Tag Archives: Cyclops

Comic Book Character of the Week: Bishop

Bishop

Lucas Bishop, better known as simply Bishop, is a mutant with the ability to absorb energy. More unique, he is a time traveler and from a dark future where Sentinels killed most of the X-Men and took over North America.

Bishop grew up a survivor of this future and, along with his sister, became a member of the X.S.E. (Xavier Security Enforcers, a group that policed criminal mutants). His sister became his commanding officer as he stayed at a lower rank to patrol the streets with his friends in the group. His sister was eventually ambushed and turned into a monster that needed to kill mutants for their energy in order to survive. She was eventually killed by Bishop himself and her essence was stored in his holographic matrix projector on his wrist.

The man who set Bishop’s sister up was her criminal boyfriend Trevor Fitzroy, who would become one of Bishop’s greatest enemies if not his greatest. Fitzroy eventually was caught and imprisoned for his criminal activities and fled to through a time portal to the X-Men’s time, where Bishop and his friends followed. Bishop’s friends were killed, but they stopped Fitzroy for the time being.

Bishop

Bishop initially had conflict with Storm due to his methods of fighting/dealing with enemies and Gambit due to mistakenly thinking that Gambit was the one who would ultimately betray the X-Men.

During Age of Apocalypse (an event that changed the entire universe), Bishop retained his memories of the old timeline and inspired Magneto and the X-Men to change things back to “normal”. Eventually an elder form of Bishop stopped Legion (a very powerful psychic mutant that caused the Age of Apocalypse).

Later, Bishop found a rival/enemy in Cable as he was trying to kill the so-called “Mutant Messiah” AKA the first baby born after M-Day AKA Hope Summers, while Cable was trying to save her. Bishop hounded Cable throughout time and repeatedly attempted to kill him and Hope as Bishop was under the impression that Hope might become an antichrist like figure rather than a savior.

Eventually he was outwitted and had his means of time travel destroyed (a cybernetic arm he stole from Forge) and was trapped in the far future by Cable.

Bishop’s powers allow him to absorb great amounts of energy and turn them into accelerated healing, concussive blasts (usually twice the force/energy of the original source), enhanced strength, enhanced speed, and a form of invulnerability. His powers aren’t as fine-tuned as Sebastian Shaw where he can absorb the energy(kinetic) from impacts such as punches or being hit against a wall, but he seems to be trying to learn how and work on his abilities.

He’s shown the ability to absorb psionic energy (though he’s not immune to telepathic attacks or the like) and magic energy and has even stored enough energy to hurt Legion at one point. Bishop’s abilities have even allowed him to aid the X-Men in surviving the powerful psychic entity Onslaught by absorbing a large amount of psionic energy that would’ve otherwise killed them all. His limits are unknown and seem to vary, but are consistent with the fact that he needs to release the energy he has stored or he could explode.

Bishop absorbing energy

If you wish to see more, Bishop makes a cameo appearance (a bit more than that actually, but not exactly a starring role) in X-Men: Days of Future Past.

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