who agrees only reluctantly to fight. He debuted in that issue and has stayed a fairly steady presence in X-Men comics ever since. Why would a gentle painter from a Siberian farm end up as the muscle of a team of outcasts? What happens to a man whose family keeps being taken from him? And how far will someone go when he believes his powers exist to serve others?

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• 2. A Strong Guy

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  Dave Cockrum remembered that Colossus was among the first ideas to occur to him once he got home. He said, "We needed a strong guy for the team, so I drew up a strong guy." The armor, he recalled, simply fell into place, and the design was accepted nearly as drawn.

  One detail did not survive. Cockrum had drawn bare legs, reasoning that if the arms were bare in armored form, the legs should be too. Writer Len Wein disliked male characters with bare legs. The compromise was a blue costume for Colossus when he was not armored. His legs would show only when he transformed, because of the unstable molecules of his costume.

  Cockrum also traced the character to an earlier idea from his college days, a figure named Mr. Steel. As for making him Russian, Cockrum was cheerfully offhand. "Everybody was into détente" and the team was meant to be international. Since the character looked Russian the way he drew him, Cockrum said, "why the hell not?"

  Cockrum credited Wein with choosing the name Peter. He guessed that Wein picked Rasputin because it is a recognizable Russian name. Decades later, other writers would turn that casual surname choice into a plot of its own.

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• 3. Organic Steel

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  In armored form, Colossus stands about 7 ft 7 in tall, compared with 6 ft 7 in as a human. Official figures say his weight more than doubles. His body becomes a substance called organic steel, which has properties similar to osmium but a composition nobody has pinned down. The change is all or nothing. He cannot armor only one arm or one shoulder.

  In that state he needs no food, water or even oxygen. He can withstand great impacts, large caliber bullets, falls from tremendous heights, electricity and certain magical attacks. He resists extremes of hot and cold, though extreme heat followed by rapid super-cooling has been shown to damage him. A weapon made of Antarctic Vibranium, which attacks metal, makes his body shift back to human form on instinct.

  His strength is now greater than when he first joined the X-Men. Magneto realigned his cells to heal an injury during the Mutant Massacre, and the repair left him stronger.

  He is also a trained fighter. Cyclops taught him Judo, and Nightcrawler gave him lessons in acrobatics and sword fighting. As a human he is exceptionally strong and in superb condition, though not superhumanly so. He has even completed college-level courses at Xavier's school.

  His limits showed in the "World War Hulk" storyline. Locked in a test of strength, the Hulk bent Colossus's arms backwards at the forearms and broke them. Beast heated the arms with a laser to near their melting point, and Strong Guy bent them back into place. The arms had to be reset in metal form, before he changed back to human, to avoid serious injury.

  At one point he also served as the avatar of Cyttorak, which added strength, resistance to injury and mystical powers. One of these let him ignore impediments to his movement, earning the "unstoppable" moniker. Those powers were later taken from him and returned to Cain Marko.

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• 4. Siberian Family

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  Piotr Rasputin was born on the Ust-Ordynsky Collective, a Soviet collective farm near Lake Baikal in Siberia. His parents were Nikolai and Alexandra, and his younger sister was Illyana. His older brother Mikhail had been a Soviet cosmonaut and had apparently died in a rocket accident.

  A runaway tractor changed everything. Piotr's powers appeared during his adolescence, as he saved Illyana from it. Professor Charles Xavier then contacted him. Xavier was assembling a second generation of X-Men to rescue the original team from the living island Krakoa. Piotr left the farm for the United States, and Xavier gave him the name Colossus.

  A 2006 mini-series, Colossus: Bloodline, gave the Rasputin name real weight. It established that the family descended from Grigori Rasputin and a Romani woman named Elena. In the story, Colossus travels to Russia after a call from his cousin Larisa Mishchenko, a journalist. Her research showed that their relatives were being systematically murdered. Grigori Rasputin was a powerful mutant whose power passes to his descendants. As they die, that power concentrates in those who remain, and when only one is left, Rasputin will be reborn in that person. Mister Sinister, an old ally of Rasputin, was behind the killings.

  Sinister murders Larisa, but Colossus and Mikhail foil his plot. Mikhail banishes himself to a dimension where he can never die and can never return. Colossus goes back to the X-Men a man without family.

  The loss of family was already a pattern. Colossus wrote home often, and soon after he joined the X-Men a woman called Miss Locke kidnapped Illyana from the farm. She wanted the team to help free her employer, Arcade, from captivity by one of Doctor Doom's robots. Arcade brainwashed Colossus into a villain called "The Proletarian" until the X-Men countered it. Illyana went to live with her brother at Xavier's mansion.

  She was later held in a dimension called Limbo, where she spent years while only moments passed on Earth. She returned as the adolescent sorceress Magik. In an alternate timeline, a version of Colossus dies in Limbo.

  Mikhail turned out to be alive too, acting as a messiah to the people of another dimension. He came back to Earth with the X-Men, burdened by guilt over the deaths of his original crew. He led the Morlocks and planned a mass suicide he hoped would bring retribution. At the last second he changed his mind and moved himself and the Morlocks to another world. Peter was disappointed by his brother's departure and blamed himself.

  Back in Siberia, Peter's parents were slain, and the Russian government kidnapped Illyana. They hoped to evolve her until she could use her powers again, to defeat a mutant called the Soul Skinner. Colossus and the X-Men rescued her. Illyana later became an early victim of the Legacy Virus and died.

  With his immediate family gone and brain damage forcing him to stay armored, Colossus joined Magneto and his Acolytes. They offered an alternative to the X-Men's pacifist hope of peaceful coexistence. He recovered from the damage but stayed of his own volition, hoping to temper their extremism with what he had learned from Xavier. That choice broke friendships with Wolverine and Storm that he later had to repair.

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• 5. Reluctant Warrior

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  When the X-Men fought the evil mutant Proteus, Colossus tried to kill him to save the life of Moira MacTaggert. He found the act morally questionable even though his motive was good. The same conflict returned during the "Mutant Massacre," when the X-Men tried to save the Morlocks from the Marauders. Kitty Pryde was severely injured by Harpoon, and Colossus gave in to his rage and snapped Riptide's neck.

  Breakworld offered him a cleaner test. Its precogs held that Colossus was the mutant destined to destroy their world. The X-Men learned that the prophecy was an elaborate scheme by Aghanne, the insane leader of a reform cult on Breakworld. She chose Colossus because his organic steel form could destroy the planet's power source and start a chain reaction. He refused to kill the planet. He did warn that he would seize power and rule it if Breakworld destroyed the Earth as planned.

  During the "Fear Itself" storyline, the Juggernaut became Kuurth: Breaker of Stone, a herald of a long-dormant god of fear called the Serpent. To stand against him, Colossus bargained with Cyttorak, the being who had first empowered the Juggernaut. He became the new Juggernaut and pushed Cain Marko back until the Serpent summoned Cain away.

  During "Avengers vs. X-Men," a fragment of the Phoenix Force bonded to Colossus, making him one of the Phoenix Five with Cyclops, Emma Frost, Magik and Namor. Cyttorak refused to release the Juggernaut power because of the Phoenix connection. Spider-Man finally provoked Colossus and Magik into attacking each other, and the Phoenix powers dissipated.

  Magik later purged the Juggernaut powers with her Soulsword. Colossus realized she could have freed him at any time and had made him keep them as a lesson. He turned on the sister he once loved, even saying he wanted her killed.

  His powers then went out of control, shifting between flesh and organic steel across his body. Cable gave him a device to stabilize himself, and he joined Cable's X-Force. His sister later convinced him to rejoin Wolverine's team, and he regained control of his steel and dropped the harness.

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• 6. Kitty Pryde

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  Early in his X-Men career, Colossus began what was arguably his most significant relationship, with teammate Kitty Pryde. They were a couple only briefly, but it became the foundation of a deep and lasting friendship.

  During the "Secret Wars," he became infatuated with an alien healer named Zsaji. He realized his feelings for Kitty were not wholly genuine and ended the relationship. Emotionally distraught, he got into a bar fight with the Juggernaut.

  Years later he crossed the ocean to find her. Exhausted, mentally ill and enraged, he reached England and found Kitty with her new love, Pete Wisdom. Colossus attacked Wisdom and nearly killed him. Captain Britain and Meggan subdued him, and Moira MacTaggert later cured his illness. He accepted Kitty's new life and joined Excalibur himself.

  Kitty's pet dragon, Lockheed, never accepted Wisdom and favored Peter. At the wedding of Meggan and Captain Britain, Lockheed seized the garter and dropped it into Colossus's hand. Kitty had caught the bouquet, so Colossus was obliged to place the garter on her leg.

  After Kitty was lost, he mourned. In San Francisco, the other X-Men tried to cheer him with everything from picking fights to throwing a party. Eventually he told them to leave him be. Walking through Golden Gate Park, he met a little girl who needed help rescuing her cat from a tree. He said nothing would make him happier.

  Kitty came back in a strange way. She had phased for so long to stop a bullet that she had forgotten how to become solid on her own. Magneto brought the bullet back to Earth, and she and Colossus were reunited but unable to touch. Residents of Breakworld restored her solidity.

  Then came the Juggernaut bargain. Kitty ended things because she could not cope with his growing willingness to sacrifice himself. She wanted someone willing to live for her. During the Phoenix crisis she rejected his attempt to win her back, wary of what the Phoenix had made of him.

  Later, Storm asked Kitty to return to the X-Men and take her place as leader. Kitty moved the mansion from Limbo to Central Park, created a new field team, and recruited Colossus. They share many awkward moments, trying to be friends while still feeling a chemistry.

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• 7. Death and Return

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  The notes of the recently murdered Moira MacTaggert, the X-Men's resident scientist, gave Beast what he believed was a cure for the Legacy Virus. There was a catch. It could only be made airborne through the death of its first user.

  Colossus did not wait for a safer version. Rather than let others die as Illyana had, he injected himself. Using his powers and sacrificing his life, he enabled the release of an airborne cure that effectively eradicated the disease. His body was cremated, and Shadowcat carried his ashes back to Russia to be scattered on his native soil.

  Nearly two years later, the X-Men learned that a medical company called Benetech had developed a mutant cure. Beast got a sample and found a string of DNA hidden deep in the formula. After matching it, he and the team set out to investigate.

  During their infiltration, they learned that Ord was responsible for how the company made the cure. While the team was separated, Kitty descended into a hidden complex beneath the Benetech building. There she found the secret. Shortly after Peter's death, Ord had captured his body and left a duplicate for the X-Men to cremate.

  Ord had revived Peter and used the Legacy Virus cure in his bloodstream to develop the mutant cure. Kitty unknowingly released Peter from his cell and rejoined him with the X-Men. Together they subdued Ord as he tried to escape Earth. Peter returned to fighting alongside the team, and he and Kitty resumed their romance.

  The person who had carried his ashes to Russia was the one who found him alive.

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• 8. On Page and Screen

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  In 2014, Entertainment Weekly ranked Colossus 11th in its list of every X-Man ever. Earlier, Wizard ranked him 184 on its Top 200 Comic Book Characters of All Time, and in 2006 IGN placed him 10th in its Top 25 X-Men. In 2018, CBR.com ranked him 7th among the 30 strongest characters of the Age of Apocalypse world and 13th among X-Force's 20 powerful members. In 2013, ComicsAlliance put him at No. 22 on its list of the 50 sexiest male characters in comics.

  On the page, he was a mainstay of the X-Men series until the 1990s, then appeared regularly in the first series of Excalibur. A self-titled one-shot there showed him and Meggan fighting Arcade at his new Murderworld facility. Joss Whedon wrote him in the third series of Astonishing X-Men. In December 2012, Dennis Hopeless and Salvador Larroca launched Cable and X-Force with Colossus aboard. Jeff Lemire and Humberto Ramos later put him in Extraordinary X-Men.

  Alternate versions have taken him in different directions. In Age of Apocalypse he is part of a team formed by Magneto after the death of Charles Xavier. In the Ultimate Marvel universe, he is a gay former arms dealer who joined the X-Men after his associates were killed. In the Ultimate Universe imprint, he leads the Eurasian Republic, a power bloc centered on Russia.

  On screen, Donald MacKinnon made a cameo as Colossus in X-Men in 2000. Daniel Cudmore then played him in X2 in 2003, X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006, and X-Men: Days of Future Past in 2014. In that last film he is killed by a Sentinel in a ruined future. After the timeline changes, he becomes a teacher at the Xavier Institute alongside Pryde. A viral marketing website for the film revealed that he was one of several mutant babies born prematurely after the Chernobyl disaster.

  In Deadpool in 2016, Colossus became a CGI character voiced by Stefan Kapičić, built from motion-capture work by several performers. Director Tim Miller had first offered the role to Cudmore, who declined. Kapičić returned for Deadpool 2 in 2018 and Deadpool & Wolverine in 2024.

  Colossus has also been voiced on television by John Stephenson in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, by Michael Adamthwaite in X-Men: Evolution, and by Nolan North in Wolverine and the X-Men. He has appeared in video games from X-Men Legends to Lego Marvel Super Heroes, where John DiMaggio voiced him.

  In 2025, Colossus is set to get a solo X-Men project.

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