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Bishop

December 13, 2017 | By Errex More

The 90’s saw the inception of several antihero type characters in comics, many of which cultivated a definite anti-authority vibe to them. One such character is Bishop, a time traveling enforcer that came back to the late 20th century from a dystopian future.

My personal knowledge of Bishop’s exploits is rather limited, as he was created around the time my X-Men comic reading phase was winding down, but I still got to learn about some of the basic motivations behind him.

First off, he was part of Xavier’s Security Enforcers, a type of mutant police force active in the year 2070, which got back in time in order to learn about a mysterious figure that was rumored to have betrayed and caused the death of the legendary X-Men.

At the time, Bishop suspected that the man responsible for this was another popular character from the 90’s, Gambit, but apparently the answer was much more convoluted than that.

Anyway, the only other Bishop action figure I have in my collection was the Toy Biz version released a long time ago, so I jumped at the chance of getting an updated Bishop when Hasbro decided to include him in the 3.75-inch Marvel Infinite Series line last year.

Bishop is portrayed wearing his XSE uniform, accomplished mostly by paint and adding a couple soft plastic accessories over the generic smooth buck developed for the later waves of 3.75-inch figures. There are a few newly sculpted pieces for the short-sleeved arms and also a completely unique head sculpt.

The accessories included are: a belt with a holster in it and a combination shoulderstraps/scarf. Both accessories can be removed if you pop off the legs and/or head, but the legs are rather tricky to do.

The overall appearance is very consistent with the portrayal of the characters in the comics, although the new body mold is rather sparse on articulation, consisting of:

• Ball jointed neck.
• Pin & disk shoulders
• Pin & disk elbows
• Ball jointed hips.
• Double hinge knees.
• Pin & disk ankles.
• Rocker feet.

From the waist down, articulation is rather reasonable for a gun wielding character but, by the same token, upper arm articulation would have been much more of a disappointment if not for the fact that Bishop would not been able to hold his larger weapon with both hands anyways, since his left hand is sculpted as a closed fist.

Speaking of which, Bishop comes with a large energy rifle and a pistol. None of these weapons are new molds, as we have seen then used time and again on other characters in this line, but they get the job done.

The paintjob on my figure is just fine, considering the whole weight of the characterization relies heavily on its application.

Still, Bishop turned out better than I expected, and will stand proudly alongside my 90’s X-Men collection.