Bishop: The Last Quality X-Man?

(or Deadpool vs Bishop)

As you may have noticed, the update of this page is a little late. So, to help me catch up there's only one feature article for this double issue. But, as a bonus I have a 1024x768 Bishop desktop poster for you to download, just click here!

There's always a lot of talk about the X-Men. People say how many problems the main titles have, complain about the number of related titles and cry blue murder every time there is a cross over. It was because of these things and the way hype is often used to cover up crap that I was wary of picking up Bishop: The Last X-Man. But, I was pleasntly surprised. Bishop's monthly is quite good, so far. Particularly in comparison with other 'second tier' X-Books (X-Man, Cable, Wolverine, Gambit, etc).

What is so good you ask? Well, previous to this book I thought that Bishop was a character with no potential and quite disliked most of his appearances in the X-books over the last couple of years. I have mostly only ever seen him portrayed as a one-dimensional tough guy of few words. But, in this book Joseph Harris makes Bishop so much more interesting and gives his character so much more depth. This coupled with Georges Jeanty's excellent pencils are what makes this book.

This story makes sense, unlike books with a similar premise (i.e. Mutant X), the story interests me and makes me want to read on. The basic premise is, Bishop after arriving back on earth from his interstellar journey, is consumed with a desire to finish the quest he started years ago that led to him becoming one the X-Men. So he sets out on a quest top find Fitzroy, the evil time-bending mutant from Bishops future. This leads him to being ambushed and somehow transported to an alternate reality/future where the world is ruled by the Chronomancer (Fitzroy) and Bishop is a prophesised hero. This isn't what necessarily makes the story interesting. What makes it interesting, is that this world isn't a straight copy of the existing Marvel Universe with the same characters, but just messed around a bit. No, this world is almost medievil filled with a host of new and intersting characters.

As I said this is a quality book (so far) and has a bright future with a great creative team. This book can sit easily sit on the same level of quality as Deadpool. It's only weakness is that it is a pretty straight-faced book and doesn't yet have the capacity for humour that Deadpool has.

By Spidermad