Bishop (later collected as Bishop: Mountjoy Crisis) is a 1994 comic book limited series from Marvel Comics.
The series, set in the shared Marvel Universe, is part of the wider X-Men franchise and follows on from Bishop's debut in Uncanny X-Men.
The titular Bishop is superhuman mutant who can absorb and redirect energy. He's also a time traveller, a member of the mutant police force the X.S.E. (Xavier's Security Enforcers) from 70 years in the future. Along with his colleagues Randall and Malcolm, he pursued the mutant criminal Fitzroy and his allies through a portal to the present day. Now his comrades are dead and Bishop's joined the X-Men, the band of mutant heroes he'd only read about in the history books.
When Bishop discovers that one fugitive from the future, the murderous body-thief Mountjoy, is still at large, the hunt for the killer brings back old memories and makes Bishop question his own identity. Is he an X-Man, or an X.S.E. officer?
Bishop contains examples of the following tropes:
- Danger Room Cold Open: The first issue opens with Bishop, Randall and Malcolm fighting against Fitzroy's renegades. It's not a flashback, it's a danger room simulation of the battle in which Randall and Malcolm died. Bishop's been repeating it almost daily, trying to find a path that would have saved his friends, refusing to accept that it's an impossible challenge.
- Grand Theft Me: Mountjoy's powers allow him to possess other people, physically merging his body into theirs. He can influence their actions, remaining almost undetectable. Alternatively, he can mount a 'hostile takeover', borrowing their powers and memories as well, and eventually consuming his victim.
- Hallucinations: After being caught in an explosion, a shaken and concussed Bishop starts hallucinating, drifting between the present day and memories of his life in the future.
- He Knows Too Much: Bantam, whose body was hosting Mountjoy, is the only person who knows the body thief travelled back in time with Fitzroy's rabble, as hiding within Bantam made him undetectable. And if Mountjoy can silence Bantam before he tells Bishop, then nobody will know he's here at all...
- Mugging the Monster: In the first issue, Mountjoy's just about to murder Bantam when a gang of street thugs decide to rough them up. Mountjoy effortlessly kills most of them, then uses his powers to merge with and possess the sole survivor.
- Projected Man: Forge repairs and upgrades Bishop's hologram of his dead sister Shard. The new version can speak and act independently, and has a personality based on Bishop's memories of the real Shard.
- Super-Reflexes: Mountjoy effortlessly defeats normal foes, often relying on knives and a crossbow rather than his powers. It initially seems he's a very fast, superhumanly skilled warrior, but this is subverted when it's revealed that his 'Basilisk Field' is slowing anyone who gets too close to him.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: Bishop finds himself caught between his X.S.E. training, which instructs him to execute Mountjoy, and the X-Men's less lethal philosophy. The hologram of his sister, X.S.E. officer Shard, voices the argument in favor of killing Mountjoy, who's essentially a superpowered Serial Killer. Bishop eventually decides against that, following Xavier's principles and rejoining the X-Men instead.
- Two Beings, One Body: Mountjoy's powers let him physically absorb others. After a while, he consumes them, but in the short term they become a merged being with Mountjoy's mind in control. This can lead to some Body Horror, often with the victim's agonised face surfacing on Montjoy's skin, trying to break free of his flesh. If the victim is a mutant, it can also let him use their powers.
