Stumbled across an interview I did with Joe "The Quessiah" Quesada for a long dead site called The Last Comic Site. This was a few years back before, I think, even Ultimate Fantastic Four was announced. Milligan's X-Force had just kind of taken off. I thought this was interesting and wanted to share.

W: Backing up a second to the subject of death, because one of the things in our Last Comic Site manifesto was that death is final, and I know I'd read some other interviews where you talked about that death have meaning, like with—I think the examples were Colossus and Karen Page, that you wanted them to stay dead.

JQ: Yes.

W: And I've got to tell you, that as a fan, when I read the issue when Colossus died, I thought it was handled really well, and I thought "Wow—that’s amazing!" And then I thought in the back of my head, "You know, they’re just going to bring him back when they run out of ideas." And then the next issue, he's cremated, and I'm still thinking, "Well, it's Marvel—they’re going to bring him back…" I mean, what do you say to a fan like me who's been burned before to make me feel better about something like that?

JQ: The only think I can say to you is to just watch our actions. I think Marvel is dealing with a lot more consistencies today than we ever have. We're saying things and we're sticking by them. You know, we tell you that X-Force is really new and different, and it's really new and different. I mean, we're trying to be as up front with our product as possible, and again, you know when I talk about it, you know, I've quantified this. I've said, "There's death in comics, and then there's meaningful death in comics. And Karen Page was meaningful. Colossus was meaningful. The minute you bring those characters back, you cheapen everything that happened in that story. So if you’re going to tell that story, tell that story, and be prepared—I'm not going to let you bring that character back. Then, of course, there's the traditional comic book death, which is, you know, the bad guy jumps off a ledge and you know, you look down and he's gone and you presume, "Well, he’s dead." But you know, it's the bad guy, the villain kind of death, and you know he's going to be back. And I'll let those go, but I'll be honest with you—I want to see fewer and fewer of those kinds of endings, because it's a cheap way out, for a writer to do that. So I want, I want there to be a reason that if this character is going to die, it's got to be meaningful, and it's got to do something to drive the Marvel universe forward.

Quesada was a nice guy. I appreciated him taking the time to talk to me. Far as I know, he's still a nice guy. I think Marvel's irreparably damaged at this point, but regardless. The point I wanted to make is that, based on this, at some point, Colossus was downgraded from "meaningful" death to "cheap" death. So roger that.