While Colossus' powers have made him the go-to powerhouse of most X-Men rosters, one upgrade added Wolverine-style claws to turn him into something totally different. A peaceful hero at heart, Colossus is often overlooked in a world where Hulk and the Thing relegate him to the C-tier of superstrength, but it's in the details of his powers that things usually get interesting - for example, his immunity to fatal injuries while in his steel form or his natural ability to dispel magic due to being made of metal.However, these powers were amplified with some new abilities when the X-Men encountered a new team of mutants formed by Cerebro itself. The machine that Charles Xavier traditionally uses to detect mutant life across the world, Cerebro was privy to all of the X-Men's files, and after resolving to catalog every mutant in the world, it took on Xavier's form and created its own team of X-Men drawn from the personalities and powers of his superpowered wards.Cerebro's X-Men officially debuted in Uncanny X-Men #360, from Steve Seagle and Chris Bachalo. The team included the Grey King, Rapture, Chaos, Crux, Landslide, and Mercury. While each was initially presented as a pre-existing superhuman - with Mercy supposedly working as an international hitman - it was later revealed that they were artificially created by Cerebro using advanced technology and its imprints of the X-Men. In Mercury, Cerebro seemingly combined Colossus and Wolverine, creating a liquid-metal killer who was impervious to harm like Colossus, but had far more control over his body, allowing him limited shapeshifting and the power to create deadly claws which extended from his fingertips.
All-New, All-Deadly X-Men
While boasting an amped-up form of Colossus' powers, Mercury was far less heroic, and possessed Wolverine's lethal mindset along with training as a fighter pilot. Mercury did have some moral qualms, and wouldn't undertake missions simply to sow terror, but was ultimately destroyed when Cerebro judged its new team a failure and absorbed them back into itself. Its android form was eventually destroyed by Xavier, and its deadly X-Men team were lost. Of course, in comics, it's only ever a matter of time until a given character returns.
Colossus' Clone Originally Combined Him with Magneto
Despite his sharp claws, Mercury was originally designed as a combination of Colossus and Magneto, according to a recent tweet from Carlos Pacheco sharing the artist's original designs for the new characters. In the original sketches, this Magneto/Colossus hybrid takes the name Silverface, while the team are given the name of the All-New, All-Deadly X-Men. As a stalwart and even-tempered hero, it was a particular treat for fans to see Colossus reimagined as an international assassin, and to witness Colossus' unbreakable body become more pliable under his own mental control - a power which it has been implied he could unlock with time.
Colossus' Mercury Form Needs to Return
In the current Krakoan Age, X-Men comics have introduced bio-tech to resurrect fallen mutants and are currently exploring the idea of AI rights and personhood in opposition to mutantkind's survival, so there's never been a better time for Cerebro's composite X-Men to find a way to return. Despite drawing on Colossus and Wolverine's personalities and abilities, Mercury was a fascinating presence in his own right, and a debonair antihero who could fit seamlessly back into the Marvel Universe. Hopefully, Marvel chooses to bring back these forgotten antiheroes who exist at the exact intersection of mutant and AI life, if only so X-Men fans get to enjoy a suave reimagining of Colossus with his own Wolverine claws one more time.
Source: Carlos Pacheco