A History in Time
Around a year after their liberation, Bishop’s grandmother died, but not before making him promise to look after Shard. Living on the streets, Bishop and Shard turned to thievery to survive. When XSE members Sureshot and Trace were pursuing the Exhume Virago, she took Shard as a hostage. Bishop leaped onto Virago’s back in an attempt to free his sister, and an infuriated Virago was about to murder Bishop when Sureshot killed her. Until then, Bishop regarded the XSE as his enemies and the Exhumes as heroes, but after Sureshot saved him, he wanted to join the XSE. Later, Bishop and Shard and their grandmother's friend Hancock were attacked by criminal mutants Billiboy and Halftrack; the two criminals killed Hancock and were going to murder Shard as well. Bishop tried to save his sister from them, but it was XSE members Amazon and Recoil who stopped the criminals.
Impressed by Bishop, the XSE offered to recruit Bishop, and he agreed on the condition that Shard be accepted into the XSE as well. The siblings both became cadets at the XSE Academy under Hecat’e's supervision. Their classmates included the mutant Trevor Fitzroy, with whom Bishop formed an instant enmity. Bishop became the youngest cadet to ever graduate from the Academy until Shard graduated the following year. Bishop quickly ascended to the rank of Squad Commander and ultimately led his team, Omega Squad, including fellow XSE officers Malcolm and Randall. Fitzroy ultimately became a criminal, forcing Bishop to arrest him. Seeking to cut a deal, Fitzroy informed Bishop of an Exhume hideout’s location. In turn, Bishop told Shard so she could make the arrest and gain another promotion; however, Fitzroy had set them up as the hideout was actually a nest of Emplates—mutants who fed upon other mutants. Shard was killed and transformed into an Emplate herself. She then confronted Bishop. Bishop sought to help his sister and took her to the Witness, who agreed to help her only if Bishop came to work for him for a year. Bishop reluctantly agreed, and the Witness used holographic technology to save Shard’s life.
Time-Tossed
Subsequently returning to the XSE, Bishop once again encountered Fitzroy, who had since been released from prison. Recaptured, Fitzroy engineered a mass breakout and escaped through a time portal to the modern era of Earth-616. Bishop, Malcolm, and Randall followed, even though they knew they had no means of returning to their own time. Stranded in the past, the trio tracked their mark into a fray between the X-Men and the Sentinels. Confronted with the legends of his youth, Bishop’s first reaction was one of disbelief. He and his compatriots battled the X-Men ferociously, seeking to expose what they assumed to be a deception. Before Bishop could discover his error, Fitzroy’s forces slew Bishop's troops during a deadly firefight. Only through the X-Men's intervention did the badly injured Bishop survive.
Finally coming to terms with his time-tossed situation, Bishop was honored when Xavier invited him to join the team whose members he had idolized since childhood. Bishop found new purpose with the X-Men, fighting alongside them to avert the potential genetic war that, for him, was history. Initially uneasy with Bishop’s presence, the X-Men soon realized he was a devoted disciple of Xavier’s philosophy, albeit an often overzealous one. During his time with the X-Men, Bishop proved instrumental in returning the timeline to normal after it was diverged into Reality-295 (the “Age of Apocalypse”) by Legion, Xavier’s mutant son, who had traveled into the past to kill Magneto but had inadvertently killed Xavier instead. In his own time, Bishop had learned of a traitor in the X-Men’s ranks who would ultimately cause their death. For a time, he believed this to be the X-Man Remy LeBeau, AKA Gambit, of Earth-616. Still after the traitor turned out to be Xavier’s malevolent psionic alter ego Onslaught, Bishop stopped Onslaught from killing the X-Men by absorbing the energies of a massive psychic blast.
Later, the Shi’ar Imperial Guardsman Gladiator recruited the X-Men to help save the intergalactic Shi’ar Empire from the threat of the techno-organic Phalanx. Alongside outcast Shi’ar warrior Deathbird, the X-Men prevailed; however, on their return home, the X-Men were separated after an encounter with an alien spaceship, and Bishop was severely injured. Deathbird tended to his injuries, hoping to use him in an attempt to claim the Shi’ar throne from her sister, Lilandra. After adventuring with Deathbird, including a visit to the alternate Earth-9922 reality wherein the Shi’ar ruled Earth, Bishop returned to Earth and the X-Men.
Plagued by recurring nightmares of Fitzroy, Bishop soon quit the X-Men to pursue his old nemesis. Drawn by the villain into the apocalyptic future of Earth-9910, Bishop learned that his failure to act against Fitzroy had resulted in the criminal taking over this future world, wherein he had become the all-powerful Chronomancer. Fitzroy planned to ascend to godhood by becoming one with the temporal energies that control time. Aided by a young boy named Michael, who had been drawn to the future with him, Bishop gathered a small group of mutants dedicated to quashing Fitzroy’s mad plan. Bishop ultimately defeated Fitzroy, but at a terrible price: Bishop’s sister, Shard, sacrificed her life to make this victory possible. Mere moments after the war’s end, Bishop—filled with chronal energy—was ripped back through time while Michael remained in the future, seemingly with no hope of returning home.
Spiraling through time, Bishop emerged back in Earth-616’s present, crashing into a Shi’ar deep space station. As it happened, Professor Charles Xavier, AKA Professor X, and his team of mutant Skrull students Cadre K were searching the same station for Cal’Syee Neramani, AKA Deathbird, who apparently served as Bishop's chronal anchor. A pan-galactic committee had decreed Earth to be an intergalactic prison planet, and Deathbird held the key to penetrating the energy barrier that surrounded Earth. Bishop almost killed Deathbird before she opened an airlock and blew herself unprotected into the vacuum of space. Forming a plan with Xavier, Bishop allowed himself to be captured by the pan-galactic committee and sent to Earth, where he was quickly reunited with the X-Men. Alongside members of the Avengers, the X-Men then helped liberate Earth from the true threat behind the plan, the evolved Kree, who were posing as another race called the Ruul.
Unbeknownst to Bishop, his earlier return to Earth-616 had infused him with the power of le Bete Noir, an ancient entity whose power rivaled that of the cosmic Phoenix Force. The entity threatened to consume Bishop and unleash its evil upon the universe once more. An unexpected sacrifice by the villainous Stryfe, a clone of Cable with immense kinetic powers, liberated Bishop. Soon after, Bishop and five of his teammates formed a splinter group that cut all ties with the rest of the X-Men while seeking the diaries of the late mutant seer Destiny. After the swordsman Vargas seemingly slew their teammate Elizabeth Braddock, AKA Psylocke, the splinter group thwarted an attempted invasion of Earth by the warlord Khan and his forces from Reality-2410 (“Dimension X”).
Bishop and his teammate Tessa, AKA Sage, subsequently began performing freelance police work in cases involving mutants, such as young Xavier Institute student Jeffrey Garrett—a mutant teleporter and suspected murderer who proved to be merely a pawn of mutant predator Elias Bogan. Later, the team was granted official sanction as a global mutant peacekeeping force dubbed the X-Treme Sanctions Executive (XSE), echoing Bishop’s future organization. Bogan then returned to plague the newly minted XSE after having possessed former X-Man Rachel Summers, who, in turn, possessed Bishop and set him against his teammates. The XSE ultimately prevailed, then helped the X-Men rebuild the Xavier Institute following an attack by Magneto. With Xavier having left to help rebuild the devastated island nation of Genosha, the X-Men restructured and the XSE rejoined their comrades while still operating independently. Later, when crime in the New York borough dubbed “Mutant Town” proved more than the N.Y.P.D. could handle, Bishop was called in to help police the region, renamed District X. Partnered with human officer Ismael “Izzy” Ortega, Bishop regularly opposed the plans of rival crimelords “Filthy” Frankie Zapruder and Daniel “Shaky” Kaufman, culminating in a gang war that saw both criminals arrested.
Bishop then prevented enigmatic mutant Mr. M from destroying Mutant Town and investigated the mysterious mutant Winston Hobbes, AKA Worm, before Wanda Maximoff, AKA Scarlet Witch’s “M-Day” reality warp depowered most of the world’s mutants, including many of Mutant Town’s residents.
When the United States government introduced the Super Human Registration Act (SHRA), Bishop sided with the pro-registration forces led by Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man, and participated in a clash with Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America’s anti-registration forces, ending with the Captain’s surrender. Subsequently, Bishop opposed the mutant refugees dubbed the 198 when they sought to escape federal protective custody. Finding himself at odds with X-Men leader Cyclops, who disagreed with the 198’s confinement, Bishop was placed in charge of an Office of National Emergency (O*N*E) coalition charged with recovering the 198. The X-Men similarly sought to recover the 198, culminating in a stand-off in the Nevada desert outside an abandoned S.H.I.E.L.D. bunker where the 198 had sequestered themselves. The O*N*E’s General Lazer, secretly an anti-mutant activist, had the mutant Johnny Dee possess Cyclops and attack Bishop, resulting in a clash between the O*N*E coalition and the X-Men. After Lazer was exposed and arrested, Bishop called for a ceasefire and had the O*N*E ally with the X-Men to save the 198 from the bunker’s auto-destruct sequence, which Lazer had initiated.
Still employed by the O*N*E, Bishop later helped his former X-Men teammate Hank McCoy, AKA Beast, during his search for a way to reverse the disastrous effects of “M-Day.” Bishop led him to a known supplier of Mutant Growth Hormone (MGH, actually mutant tissue samples which temporarily grant people superhuman powers) in Mutant Town; however, all of the samples had been rendered inert.
Mutant Messiah
Subsequently learning of the birth of the mutant child that he had come to hate, Bishop sought the child’s whereabouts to kill it in the hopes of preventing his dystopian future from coming to pass. After learning that the mutant soldier Nathan Summers, AKA Cable, had taken the child to safeguard it, Bishop sought to get a head start on the X-Men. He targeted the O*N*E Sentinel pilots tasked with safeguarding the Xavier Institute, infecting them with Nano-Sentinels and turning them against the X-Men. Bishop then headed to Dallas to the home of mutant technosmith Forge to destroy his time travel equipment to hamper Cable’s escape efforts. Bishop incapacitated Cable when he arrived, and as he was about to shoot the child, Nathaniel Essex, AKA Mister Sinister’s Marauders attacked him and took the infant. After Cable recovered the infant with Xavier’s aid, Bishop confronted him again but instead encountered the monstrous Predator X who ate his right arm. Seeking to prevent Cable and the child from escaping into the timestream, Bishop inadvertently shot Xavier, seemingly killing him. Cyclops then blasted Bishop away, allowing him to escape. After acquiring time-travel technology and a bionic replacement arm, Bishop began tracking Cable through time, determined to slay the child.
When Bishop tracked them down, he shot cable twice before a local gang prevented him from making the final kill. Bishop’s desire to kill Cable and the child led him to lay several traps across the timestream, and he killed many others in doing so, justifying his choices by telling himself that they didn’t actually exist or with the killing of the child, now named Hope, would return to existence.
Striking a deal with Stryfe, Bishop intended to use the insane mutant’s latent psychic powers to complete his mission to assassinate Hope. When X-Force, Cable, and Hope arrive to the future where Stryfe and Bishop lay wait, Stryfe’s army ambushes them. In the kerfuffle, the team is cast down a cliff while Hope and Warpath are taken prisoner to Stryfe’s citadel. Bishop, about to kill Hope faced Stryfe’s betrayal instead but they both found themselves interrupted by Cable and the X-Force who stormed the throne room. Stryfe laid waste to the team. When Bishop tried to kill Hope, Cable intervened, and in the battle, Wolverine slashed Bishop’s eye. It was then that Apocalypse, the immortal mutant with god-like powers, returned with help from Archangel. Apocalypse defeated Stryfe and allowed X-Force to escape. Bishop, his cybernetic arm wounded from the battle and with one less eye, also escaped.
Bishop then cut off the useless portion of his damaged arm but kept the machine inside his upper arm which still functioned. He tracked Cable and Hope through the timestream and when he found Cable alone, he shot him with his handheld weapon and a blast of his energy, but Cable is almost all organic metal, making him stronger than ever before. Almost defeated, Bishop retreats to the timestream to track down Hope, but his time mechanism is beyond repair. He allied with Stryfe’s Commander Spence and his city guard to track her down, but did not find her for two years. In that time, he became the priest known as Archbishop and altered his arm to contain a short-range thermonuclear device to kill Hope once and for all. Cable eventually found Hope, however, and liberated her from the fate Bishop had planned.
Eventually, Bishop came to realize how wrong he was in trying to kill Hope. Facing death Bishop met The Order, a group of humans who helped him recover and then trained him to hunt down the monstrous Revenants that possessed people. In his killings, he stopped when he came across a little girl who was still human. They became companions, though he later found himself trapped by Ghost Owl, the Queen of the Revenants. Bishop, possessed by Demon Bear, was then used by Ghost Owl to travel back to the present day. It wasn’t until Betsy Braddock, AKA Psylocke, and Ororo Munroe, AKA Storm, freed Bishop from possession, and Storm erased Bishop’s memory, wiping out his obsession to kill Hope, but it put him into a coma.
Comatose No More
After he awoke from his coma, he revealed Ghost Owl’s plans to rule the world, and X-Force helped him put a stop to it. Hope, now Hope Summers, attempted to take revenge on Bishop for his previous attempts to kill her, but they were both taken and held prisoner by Stryfe. Bishop expressed remorse for his role in her life, and Cable and Storm’s X-Force teams rescued them. Hope spared Bishop’s life, despite injuring him, and made a truce.
Bishop joined Warren Worthington III, AKA Archangel (now Angel) Charlie-Cluster-7, AKA Fantomex, Remy LeBeau, AKA Gambit, Raven Darkhölme, AKA Mystique, Logan/James Howlett, AKA Old Man Logan, Psylocke, and Anna Marie, AKA Rogue, to defeat the Shadow King with the spirit of Charles Xavier, Professor X’s help. During the battle, the Shadow King used the mutant Proteus’ energy to psychically infect Bishop, though he was later cured.
When Nate Grey, AKA X-Man, remade the world in his image, Bishop opposed him, and he, along with all other mutants were transported to a reality created by X-Man where everyone was mutants and love was outlawed. Bishop, having no memory of his former life thanks to X-Man’s alterations to reality, had an intimate evening with Jean Grey, AKA Marvel Girl (later Phoenix), which landed him in a prison for mutants who violated the rules of this reality. Bishop later returned to his reality after X-Man realized his new world was flawed.
When Xavier, Max Eisenhardt, AKA Magneto, and Moira MacTaggert, AKA Moira MacTaggert, AKA Moira X, started the mutant-only independent nation-state of Krakoa, Bishop became one of the Great Captains of the island.
