UNCANNY X-MEN #283: Bishop's Crossing

The X-Men meet their biggest fan

Originally Published December 1991

We begin with chaos. 

As you may remember from last week's issue, the Uncanny X-Men were in the process of wrecking Trevor Fitzroy's business. Despite having access to a seemingly bottomless supply of jabronis, Fitzroy was on the ropes, and things only fixed to look worse as his latest portal only yielded a trio of heavily armed, uniformed men who appear to be the last people Fitzy wanted to see.

Face tattoos: all the rage in the not-too-distant future

Their leader -- identified as Bishop -- wants to shove Fitzroy back through the future-hole where he came from, but Trevor begs off: No, please, take me back if you must, but not first!

Well all right then, not first. One of the other officers, Randall, pushes his take through the portal, but guess what?

...Lisa!

That's right, in a now-rare instance of internal consistency, it has been established that Fitzroy's time-portals are a one-way trip. Anyone coming back from the future will have to make the return trip the loooooo-oooooo-ooooong way.

Fitzroy cackles in triumph while Bishop, the tactician of the group, decides what he and his cronies need to do is kill 'em all. In a panic, the faceless goons all activate their image inducers to look like Fitzroy, to cause confusion and protect the real Fitzroy (whose neck is being held by Bishop). So Bishop amends his order to kill all the Fitzroys. 

The X-Men watch on, confused and perturbed. They may not like Fitzroy, but indiscriminate killing is something the X-Men don't stand for either.

While the X-Men are confused, and Bishop's confused (could he really be meeting the legendary X-Men??!?) Trevor tries to slip away, but is collared by thugs working for Shinobi Shaw.

Bishop is meanwhile bowled over. He's the X-Men's biggest fan, has all their records, even the early ones with Mimic. But in some ways, these alleged X-Men do not match up with the stories he'd been told, which is enough of a discrepancy for him to declare them to be fakes.

This is what you get for stopping your collection in 1988

With that, the fight is on as Bishop slaps some de-powering cuffs on Colossus and uses his power to absorb energy blasts to fend of Storm's lightning.

Eventually, the heroes get the better of Bishop and force him to stand down.

Above in the Blackbird, Charles ponders just how Jean was able to transplant her mind into another body. And the answer to that, of course, is that that's just how Jean's powers work this week, so get over it. Charles works to separate Jean's consciousness from Emma's, a difficult and painful-seeming process for which there is no local anaesthesia.

And while it seems briefly that there may have been some interference from a third party, in the end, the operation is a success. Professor X is happy, Jean Grey is alive, and Emma is... well, dead, it seems.

I mean, who cares what happens to her, right?

On Shinobi's jet, the son of the former Black King crows that he has retaken his status from the Upstart of the Upstarts, Fitzroy. Trevor wants to lodge a formal complaint -- he stole Shinobi's ring fair and square. Shinobi, however, has already anticipated this and appealed to the Gamesmaster -- the enigmatic figure who is running the mysterious and ever-changing game they are playing -- and the ruling was not favorable to the green-haired one.

In case you're wondering, his severed finger was found in a field and reattached

Below, Storm, like the rest of us, wants answers: what is the deal with Bishop showing up wearing the X-Men's logo and colors? Bishop answers that he's earned them from a lifetime of fighting for Xavier's dream. Storm is like, yeah right, pull the other one, but before he can, an explosion likely laid by Fitzroy -- or just a random event designed to keep dialogue from going on too long -- occurs and the two groups separate, neither having learned (or at least accepted) the truth about the other. While Storm still has questions about the mysterious Bishop (less so his buddies Malcolm and Randall) Bishop and the Boys refuse to believe they've met the actual for-real X-Men.

I'm with them -- you're telling me they supposedly met a whole X-Men team, and it didn't even include Wolverine? The historical records suggest no such thing! Impossible!

The X-Men regroup aboard the Blackbird, where Xavier sums things up: The X-Men's alliance with the Hellfire Club nearly cost Jean her life. Storm agrees: it was an ill-conceived plot point that made no sense and went nowhere and screw the guy who came up with it things are complicated.

Back at Gamesmaster HQ, we finally get a look at the man behind all of this, whose presence we've been breathlessly anticipating since we first learned of his existence several panels earlier.

And sure, he may look harmless like the unholy lovechild of William H. Macy and Lobot, but we soon learn he's not alone in this shenanigan...

That's right, he's in league with the real actual for-real true #1 baddie here -- Selene! Did you miss Selene? I can't wait to see this plot absolutely definitely play out across several issues, perhaps years. To be continued!

Further Thoughts:

This being the first issue to explore the hot new character of Bishop means it at least has some cachet power, even if it's stuck in an intractable feedback loop of "Tell me you who are, I don't believe you, I don't understand" where none of the characters learn or absorb exactly what is being told to them. Yes, Bishop is from a future where the X-Men are actually revered legends, at least in some circles, and Xavier's dream has been morphed into a sort of paramilitary police force on which Bishop serves.

Now here's a man who has not been studying his 1991 Marvel Universe Trading Cards

Of course, he's a shoot-first-ask-questions-never kind of cop, which I think is perhaps an error in judgment when being transported back to the past where knowing anything about who you are fighting might be a plus. Basically, he comes off like a dum-dum here and we, the reader, are left to be exhausted by characters refusing to grasp what we may already have caught onto. I don't know how much of that is just his role or how much is John Byrne's cringeworthy dialogue.

We get it John, you wish you could be writing Cyclops.

For the second time, an X-Person switches bodies with Emma Frost and for the second time the results are underwhelming. It really feels like there's more to do with this premise, and maybe someday some writer will come along and do justice with it.

Selene is correct, this "game" is really not very interesting