What If?
An issue of What if shows what would have happened if Colossus had never joined the X-Men. After Charles Xavier unwittingly prevented Colossus from saving his sister from a runaway tractor, Colossus turned down Xavier's offer to join the X-Men. Instead, he joined the Soviet Super-Soldiers and became romantically involved with teammate Darkstar. Professor X approached Colossus again to not only tell him that what happened to Illyana was not his fault, but also to assist in the battle against the reality warping Proteus. Proteus severed Rasputin's left arm, which the Russian then used to impale the Proteus-possessed Professor Xavier. He eventually settles down with Darkstar and has a daughter, named Illyana.
In another reality Colossus and his younger sister were part of a Soviet Space Flight led by Reed Richards, who within this reality had been raised in the Soviet Union. As a result the Fantastic Four were Russian Cosmonauts with Reed, Black Widow, Pitor and Illyana all empowered with warped versions of the original team's abilities. Pitor was a strange mix of his usual Colossus form, but a side effect of his metal body was a gradual dulling of his brain and his slow transformation into a brutish monster not unlike the Hulk. When the Four battled a United States empowered version of the Avengers over Cuba in 1961, his sister attempted to kill Captain America after a truce had been made. When Pitor tried to stop her, his simple effort in holding his hand in front of the gun deflected the bullets back at his sister, killing her instantly. Pitor became one of the Rulers of a Meta-Human sympathetic Russia following their killing of the current regime, never able to accept that his sister had been killed.
Read more about this topic: Alternative Versions Of Colossus
Famous quotes related to what if?:
“Here, with whitened hair, desires failing, strength ebbing out of him, with the sun gone down and with only the serenity and the calm warning of the evening star left to him, he drank to Life, to all it had been, to what it was, to what it would be. Hurrah!”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”
—Bible: New Testament, Philippians 4:12-13.
Paul.
“The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.”
—Italo Calvino (1923–1985)
“What reason have they for saying that we cannot rise from the dead? What is more difficult, to be born, or to rise again—that what has never been should be, or that what has been should be again?”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)