Bishop (comics)

Bishop (Lucas Bishop), is a fictional character, a Marvel Comics superhero who is a member of the X-Men. Created by writer John Byrne, artist Whilce Portacio and artist/co-plotter Jim Lee, the character first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #282 (November 1991).

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 anti-hero, he had difficulty adjusting to the norms of the time period.

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

Publication history

Bishop had four limited series, one a self-titled one, Bishop, where he tracked and fought Mountjoy, and another 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, and District X (2004-2005), which cast him as a police officer in New York City’s "mutant town," as well as the House of M tie-in, Mutopia.

Fictional character biography

Early life

Born about 80 years in the future of the Marvel Universe, Bishop has a distinctive M brand over his right eye, used to identify Mutants in his era. After his parents were killed, Bishop was raised 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 grandmother (a woman probably named Aliyah) took Bishop away from him. Bishop was then raised by his grandmother with his younger sister, Shard in a mutant concentration camp in Nevada or Brooklyn (perhaps both). This was in the aftermath of the Summers Rebellion, an uprising in which mutants and humans joined forces to destroy the Sentinels.

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 his grandmother's deathbed, she also made Bishop swear to protect Shard. After the Rebellion, the mutants were "emancipated," and sent out of the camps to fend for themselves, even Bishop and Shard, who were only children. They lived on the streets, stealing, before they met up with a veteran named Hancock, a family friend. Slightly blind, Hancock nevertheless took on the task of raising the two.

Bishop came across an anti-human group of mutants called the Exhumes. They took his sister Shard hostage when Xavier's Security Enforcers arrived. Up until that time with a (now disillusioned) idea of the X-Men in his heart, Bishop admired the Exhumes. After the XSE defeated the Exhume members and saved Shard however, Bishop knew he wanted to join the XSE. Around the time Bishop was fifteen, Hancock was killed by criminals who were soon arrested by the XSE. Bishop and Shard joined up, Shard soon surpassing him in becoming the youngest XSE officer. It is unknown if Bishop had any contact with the Witness during these years. During a training class, Bishop's class instructors and some of his fellow students were killed. Bishop rallied the survivors and fought back until reinforcements arrived. 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, and the Witness, then employed/housed/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. The details of Bishop's work there is unknown, but in XSE #4, he refuses to tell Shard of his actions there.

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. This happened in the ruins of the Xavier Institute War Room. While there, Bishop found a damaged recording of Jean Grey, which said something about a traitor destroying the X-Men from inside. Witness gave him very few answers on this transcript, and Bishop thought that Witness did more than just witness those events.

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 not believing who they said they were, he battled them at first. He then 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 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. Bishop also recognized Jubilee as the 'last X-Man', but this has been proven false.

He soon met Mystique for the first time, and alongside the X-Men he battled the Morlocks 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 "Professor" starship, 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.

Later, Bishop would be the one to save lives when Sabretooth escaped from his cell and the only other X-Men were busy or unable to fight him.

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 Onslaght 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 consiousness 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.

On a mission in deep space to stop the Phalanx, Bishop became separated from the rest of the X-Men. Despite trickery and base manipulation by Deathbird, he entered into a romantic relationship with her. They had many adventures far out in space but when she turned on him and the X-Men, he seemingly killed her.

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

At one point, Bishop was a founding member of Storm's splinter team of X-Men searching for the Books of Truth, the diaries of the precognitive Destiny. They left against the will and knowledge of the main team, as the splinter group did not trust in Xavier and the others to use the diaries for the benefit of humanity.

He started using "Lucas" as a first name on a fake police ID though it turned it out to be real. Even though the X-Men came to believe the diaries to be self-fulfilling, the team stayed together for a while before returning to the mansion. His team started believing that the others had grown more mutant-supremacist and less interested in integration (the original reason that many of them joined the X-Men). While with his splinter team, Bishop was second-in-command, would participate in solving murder mysteries, and even used false IDs to convince the local authorities he was one of them.

His team has recently formed their own XSE, the X-Treme Sanctions Executive which was officially recognized by the government. Bishop has also begun a friendship with the new X-Man Sage. They helped to uncover the killer of the White Queen. Bishop has recently been seen getting close to Angel's ex-girlfriend Detective Charlotte Jones.

District X

Recently, Bishop joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation and appeared regularly in District X, a police procedural set in a mutant ghetto in New York City.

Since the House of M, Bishop continues to visit New York, but since a majority of the mutant population of District X was wiped out by the Scarlet Witch, Bishop has instead primarily turned his attention back to the X-Men and school. He has been going on missions with the team, such as taking down the Shi'ar Death Commandos, or fighting the Foursaken. Bishop helped Psylocke deal with the Foursaken and the First Fallen, as well as helping Storm save Africa from soldiers taking children from villages.

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 even argued with Cyclops over letting them go. Val Cooper and Tony Stark let Bishop lead Micromax and Sabra into action against Domino, Shatterstar, and the 198. Bishop led them to the base where the 198 were hiding and told the X-Men to stand down. 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 as he was overwhelmed, and he was forced to direct the energy he had absorbed upwards in a powerful blast that would easily destroy 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 is among Iron Man's pro-registration forces that guard the Negative Zone prison. When Captain America's team breaks in, a fight ensues, putting Bishop at odds with his former teammate, Storm.

Messiah Complex

In Messiah Complex, the precipitating event causing Bishop's future is finally revealed, i.e., the birth of the first mutant child since M-Day. As the Marauders, on Mr. Sinister's orders, try to gather anyone and anything with knowledge of the future, he is the only target they were unable to locate and terminate. It is revealed that he betrayed the X-Men and attempted to kill the baby, however before he could kill the baby he was thwarted by the Marauders who escape with the baby. As X-Men arrive on the scene, Bishop pretends to have attempted to retrieve the baby. As Multiple Man’s dupe and Layla Miller find out in their mission to one of the 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 attempt to alert X-Force to Bishop's betrayal, but he manages to block out all of their channels of communication. After arriving on Muir Isle and fighting past the Marauders, Bishop finds Cable attempting to escape with the baby and begins to attack when both mutants are attacked by Predator X, who viciously rips off Bishop's right arm. The wound does not kill him though and in an attempt to shoot down a teleporting Cable, he misses and hits Professor X instead.

After the Messiah Complex

Bishop managed to escape the X-Men after he seemingly killed their mentor, and makes several time jumps in an attempt to find his newest enemy and the mutant messiah. Now using a bionic arm he eventually tracks Cable and the newborn mutant. Upon finding them, he shoots Cable twice before being hindered by a local gang. With Cable severely weakened by severe 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, possibily to death, the Mutant Messiah. However, he 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. As for Bishop, he'll be despised and considered a devilish figure, the Child Killer, and a prophecy will be passed down allowing everyone to act with retribution over his action by killing him.

Powers and abilities

Bishop's mutant ability enables him to absorb all forms of radiant or conductive energy that are directed towards him and to release that energy from his hands. This power is passive, allowing Bishop to absorb energy at all times.

When he releases the energy, he can release it as many different types of forms, usually in concussive blasts or in the same form as he had absorbed the energy although he can emit microwaves as well. He can also store energy in his personal reserves for increasing his strength, endurance, and (to an extent) his healing. He also has enhanced durability, resistance to poison and injury and is a skilled marksman and hand-to-hand fighter.

His powers make it difficult to harm him with energy-based attacks; however, he can become overloaded from absorbing too much energy, though his upper limits are unknown, even to himself. He is, however, vulnerable to non-energy weapon attacks. If he were to be shot by a projectile weapon or hit with a crowbar, it could harm him. He carries guns that fire laser beams and plasma charges through which he can channel his personal energies.

He can "let his spirit go" as seen in X-Treme X-Men Annual #1. It's unknown if this is a mutant talent, or an ability taught to Bishop sometime in his life.

He has also demonstrated the ability of instinctively knowing where he is and the present hour and date even if asleep, first mentioned in X-Treme X-Men #1. Although being the great-grandson of Gateway, a mutant possessing extensive dealings with time travel, this aspect is not one of Bishop's mutant powers. Bishop's explanation is that due to training, he knows where he is at all times.

When fighting "growing men" in Limbo, he was able to stop one from growing by reaching out with his power and draining it of the energy it had absorbed. He was then able to immediately release that energy back into his opponent and start the process again.

It has been clearly stated that Bishop is also able to absorb and process kinetic energy similarly to Sebastian Shaw but in a much less effective way.

Bishop is a highly athletic man, an excellent hand-to-hand combatant with many years of armed and unarmed combat training, and a superb marksman with firearms. When he first came to the modern era, Bishop carried XSE guns from his time that fired laser beams and plasma charges. He also wore his XSE uniform, modeled after X-Men uniforms, which contained body armor.

His current right arm is a prosthetic, stolen from Forge. A nuclear powered battle ready arm, incorporates in its design a time-travel device and enhanced strength and resilience.

Other versions

Ultimate Bishop

In Ultimate X-Men #43 when Emma Frost introduces some of the candidates for the new, government-supported mutant team to the President, a muscular African American with braided hair and a golden chain around his neck is shown on a screen.

The President says, "No to Bishop. Not with his criminal record."

A time-traveling Bishop appears in Ultimate X-Men #76. Moments after the battle with Cable concludes, he appears asking if he's too late to stop Cable.

Wolverine knocks him unconscious and the X-Men interrogate him. He is wearing the same uniform as the members of Cable's squad. He appears to be much older than the mainstream Bishop, because of his gray hair. He then leads the team into battle with Cable's squad. However he fails to stop Cable from kidnapping Xavier (everyone believes Xavier is dead) and is now trapped in the present day, due to Cable's destroying of the device that allowed him to time travel.

In Ultimate X-Men #80, Bishop has a conversation with his younger self, who is incarcerated, in which he tells him not to use his powers to escape. By Ultimate X-Men #84, Bishop has formed a new team of X-Men (consisting of Wolverine, Storm, Pyro, Dazzler, Angel, Psylocke and himself). He is using the new team to stop a new wave of Sentinel attacks on mutants, caused by an unknown enemy, revealed in that issue to be the Fenris twins and Bolivar Trask. Wolverine appears to distrust Bishop, promising to gut him if he tries anything suspicious. He was unconscious during the fight with the Fenris twins and the Sentinels, but when Psylocke's life was at risk, he woke up to defend her and revealed that she was his future wife.

He killed both the Fenris twins with his abilities and went on to lead the New X-Men against the Sentinels. But, at the end of the battle, it was surprisingly revealed that he was in fact working with Cable, and that the entire "Cable" affair had been a ruse to make the X-Men a stronger team. The team remains unaware of the deception and Wolverine stabbed Bishop at the end of Issue 90, when Bishop stopped Storm and Dazzler from being able to save Angel from being killed by Sinister, before Bishop could reveal this. Bishop believes that it couldn't have happened any other way. Cable later reveals the ruse, but Wolverine shows no regret for killing Bishop. After the battle with Apocalypse is undone by the Phoenix, there is no evidence that Bishop has been returned to life, even though Angel was.

His powers have been revealed as density control. For example, he recently destroyed a Sentinel robot by causing its shell to increase in density and crush its inner parts. Bishop then reduced his own density and floated to the ground. He also has access to teleportation technology.

Robert Kirkman later admitted that the Bishop mentioned earlier in the series is the same as the one he introduced; faced with the fact that this Bishop was already introduced into continuity when he would have preferred the character to work with Cable, Kirkman simply introduced him as an older version of the previously-mentioned Bishop.

X-Men: The End

In the non-canon trilogy of mini-series, Bishop learns he has a teenage daughter, Aliya, by Deathbird. She will become Majestrix of the Shi'ar with her father as her Imperial Chancellor.

In other media

Television

X-Men animated series

Bishop guest starred in a few episodes of the X-Men animated television series voiced by Philip Akin. He travels back in time to stop the assassination of Senator Kelly and prevent the Days of Future Past timeline from occurring (with Bishop assuming Kate Pryde's role from the comic version of this tale). Bishop believes Gambit to be the assassin, but it is later revealed that Mystique attempts the assassination in the guise of the Cajun X-Man. Upon returning to his own time after saving Kelly, he finds the world infected with a deadly plague. He returns in a later episode to stop the spread of Apocalypse's techno-organic virus, however, he also faces resistance from Cable, who knows the virus is necessary as it will create antibodies necessary to the stabilization of the mutant genetic code. He also shows up in some more episodes, where he and his sister travel back in time to stop Fitzroy from killing a young Charles Xavier in the past, causing constant war between mutants and humans in the X-Men's time, and his time changes into one in which mutants have been all but exterminated by Master Mold. They eventually manage to save Xavier, but Bishop gets trapped in the Axis of Time during Apocalypse's attempt to control all of time in the "Beyond Good and Evil" episode. After Apocalypse's defeat, Bishop returns to his own proper timeline.

Wolverine & The X-Men

Bishop appeared in Wolverine and the X-Men as a member of Professor X's future X-Men team.

Video games

• He is a playable character in the video game X-Men: Next Dimension
• A younger version of Bishop makes a cameo in X-Men Legends voiced by Grey DeLisle. He is almost killed by a Sentinel, but is saved by the X-Men.
• Khary Payton voices Bishop who is a playable character in X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse. Bishop's status as a time traveler is mentioned in a trivia mini-game.
• Bishop will appear in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2: Fusion, but it's unknown whether or not he'll be playable.

Books

• Bishop plays a small part in the X-Men: The Last Stand novelization by Chris Claremont. He is mentioned as a NYPD Officer who is in charge of crowd control at Worthington Cure Clinics in the city of New York. He is also mentioned to be a former student at Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters, and he is an acquaintance of Iceman.
• Bishop is a main character in the Spider-Man and X-Men novel trilogy Time's Arrow by Tom DeFalco with Jason Henderson (The Past), Adam-Troy Castro (The Present), and eluki bes shahar (The Future), in which he and Spider-Man travel through time and into parallel universes. In these books Bishop is able to use his energy absorption ability as an active power.
• Bishop appears in X-Men Dimensions 2, being called in by Professor X for help in the final battle, along with Forge. He will return for X-Men Dimensions 3, but is unknown at the current time what sort of role he will play.

Notes

References

External links

• Bishop at UncannyXmen.net
• Bishop at the Marvel Universe