Bishop

Bishop (comics)

Promotional art from the cover of Bishop: The Last X-Man #1 by Georges Jeanty

Bishop (Lucas Bishop) is a fictional comic book superhero, appearing in books published by Marvel Comics, in particular the X-Men family of books.

Bishop was a member of Xavier’s Security Enforcers (initially called the Xavier School Enforcers), a mutant police force from a dystopian future of the Marvel Universe. He traveled to the 20th century and joined the X-Men, a team he knew only as legends. A brash antihero, he had difficulty adjusting to the norms of the time period. After a decade and a half of acting as a member of the team, Bishop was instead portrayed as one of the X-Men’s main antagonists.

Bishop made frequent appearances in the X-Men animated series of the 1990’s.

Publication history

Created by Whilce Portacio and Jim Lee, the character first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #282 (November 1991).

Bishop had four limited series including the self-titled Bishop series, where he tracked and fought Mountjoy, XSE, which showcased his past (future), and its sequel – Bishop: Xavier’s Security Enforcers. He also teamed up with Gambit to oppose Stryfe in Gambit and Bishop: Sons of the Atom. He also starred in the series Bishop: The Last X-Man (1999–2001), in which he was trapped in another alternate timeline. He appeared regularly in District X (2004–2005), a police procedural set in a mutant ghetto in New York City. He was cast as a police officer in New York City’s “mutant town,” but the series was canceled after 14 issues. He also starred in the House of M tie-in, Mutopia.

Writer Sam Humphries revealed in an interview that Bishop would be back in our timeline and would be one of the first enemies of the new incarnation of Uncanny X-Force.

Fictional character biography – Early life

Born about 80 years in the future of the Marvel Universe, Bishop was the son of Aborigine mutant refugees who fled Australia for America a day before it was devastated in a nuclear attack. He was raised in a mutant concentration camp in the aftermath of the Summers Rebellion, an uprising in which mutants and humans joined forces to destroy the Sentinels. Bishop has a distinctive M brand over his right eye, used to identify mutants in his era. After his parents were killed, Bishop was taken in by a man named LeBeau, also called Witness, who was reportedly the last man to see the legendary X-Men alive. According to LeBeau (in XSE#4), Bishop’s adoptive grandmother took Bishop away from him. Bishop and his younger sister, Shard, were then subsequently raised by his grandmother within the same mutant concentration camp in Brooklyn.

Bishop’s grandmother taught him many legends of the X-Men, who were old allies of hers. Depowered by unknown means, she had entered the camps in secret to raise her grandchildren. Upon her deathbed, she made Bishop swear to protect Shard. After the Rebellion, the mutants were “emancipated” and sent out of the camps to fend for themselves. Bishop and Shard, who were only children, were left alone. They lived on the streets, stealing in order to survive until coming under the care of a family friend, a war veteran named Hancock. Slightly blind, Hancock nevertheless took on the task of raising the two.

One day, Bishop encountered an anti-human group of mutants called the Exhumes, who took Shard hostage just before the XSE arrived. Until that time Bishop had admired the Exhumes, attributing to them his proud, idealized notion of the legendary X-Men. It wasn’t until the XSE defeated the Exhume and saved his sister, however, that Bishop knew he wanted to join the XSE, and when at the age of fifteen Hancock was murdered by criminals who were promptly arrested by the XSE he and Shard enlisted in their ranks. Shard soon surpassed Bishop to become the youngest XSE officer.

During a training class, Bishop’s instructors and some of his fellow students were attacked and killed. Bishop rallied the survivors and led the struggle against the assailants until reinforcements arrived. Bishop gradually climbs the ranks of the XSE until finally becoming their commander.

While on a mission to wipe out a nest of Emplates, mutant vampires that feed on bone marrow, Shard was critically injured. Bishop went to Witness for help. Witness, then imprisoned at the New York Stark Fujikawa building, agreed to transfer Shard’s essence into a holographic matrix if Bishop would work for him for one year. Bishop agreed, leaving the XSE for a time. The details of Bishop’s work during this period are unknown; Bishop appears reticent on the subject, later refusing to tell Shard of his actions.

Immediately upon his re-installment as a commander in the XSE, Bishop and his XSE group the “Omega Squad” captured Trevor Fitzroy, a murderous ex-XSE trainee in the ruins of the Xavier Institute War Room. While there, Bishop discovered a damaged recording of Jean Grey, in which she spoke of a traitor destroying the X-Men from inside. Haunted by his discovery, Bishop confronts Witness for details, but receives only a vague, ambiguous response, leaving Bishop to suspect his former master of being more than simply a witness to the downfall of the X-Men.

Joining the X-Men

Fitzroy escaped from prison and used a large amount of mutant life-force to open a time portal and break out 93 mutant criminal “Lifers” in the process. Bishop found himself in the past, in the time of his heroes, the X-Men. Bishop and the Omega Squad eventually “sanctioned” the Lifers, but did not get Fitzroy. Bishop encountered the X-Men for the first time, but did not believe that they were really the X-Men. He then battled them but later allied with the X-Men in trying to stop Fitzroy, and Malcolm and Randall, the two members of his Omega Squad, died in the process.   Professor Charles Xavier offered him a place in the X-Men, and he was placed under Storm‘s tutelage. He fought and defeated Styglut.   When he met Gambit, Bishop recognized him as possibly a younger version of the Witness and fought him.

He soon met Mystique for the first time, and alongside the X-Men he battled theMorlocks  and the Death Sponsors.

Bishop assigned himself the role of Xavier’s personal bodyguard, which he failed at when Stryfe, the evil double of Cable, critically wounded Xavier. Initially, the X-Men believed that Cable was the would-be assassin, so Wolverine and Bishop tracked down Cable, but then traveled to Cable’s “Graymalkin” space station, and then joined with them in finding Stryfe.  Citing his failure to protect Professor X, Bishop offered to resign from the X-Men. His resignation was rejected by Xavier, and then alongside the X-Men he battled the Acolytes.

Age of Apocalypse

When Professor Xavier’s insane son — the mutant Legion — went back in time to assassinate Magneto, Bishop was one of the X-Men sent to stop him.   When they failed, and Legion accidentally killed Professor Xavier, Bishop was the only time-traveler to remain when history was altered and became the Age of Apocalypse.   He eventually convinced the Magneto of that era that the existence of this reality was wrong, and with a great amount of sacrifice, managed to correct the error and stop Legion.   After the timeline reset itself, Bishop received some of his counterpart’s unsettling memories of the Age of Apocalypse.

The traitor in the X-Men was eventually revealed to be Professor X in the form of Onslaught. Bishop’s knowledge of the future was the only thing that stopped Onslaught from killing the X-Men. As Onslaught fired a massive blast of psionic energy at the distracted X-Men, Bishop threw himself in front of them and absorbed the blast that would have killed them. Onslaught, winded from such a massive attack, said that his blast was enough to kill a thousand mutants and “Another time, another place, I would have been proud”. Bishop lost consciousness after absorbing the blast, but soon recovered, although it was not enough to prevent Onslaught from nearly destroying all of humanity. He made peace with Gambit, who was not the traitor after all.

Following this, Bishop spent some time in a distant possible future, detailed in the Bishop: The Last X-Man series, where he again faced Trevor Fitzroy. He was temporarily returned to the present by Apocalypse who needed him as one of The Twelve, before finally returning permanently during the Maximum Security crossover.

X-Treme X-Men

Bishop was a founding member of Storm‘s splinter team of X-Men, whose mission was to search for the Books of Truth, the diaries of the precognitive mutant Destiny.   They left against the will and knowledge of the main team, as the splinter group did not trust in Xavier or the others to use the diaries for the benefit of humanity.

District X

Bishop joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation. District X, or ‘Mutant Town’, had a high-population density. It was also a poverty-stricken area with high crime rates. Bishop was assigned to the area in order to resolve mutant-related crimes.

Civil War

In the Civil War: X-Men miniseries Bishop sides with the O*N*E* to bring in the X-Men and the 198. He argues with Cyclops over allowing their escape, and states his fear of what the future might hold. Val Cooper and Tony Stark let Bishop lead Micromax and Sabra into action against Domino, Shatterstar, and the rest of the 198. Bishop led them to the base where the 198 were hiding and told the X-Men to stand down upon their arrival. However, General Demetrius Lazer betrayed him by ensuring that Cyclops attacked Bishop. Though at first he simply absorbed it, the power was too much for him to control and he was overwhelmed. Bishop was forced to direct the energy he had absorbed upwards in a powerful blast that destroyed a O*N*E* Sentinel. He later teamed up with the X-Men to save the 198 from a bomb explosion and then went his own way, leaving the X-Men. Bishop was among Iron Man’s pro-registration forces that guarded the Negative Zone prison. When Captain America‘s team breaks in a fight ensues, putting Bishop at odds with his former teammates Storm and Cable.

Messiah Complex

In Messiah Complex, an event revitalized Bishop’s timeline as a viable future: the birth of the first mutant child since M-Day. As the Marauders, on Mister Sinister‘s orders, try to gather anyone and anything with knowledge of the future, Bishop is the only target they were unable to locate and terminate. It is revealed that he had betrayed the X-Men, and he attempted to kill the baby. However, before he could succeed, he was thwarted by the Marauders, who escaped with the baby.   As X-Men arrive on the scene, Bishop pretends to have attempted to retrieve the baby. As Multiple Man‘s duplicate and Layla Miller find out in their mission to one of the planet’s possible futures (80 years in the future) that the birth of the child created, the child apparently kills a million people in an event dubbed the Six-Second War, and the U.S. government incarcerates all the mutants into concentration camps, where Bishop is born, grows up, and sees his parents killed. As Multiple Man’s dupe and Layla find out, Bishop wishes at a young age to have had the opportunity to kill the baby, so that, while he would not be born, he would also not have to see his parents die, and to endure the horrors of life in the concentration camps. Layla kills the dupe, so that the information conveyed to them by young Bishop can return to the present, to the Multiple Man prime, who conveys Bishop’s treachery to the X-Men. The X-Men then attempted to alert X-Force to Bishop’s betrayal, but he managed to block all of their communication channels. After arriving on Muir Island and fighting past the Marauders, Bishop found Cable attempting to escape with the baby, and the two fight. Both mutants are then attacked by Predator X, who viciously rips off Bishop’s right arm. Bishop cauterizes his torn shoulder on an unconscious Sunfire and in an attempt to shoot down a teleporting Cable, he misses and hits Professor X instead.

Bishop managed to escape the X-Men after he seemingly killed their mentor, and stole a nuclear powered bionic arm from Forge equipped with a timeslide device, which he uses to track down Cable and the newborn mutant. Upon finding them, he shoots Cable twice before being hindered by a local gang. With Cable severely weakened by blood loss, he makes a risky attack before the gang can find heavier weapons.   He later manages to track down Cable, slaying several mutated beasts in the process, and shoot the Mutant Messiah. He also finds that in the future generated by his choice, Cable will be always revered as a Messianic figure who tried his best to protect the Child, and saved humanity from the very beasts Bishop unwillingly saved Cable from. It has been revealed that the Messiah child is still alive and Bishop has been captured by the X-Men. However, in his efforts to kill the child Bishop has laid out several traps for Cable throughout the timestream, killing millions in the process, though he doesn’t see them as people who actually exist, but as people who wouldn’t exist or come back to life if he kills Hope.

Messiah War

After multiple failings at killing Hope, Bishop locates and enlists the aid of Stryfe, promising him that he would aid him in killing Apocalypse and Cable. Stryfe and Bishop travel to a point in the future where Apocalypse is at his weakest and manage to defeat him.   Stryfe builds an empire using Celestial technology and Bishop becomes his right hand man, waiting for Cable and Hope to re-emerge. When they do appear along with X-Force, Hope is kidnapped. Bishop betrays Stryfe and his plot to kill Hope is foiled by Stryfe, who wants to make her his heir. Both attempts are foiled by Apocalypse, X-Force, and Cable. Cable manages to rescue Hope and escape yet again.   Bishop escapes into the “near future” of the 21st century, reconstructing his arm, vowing to find Hope once again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_(comics)