Bishop and Deathbird take on an evil empire!
Originally Published August 1998
We begin with Bishop doing his best Dewey Cox and thinking about his whole life.
Specifically, how all of it led to him being stranded on some unknown planet far from Earth. his only company? Deathbird, a woman who is so obsessed with him she paralyzed him to keep him from running away and also made him believe that everyone he knows in this time period had died. It's something of a complicated relationship, but it's a work in progress.
Unfortunately for the couple I will now forever refer to as Deathbish, they have more pressing concerns as they are attacked by some hostile locals, the Ursaa. They acquit themselves well (being that one is a ruthless mutant cop and the other is a bloodthirsty conqueror) until they are met by a friendly face, a Han Solo type rebel who identifies himself as Karel.
Karel takes the not-so-happy couple to his camp, only to find that it has been destroyed by the big baddies, the Chnitt. Instead, they go to his buddy Tu, who is some kind of, I don't know, information broker or employment agent or antiques dealer or something, who knows, it's not explained and doesn't really matter.
Karel explains that he's not from around these parts either -- his peaceful planet was ravaged by the Chnitt, and he came to seek out a weapon that could destroy them. Deathbird calls him out for claiming to be "peaceful" when he's looking to take his oppressors out by force -- which is rich coming from someone called Deathbird. Also I think when someone occupies and razes your home planet, you can be forgiven for fighting back in kind. Life is complicated, you know?
Anyway, being a warrior who is actually willing to fight back rather than a submissive hippie makes Karel an outcast on his world -- hated, perhaps even feared -- not that he would expect his new friends to understand.
Anywhoozles, Karel's plan is to go across the dangerous flats to the Smuggler City of Kuth, which the Chnitt are thankfully not keeping an eye on because they're busy with their orbital blockade. There, he'll use a warp gate to get to his home planet with his ultimate weapon. Bishop and Deathbird agree to go along, on the premise that the warp gate sounds like the best bet to get them home -- meaning, in Bishop's case, Earth.
Back on Earth, in Anchorage, the Original 5 X-Men are packing to go back home. However, they're having trouble selling their new house. I'm not that surprised considering it's in Alaska and they only bought it two weeks ago, but some of the X-People suggest it may be prejudice.
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| Which, to be fair |
Since we're on the subject and I don't really want to revisit this in the "Further Thoughts" section, I just want to state clearly that it's a pet peeve of mine in any medium, when characters undergo some big life-altering change and then immediately revert back to the status quo. Like, it's bad enough another member of the team goes "on leave" every other month only to return a handful of issues later, you just moved to Alaska! With quite a great deal of fanfare! Why did the writers bother if they were just going to rejoin the team within the same year?
Anyway, Jean also gets hit with some psychic shockwave from the Shadow King story, but it's really just a way of telling you to buy X-Men if you weren't already.
On the way to Kuth, the Chnitt arrive in all they crab-spidery glory.
Handling one Chnitt seems to be well within Deathbird's scope of capabilities, but Bishop, forever the cop, is concerned about the fact that good ole friendly Tu definitely sold them out.
After some more action with a tentacle monster that is definitely not the Sarlaac for legal reasons, and some discussion over whether Bishop should go back to Earth or join Deathbird in trying to overthrow her sister's empire, they make it to Kuth.
Bishop asks about the ultimate weapon, which Karel explains is a device that eats metal like a flesh-eating virus. How it will know to stop with the bad guys' spaceships, nobody knows. As they discuss next steps, death beings to rain down on them in the form of an attack from the Chnitt who weren't even supposed to be here today.
While Karel and Deathbird make haste to the warp gate, Bishop offers to stay behind and throw one of the three nullifiers at the Chnitt ship, potentially sacrificing himself and his only chance to get back to Earth. Deathbird is insistent that she absolutely totally 100% will not be waiting for Bishop, no matter what.
They say their farewells and part, offering complementary narration captions to explain how totally not into each other they are.
Bishop winds up and makes the throw from deep right field to third base.
This causes the Chnitt ship to explode spectacularly, which is definitely not what was implied would happen but certainly looks a lot better than gradually being eaten away.
Bishop makes it to the warp gate just in time to catch Karel on his way out the door. He asks about Deathbird and Karel heavily implies that Deathbird did indeed successfully make the jump and is no longer present.
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| "We both understand what's being asked and said here, right??" |
Then, because that's the sort of thing that happens, the warp gate explodes into nothingness, thus stranding Bishop on a hostile alien world, alone, with absolutely nobody to comfort her.
Or maybe Deathbird was lying when she said she wouldn't wait. Whatever.
See you in the spinoff!
Right?
Further Thoughts:
I shouldn't like this. It has absolutely nothing to do with the main narrative of the book, just kind of bridging this lingering plot thread featuring two characters who basically count as background players at this point, to an upcoming spinoff that seems like nobody could possibly be interested in (with practically the worst name I've ever heard.) Not only do they not make it to Earth or the Shi'ar homeworld of Chandilar, they don't even escape the Chnitt planet. And it's a huge ball of post-Star Wars sci-fi cliches that seem to have nothing to do with anything and should be impossible to care about.
And yet... I found myself weirdly charmed! Because sometimes I like those fun old sci-fi cliches. Because the comic itself is so superficial and transparent in what it's going for it doesn't even get bogged down in said cliches -- oh, there's an exiled freedom fighter, and a treacherous underworld guy, and roving gangs and a tentacle monster and whatever else? Sure, just keep throwing it out there. Because it works as a one-off oddity amidst all the other stuff the X-Men could be shown doing. And because Seagle and scripter Joseph Harris have a pretty good handle on the intergalactic homicidal moonlighting dynamic between this unlikely pair, complete with some surprisingly strong inner monologue from Bishop about how this alien planet isn't even that much less his home than present-day Earth is.
It was a brisk, fun outing and Chris Bachalo got to not only draw kooky outer space characters like Tu and the Ursaa who attacked Bishop and Deathbird early in the story, but also use wild cascading panel layouts to add a suitable sense of action-packed alien wildness to the proceedings (note that the one Earthbound scene has a more conventional grid.)
As I'm fond of saying lately, I may be tough to impress but I'm reasonably easy to please and I came away pleased with this one.
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