COLOSSUS

The Mutant Massacre opened in Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 #211 (1986), by Chris Claremont and John Romita Jr., with the Marauders loose in the tunnels beneath Manhattan, murdering the outcast Morlocks for sport and salary alike. The X-Men arrived to a slaughter already in progress — bodies in the dark, a community being erased room by room — and Colossus, the team's pacifist farmer-artist, walked into the middle of it in his organic steel form.

The Marauder Riptide fought as a living buzzsaw, spinning at cyclone speed and spraying sharpened shuriken in every direction; he had already shredded Nightcrawler and was cutting down fleeing Morlocks while Harpoon moved in beside him. Colossus simply kept walking — through the metal storm, sparks striking off his steel skin — closed one hand around Riptide's neck, and snapped it. Then, still holding the body, he called down the tunnel to Harpoon and told him to make peace with his gods, because he was next.

The shock in the scene belongs to the witnesses. Teammates who had watched Piotr apologise his way through a hundred battles stared at the first corpse he had ever made, and the issue is remembered as the night the gentlest X-Man changed permanently. Riptide's barrage had also done quiet damage of its own: the throwing stars ruptured the integrity of Colossus's steel form, an injury that would drop him where he stood in the following issue.