X-Men: Bishop's Crossing

Uncanny X-Men (1963) #281-293

by Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, Scott Lobdell

When the Upstarts overthrow the Hellfire Club in a bloody coup, the X-Men are caught in the middle! But their battle is interrupted when hundreds of escaped convicts arrive from the future - pursued by the mutant policeman called Bishop! Raised since childhood on the legends of the X-Men, how will this hard-edged fish out of water react to meeting his idols face-to-face? And what deadly portent of doom does Bishop carry with him? Plus: Colossus' long-lost brother Mikhail returns, but he's gone completely mad - and that's a "gift" he plans on sharing with the Morlocks! Storm and Forge's romance is changed forever! And Professor X's childhood secrets are revealed when the X-Men invade the Alamogordo research facility and battle Hazard!
COLLECTING: UNCANNY X-MEN 281-293, X-MEN (1991) 12-13, MATERIAL FROM X-MEN (1991) 10-11

Genres: Comics, X Men, Marvel, Comic Book, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, Time Travel

376 pages, Hardcover

First published October 3, 2012

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Jim Lee is a Korean-American comic book artist, creator and publisher. After graduating from Princeton, he decided to attempt illustrating comic books, and met with success. Lee's distinctive, crisply hatched line art style and rigid, idealized anatomical forms established a new stylistic standard for superhero comic-book illustration and reinforced a popular trend away from brushed to penned inking in the late 20th and early 21st century. Lee is currently one of the most successful artists in American comics.

He has received a great deal of recognition for his work in the industry, including the Harvey Special Award for New Talent in 1990.

Reviews

[Sean Gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A transitional era of X-Men characterized by highly stylized art, darkness, violence, and melodrama, and the fading echoes of Claremontian character-driven narratives. If you’re reading this as a historical document, you’ll see the seeds of many future X-Men epics starting to take shape here. If you grew up during this era of our favorite mutants, you’ll recall it fondly as a time of high-stakes stories that saw the X-Men dominating both the sales charts and the comic book-reading public’s consciousness and paving the way for the X-Men movie that would be the catalyst for the superhero-dominated cinema scene we know today.

Also, I still love Gambit and make no apologies for it.

[Gianfranco Mancini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still not bad, and stories get better after Lobdell starts writing plots in addition to dialogues, but the adventures of Ororo's Gold Team are just not as good as the Blue Team ones in Chlaremont & Lee's "X-Men" twin series.
The Bishop storyline not aged much well and is too much long, the Mikhail Rasputin returns and Opal ones are just bad ones, but this collection still deserves a read thanks to Portacio's art and the great issues about the ending of Storm/Forge romance.



Not as good as I remembered.

[Malum · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume is kind of misnamed, because Bishop isn't in all of these stories and is the main character in even fewer. These stories also aren't quite as good as what was going on over at the other X-Men book at the time, but they aren't terrible.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 4 out of 5]

The “Bishop’s Crossing” story that leads things off is terrific, both for its hard repercussions and for its terrific introduction of Bishop and his crew. All of this continues to have major effects on the team many years later [8/10]. The Colossus-focus story that follows sadly isn’t nearly as good. The whole team-separated-in-an-alien-land has been done to death. The one thing of interest is Colossus’ interactions with his brother. I think I might have stopped reading X-Men in the old days after this story, because it was such a fall from Claremont’s recent heights [5/10]. When Jim Lee takes over the writing and brings Bishop into the X-Men, the writing’s unfortunately not as good as on the original Bishop story, and Bishop’s partners are dealt with a little simply and off-handedly [6/10]. The subplots that fill the next three issues are fun (and Claremont-esque). The Forge & Storm resolution is great and a long time coming, while Bishop’s integration into the team is also good. I was never fond of the Opal/Clan plot, but it’s at least good to see reminders that X-Factor existed not long before [6.5/10]. Lobdell’s Morlock three-parter is unfortunately kind of bad. He mimicks Claremont’s dialogue at its worst and has a plot that feels like he’s just moving the pieces around [4/10]. Lobdell’s Maverick stories are incomprehensible and badly written to boot; not worth reprinting [1/10]. The last story, on Ryking, adds some interesting backstory to Xaview [7/10].

Finally, a big thumb’s up to Marvel for printing his oversized hardcover, to bridge the gap between the last Claremont Omnibus and the x-cellent x-cutioner’s song.

[Aildiin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this for historic reason and there's no other one I could give to read this.
The writing is terrible and the art is ok in the first half and then it becomes not so ok...
This comic was originally released right as Marvel fired long time X-Men writer Chris Claremont over some disagreement with new rising artist star Jim Lee. Chris Claremont wasn't in his peak at the time anymore and things only became worse when then artists suddenly were tasked with writing the serie for a while. Right when the X-Men were at their peak in sales ( this is right after X-Men 1 sold 8 million copies) Marvel suddenly had the worse people possible at the helm ( and things only got worse as suddenly all the top artists fled to create Image comics).
I highly recommend you skip this. I only bought it myself become I have a strong collector mindset and I am trying to collect all hardcover X-Men material.

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like many other forms of entertainment, comics from your youth are best left in the past. I've been slowly revisiting the X-Men comics of the 90's, all the big story lines I read and collected as a kid, and honestly I probably shouldn't have done so. Every bad 90's comic trope is on display here--terrible costumes, unnecessary pouches, big guns, dark broody characters, angst driven soap operatic stories, females characters constantly standing in physically impossible poses (hey who needs a spine or ribs?) while always walking in pointe, it's all here! This covers a story from Uncanny X-Men where Bishop, the titular character, comes from a bleak future (because the future is always bleak in these things) chasing a criminal and is trapped in his past, the X-Men's present. Armed with knowledge of a mysterious traitor to the X-Men, he hopes to prevent whatever caused his own dystopian future, which is a mere 70 years away!

[Kyle Mclaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good collection of stories which leads into the X-Cutioner's Song story arc. The 2 issue Maverick story is not necessary to the rest of the story, I would recommend skipping it, because it only adds a minimal amount of background.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really loved this collection. Storm leads the "Gold" team but it is more Jean Grey's. There's a terrific John Romita, JR Bishop issue. I also learned Wilce is pronounced Willz or Wills. Never knew that. Solid fun book. Looks really good.

[J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This big "event" (if you can call it that) occurred right before I started reading comics as a kid. And oh, man, is it representative of it's time. The art is atrocious--absurdly huge muscles, tiny heads, legs twice as long as torsos, feet that are just vague lumps--all the '90s stuff is in full effect. There's absolutely no sense of actually telling a story. Events simply crash over each other like waves, whole plotlines left behind, some explored, some left for dead, some barely a hint. In fact, even calling this volume "Bishop's Crossing" is misleading. Bishop is introduced, and the story focuses on him significantly early on, but the second half is the usual X-meandering, and he doesn't even finish his primary mission (capturing those escapees?) in this volume. It's all a big, boisterous mess. But, if you like the X-Men, this is sort of part and parcel of the whole thing, all of Claremont's weaknesses magnified and enhanced into craziness.

[Crazed8J8 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was never a huge Bishop fan to begin with, but am reading my way through a variety of X-books, and this filled the Uncanny gap I was interested in reading.
First off, the art is amazing! The majority of this set is drawn by Whilce and Jim Lee (the Raney books were only mediocre, he is better at drawing the Adam Warlock-style characters, imo). So, artwork, easily a 5-star! The stories, though, seemed mostly filler. Bishop and his crew are introduced, and again, not being a huge fan, this run left me a little tepid. I appreciated the Storm run (again, not a favorite character, but one of the stand-outs in this run), her relationships with Forge and the Morlocks are both addressed in these issues. She became more 'human' and relatable to me in these books. We meet Mikhail Rasputin, which is a bit of an interesting story (knowing what's coming with Illyana). Anyway, good to read for continuity, otherwise, only okay.

[Zack! Empire · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh, man, this is so 90's. Sometimes I was having a hard time reading it cause I kept looking at the awful 90's era art. I don't want to dis an entire generation of artist, but I just don't like that style of art. There is just so many damn lines on everyone's face. I can't get past it. The art in this book suffered more because at times, it was just unclear what was happening. So, yeah, the art is bad.
The whole idea behind the book wasn't very coherent either. It's supposed to be about the X-Men meeting Bishop for the first time, but there is this whole part in the middle about them falling into a hole in the ground, and they go to another dimension(?) or another earth, I guess cause they can't let this new world expand and take place of the regular Marvel earth? I don't know, it was really unclear.
Anyway, I would not recommend this book, unless you're a hardcore X-Men fan.

[Joebot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love me some Bishop. Have for about 30 years, but yet I had never read his intro. Can now check that off. Every part with Bishop was great, and I love knowing how far he's come since then. That said, woo mama, there was some filler here. I was very X-men Blue back in the day, but X-men Gold is where it was at

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generally great art and average storytelling. There is a great story about Storm and Forge here and an OK story about the Colossus brother coping after he retune from another dimension where he killed a bunch of people in an accident. The main thing is there are great potential in this material, but the writing never quite hits the mark.

[Chad Bunch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a lot of fun to read. I have not read much of the X-Men from the 90's and before, so this was all new to me. Although the stories and dialogue can be quite cheesy, and the art is mediocre, this is still pure fun. I look forward to more of these "antique" collections.

[Ivan Lex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is not an amazing story but is a must read cuase the Bishop appearance and incorporation to X-Men files. The ending of the Forge-Storm realtionship is ok and the Colossus brother's role was amazing.
The X-men blue team stories by Claremont and Lee are so much better but this still worth the reading

[TK · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like Bishop but, despite his name being in the subtitle of this book, he's not even close to being the star of this. The whole thing is kind of all over the place

[doowopapocalypse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everyone is lowering their centers of gravity and shouting.

[Derrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Uncanny X-Men issues 281-293 are quite good - if Oh. So. Angsty. The art is strong - mostly Portacio with some JR,Jr (and a few crappy fill-ins). The writing is pretty solid, too. They succeeded in making me care about Forge, Storm, and Colossus for the first time in 30+ years of reading comics. And I really enjoy the way they've been using Jean here.

But then we move into segments from X-Men 10-11, a Lobdell/Texiera story about a guy named Maverick. Good lord, this is awful. Brigade/Youngblood levels of awful dialogue and art. Thankfully, it's only a few pages. X-Men 12 is Nicieza/Thibert. Much better art, though the writing is choppy.

When I was a teen, I had such a crush on Rogue, with her big hair and her cool powers. Now, I find her annoying. And Gambit is another character whose "cool" aspects appealed to teens from 1992 but who mostly annoys now. Fortunately, we only got two issues of these characters right at the end.

The book also includes the Marvel Swimsuit Issue, which is a fun flashback. I remember it well. There are images of Storm, Psylocke, and Jean Grey in bikinis that I will never forget - such were they burned on my horny teen self's mind.

[Adam Fisher · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my reread of the X-men comics of my childhood, I come to the introduction of Bishop. This Volume was very long, and only ended up being ok. The art is what I remembered, and while not as good as some of the artists I like now, was nice and nostalgic.
The story of how Bishop came to be part of the current X-Men is necessary, but not to this length. I'm glad I read it, but not for everyone.

[Rsoeffker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection is something I have wanted since I was a kid. I loved Bishop and was always a few issues short of getting this whole story.

As an adult, the drama of Marvel/Xmen kinda lost it's luster, but it was a fun trip into the past and worth reading.

[Relstuart · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't imagine reading this in a better way than in oversized HC. The art is pretty frenetic at times so the extra space helps. This story introduces the character Bishop as he comes back to our time from the future.

[Bob · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Bishop, & Whilce Portacio & John Byrne have their virtues, but the combination of Portacio's art & Byrne's excessive scripting is unreadable. I never thought I’d say this, but thank god for Scott Lobdell coming in. The John Romita, Jr. & Andy Kubert fill-ins are nice

[Timo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite entertaining 90s X-fun with interesting Bishop. Not forgetting very sexy posey art.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Choppy and long..

[Vikas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Introducing Bishop and Trevor Fitzroy was really cool, but besides that this story "arc" is just a collection of disjoint subplots. Many of them not even involving Bishop at all.