X-Men Origins: Colossus is a one-shot about Colossus' life before he joined the X-Men.  From the look of the title, we can presumably anticipate more in the same vein. 

Although the logo borrows from Wolverine: Origins, the story itself is in a different vein.  It starts off with Peter's brother, Mikhail, heading off to become an astronaut, and it runs through to Xavier recruiting him.  Much of the issue is taken up with Peter mourning his brother's death (which was retconned away years later, but that doesn't matter here), and an explanation of why the Russian authorities kept off his back.

This isn't a bad idea for a spin-off story.  Despite the X-books' obsession with continuity, Colossus' backstory is largely unexplored.  But when you think about it, there's a good reason for that.  When Colossus was first introduced, the idea was that he was a simple farmboy, continually surprised by the strange things he was now experiencing.  Hitherto, his life had been stable and uneventful.  That idea lasted a good few years, until he faded into the role of an established superhero. 

So when you have Colossus fighting off Russian secret agents and smashing up helicopters, long before he gets anywhere near the X-Men... well, you've kind of missed the point.  After all, this is billed as an origin story.  And the function of an origin story is to explain how the character came to be the way he was.  It's difficult to see how this story sets up any version of Colossus, let alone the early incarnation. 

Now, granted, if you were going to do the origin of Colossus properly, it would probably end up as a story of a nice young boy discovering that he can turn to steel, and everyone in the village being fine with that, perhaps after a gentle misunderstanding or two.  And sure, that's not very interesting.  Which is probably why nobody's done it before.

Still, that's the problem here.  If you judge it as a story, purely in isolation, well, it's okay.  It features an unusually grim and downbeat Colossus, mourning a lot (well, it is a Christopher Yost story) and being sucked into a life of fighting.  And it's got rather good art from Trevor Hairsine, who does good metal bodies.  The story has its merits.

But it doesn't work very well as a back story for Colossus, simply because the nature of the character is that he doesn't particularly need one.

Rating: C+

back | continue