UNCANNY X-MEN #287: Bishop to King's Five!

Bishop has a flashback to the future!

Originally Published April 1992

We begin in the thick of it as Bishop and his XSE Cronies Malcolm and Randall have located seemingly all of the remaining temporal outlaws, who have gathered in one location for easy and convenient slaughter.

The cowboy cops (hey, they even have matching bandanas!) remind us that they are from the future where the X-Men are revered as legendary heroes, by using expressions like "By Cyclops," "I'll be bamfed," and "I've had it with all these mother-Forgeing outlaws."

The X-Men, flying home from their little excursion to Voidworld, scan for mutants using their on-board Cerebro. Below, they find a smattering of 93 new mutant signatures. Oops, make than 92... 91... 73...

They agree to go investigate, while Charles, via Zoom, advises that they should avoid confrontation with the maniac time cops at all costs.

It's a wild scene below, with Bishop catching a stray blast of energy from one of the crooks, which as you know he can absorb and fire back at them.

I'm quietly obsessed with Bishop's powers. "Energy blasts" are not something that really exist in the real world, but they are pretty abundant in comics, especially in the sci-fi future Bishop grew up in, so it stands to reason that a mutant could evolve a resistance/appetite for them. It's the comic bookiest thing, and totally reads like two kids on the playground. "I blast you with my energy gun!" "Yeah well my power is to absorb it and fire it back at you!" "Nuh uh, you can't do that!" "Who says??" etc etc.

Anyway, it's three cops against numberless psychos in an enclosed space.

Which costs two of the men their lives.

This is gonna require some paperwork when Bishop gets back

This, of course, enraged Bishop, who swears he's going to kill these outlaws even more now that his friends are dead, but the X-Men arrive to stand in his way. Bishop takes this as further proof that these are fake imposter X-Men: the real historical X-Men loved committing murder.

The X-Men heed The Professor's directive not to confront Bishop until he fires a blast that sails right past Storm. Then the confrontation is on. Colossus nails him with a right cross so hard it rocks Bishop and his El DeBarge mullet about ten feet in the air.

Bishop's powers protect him from energy blasts, but he is weak to fists, which is something he and I have in common

The punch lands Bishop impaled on some debris, which the heroes must have some mixed feelings about since they don't love deliberate murder, but if they accidentally have an oopsie and get a guy killed... I mean, that's less problems overall, right? 

Given a chance to catch their breath, the X-Men realize that Bish might not have been aiming at them, but at the psycho killer behind them. In a flash, however, Bishop is gone, injured and delirious in a nearby alley where he blacks out thinking of How We Got Here.

Flash back to, I dunno, a couple of days ago or something, but in the Future. Bishop, Malcolm and Randall are chasing down Fitzroy into a supposedly radioactive tunnel. For our benefit, Bishop lays it out -- the X.S.E. was founded after the "Emancipation" that granted the mutants freedom to police themselves, and police they will. It's actually not a bad premise, if it weren't for the fact that the cops are just as bad as the crooks.

Out of luck and out of options, Fitzroy stumbles upon a buried secret hatch. Figuring he's got nothing to lose, he ducks down into it, but find himself in some labyrinthine tunnels -- an underground complex connecting Manhattan to New Salem. The coppers capture the future Upstart, but realize that where they've cornered him is not just an expensive home theatre -- it's playing the last video footage of the X-Men!

It seems a betrayal is in the X-Men's not-too-distant future, as the glitchy video of Jean throws around terms like "Power's negated" and "Shouldn't have trusted" ...while conveniently skipping over any specific details that might help identify who she is talking about.

The video ends with the betrayer seeming to attack Jean from off-screen.

Bishop is somewhat gagged by the discovery. Knowing of the legend of the X-Men's war room, he certainly didn't expect to find it, but when he did, he would have expected some answers, instead only getting more questions.

Intriguing! I can't wait to find out more about this very soon

Playing Robert Stack, Bishop goes to visit a man known as The Witness to help shed some light on this Unsolved Mystery. Also called LeBeau, the Witness is rumored to be the last person to see the X-Men alive. He is a 100-year-old man who has at least two sex slaves, spends his days sitting on a dais, and does not wear pants.

A sex pest with a French-sounding name? Do the X-Men know anyone like that?

LeBeau teases Bishop with confirmation that yeah, he was there and knows all about it. Bishop asks him to tell once and for all, but The Witness gives him the silent treatment.

Bishop is shown the door. Back at the maximum security prison, Fitzroy absorbs the life force of a rat in his cell to charge up his powers (they don't have power dampeners in future prisons? What is this, amateur night??!) and go on a rampage, freeing all the inmates he can in a sort of dystopian Jailhouse Rock scenario. He opens a portal to the past and invites the future-psychos -- and Bantam -- along, where they are free to kill and rape whatever they like, and Fitzroy can pursue his lifelong dream of joining, and leading, the Upstarts, and even winning their game. It's win-win.

Bishop, Randall and Malcolm follow them through, and the rest, as you know, is history. Or the future. Or the past. I, uh... I need to lie down.

Bishop awakens in the X-Men's infirmary. Charles relieves the team so that he can question the future-cop alone.

Charles letting it all hang out for once

The process takes a whole twenty minutes, during which the X-Men debate whether Bishop is a psycho or a stand-up guy.

At which point the Professor emerges and re-introduces them to Bishop... their latest teammate.

Honest to Blob?

Further Thoughts:

Although it's a little light on plot, this was a much-needed installment, clarifying and re-aligning Fitzroy's and Bishop's backstory and illuminating their characters ever so slightly much more. It's certainly not short on happenings as it adds the wrinkle that in Bishop's time, it's common knowledge that the X-Men were killed, which Bishop now knows was due to a betrayal by one of their own. Their sudden death somewhat explains how their legend becomes mangled into a philosophy that encourages wanton murder, but does not explain who published "The Wit and Wisdom of Hank McCoy."

LeBeau did, I guess

While the X-Men have played with time travel before, and this all risks being a re-tread of Days of Future Past, it's at least a compelling storyline to look forward to. As we know, back in those days comics weren't planned out in any great scale, they just kind of introduced plot elements and decided to pay them off later: it's very much something Claremont would do, which just goes to show that the more things change, the less they actually change. Or something.

The issue benefits from the guest artistry of John Romita Jr. who has greatly leveled up his style and ability in the ensuing years since he left the series in 1986. JRJr started his career as a solid hand at producing house style art, then began expanding his style while working on the X-Men in a way that still looked for its final form, and was really starting to find his footing when he transitioned into doing Star Brand for the New Universe instead. Now in 1992, his pencil work has embraced that pleasingly geometric form that is recognizable as his alone that he still draws today, and which benefits from the Going/Rosas color team to add depth and contrast, as well as the inks of my namesake Scott Williams (and a small army of helping hands.) His veteran sense of structure and storytelling helps keep this issue on the level where less-experienced hands on the wheel had a tendency to go a little wild in recent issues.

I'll admit, while his 80's run is not typically considered a highlight of the X-Men's history artistically or creatively, I'm a big sucker for John Romita's style of art from this point forward. While it's definitely a love-or-hate thing, I find it dynamic and engaging for superheroics, affecting and icy when it needs to be, or warmer and more expressive when the situation called for it. It's hard to believe they didn't just slot him right back into the role as regular artist then and there, but in this case it would not prove be a permanent, long-term thing.