X-MEN #110: One Tin Soldier Rides Away

Kitty lays Colossus to rest

Originally Published March 2001

We begin many years ago (about ten, by my reckoning.)

Kitty Pryde is Wonder Yearsing us with her recollections of the first time she met Russian bohunk and future ex-boyfriend Piotr Rasputin, aka Colossus.

Now, I know what you're thinking: Didn't Kitty recently disappear about ten issues ago? Shouldn't her return involve some kind of story, or at least an explanation of where she was and how she got back?

And the answer of course, is yes. And we won't be taking any further questions at this time.

As you may recall, on this particular day, the X-Men were attacked at the Malt Shoppe...

...but while Kitty recalls it being the Mandroids, it was actually the Hellfire's own bespoke armored goons. Funny how memory plays tricks on us.

(Sorry to be so pedantic, but if I weren't, I wouldn't have much of a website.)

Kitty has made the trip from New York to Moscow, electing to fly commercial instead of taking the Blackbird which could have gotten her there and back in time for tea, because she wants to feel normal while escorting Piotr's ashes back to the land of his birth.

Apparently, Russia has roadside diners that look exactly like Kansas.

Today's special, and every day's, is borscht.

As she makes the long, long, lo-o-o-ong journey from Moscow to Colossus' home of Ust-Ordynsky, (or else just finds a random spot by the side of the road,) she spares a thought for all those she has lost along the way.

Why, she wonders, did Peter do what he did? Surely, Beast would have found a way to cure the Legacy Virus without the need for further death, but Peter had colossal feelings to match his armor-clad body.

Speaking of Illyana, Kitty's reminiscences continue, taking her to the day her best friend and the sister of Colossus died succumbed to the Legacy Virus. While the other X-Men were giving Pete space to grieve, Kitty was the only one to comfort him directly. 

She reassured him then that he was not selfish in bringing Illyana to America, and it was not his fault she died there. (After all, Rasputins are perfectly capable of dying in Russia too.)

And with that in mind, she releases him at last, apparently in gaseous form.

Hey, Leinil.. do you, um... do you actually know what cremation is?

No, no, it's actually very sweet.

At this point, we learn that Kitty is writing this letter -- complete with recollections of her tweenage thirst for Colossus -- to Professor Xavier, to explain why she's resigning from the X-Men. She's writing from a dorm room at University, where she hopes to find a new way to make a difference in human-mutant relations.

And so, with a promise that they will surely find their way back to each other (no kidding!) she signs off (XO, Kitty) and the Prof decides to respect her wishes to move forward without her by erasing her from Cerebro.

The ultimate block

The end!

JKJK, we've still got an epilogue for you, with your faves... the Neo! What are those kooky segregationists up to?

They're sitting around the table at their fortress in Brooklyn. The gang's all here: Domina, RAX, presumably other members who don't share their names with fast food franchises. They're just chillin', minding their business, when they have an unexpected encounter...

And if it's a mysterious figure at the end of the issue, you know who it gotsta be...

Big Mags gives the Neo a chance to join his particular war on humanity, but apparently he's washed or chopped or cooked or whatever the kids are saying these days. The Neo laughs him off and he responds with the eyebrow of death!!

Looks like Magneto's still got the Juice after all -- which is pretty impressive since the last time we saw him he was looking pretty haggard, with Polaris helping him fake it 'til he makes it.

Anyway, the message is clear: join me or die. Reader, I think that means she's joining!

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Further Thoughts:

A hundred or so years earlier, when Jean Grey died on the moon, the next issue was  a lengthy rumination on Jean's time with the X-Men: her greatest hits summed up and re-created by the Claremont-Byrne Team. This had the dual purpose of selling the gravity and meaning of her death, and also filling 22 pages of a comic book that had to be accounted for when the original ending of the previous issue was hastily re-drawn. Plans to go forward with a lobotomized Jean were scrapped, so they bought themselves some time and wrote it off as reflection. The only major event of the issue is that Kitty officially arrives at the school after being introduced several issues previously, and Cyclops leaves to process everything that had happened, which is likely part of the pivot.

That issue ended up being quite influential. I don't know if comic book characters elsewhere were prone to spending entire issues in mourning before 1980, but I also don't know that they had anything worth mourning before that, as genuinely-intended character deaths were rare. Even the X-Men's previous death, of Thunderbird, only merited a small emotional outburst from Cyclops before the team was back in action.

In the past few issues we've been beset by deaths. Moira died and we were treated to a lengthy flashback of her time with Charles, something that had previously gone unexamined. Now Colossus has left us as well, and now have an appropriate issue-length eulogy from the character closest to him, Kitty Pryde. It's funny how comic book romances work -- the two were tied together from Kitty's first appearance, but took several years for Colossus to relent and form some kind of burgeoning romance relationship with the youngster (you may cringe) only to dash it during the Secret Wars a few years earlier. If you want to be strict about it (and I do!) they were only romantic from 1983's Uncanny #165 until the following year's Uncanny #181 with their effective breakup being cemented a few issues later. That's only a year and a half, but because of the way comic readers tend to imprint on things, those 16 issues loom larger in both characters' histories than anything else they'd done since.

And that's fair, as they entered a long period of warm friendship after that, being teammates on both the X-Men and later Excalibur. It absolutely rings true that Kitty would be the X-Person most rocked by Colossus' sacrifice.

Like Cyclops in the bygone era, this issue ends with Kitty resigning from the X-Men to find her own way in the world. That's a development I'm indifferent to -- Kitty hadn't done much as an X-Man since rejoining in recent years, and what's more, she was literally absent for the entire past year. As I mentioned above, Kitty was missing in action for most of the past year, the resolution of which should have been at least some kind of story, but instead, she is simply here as if she was never gone, only to leave properly of her own volition. That's another case where the lack of synergy is noteworthy: only a few months earlier, the X-Men Evolution cartoon would have debuted on Kids WB, where Kitty, despite not being in the recent movie, was a prominent character. I'm personally well aware of the way that media can influence the perceptions of young fans: to me, the X-Men of the 90's were those who were on the original cartoon, and those who weren't regularly -- Psylocke, Archangel, Iceman and Colossus -- were in some way lesser.

From a purely pragmatic standpoint, it's kind of quizzical why they would spend an entire issue eulogizing one character who won't be around anymore through the eyes of another character who won't be around anymore, but comic readers, myself included, love this stuff, which breaks out of the typical patterns of comic book punch-em-ups and breathes life and soul into these characters we are invested in and tells us that what they fight and give their lives for matters, if not in the real world then at least to them. To let a moment like this breathe helps every future potential moment like this feel real and significant.

As we've been discussing for some time, the franchise is currently in the process of clearing the decks. The Legacy Virus was cured somewhat abruptly, but I don't think the story got a complete dismissal. Not only did it encompass multiple prominent character deaths, it also initiated two new running plots in the form of the search for Destiny's Diaries and the recuperating population of Genosha becoming enlisted in Magneto's latest war. It wasn't as if it happened between one of the creative changeovers, where Chris Claremont or the next team could have said, "By the way, we found the cure and the Legacy Virus is no more, that's in the rear view." Just because it happened in an offhand, somewhat slapdash way does not mean they weren't at least working to incorporate it into storylines, and I would say that as far as resolving long-term X-Men storylines of the 90s, this one gets a passing grade.