Ok, so I was bored and watched the X-Men movie trilogy last night. Well, most of it. Nightcrawler was underused, my 3 predictions for the first movie still hold true, and when I went to find out what the heck was up with Bishop (not in the movies, just curious)…well, I am still clueless.
Look, I have them all, all the X-Men comics from the early 90’s. But I have to admit that with the ‘Age of Apocalypse’ came the age of too many damn crossovers and die-cut crap…so I really have no idea just who the heck Bishop is or what his power was. Heresy you say? Perhaps, but I looked him up on Wikipedia anyway. Dear lord, whatever happened to simple storytelling?
Are you an X-Fan? Can you explain in less than 20 tweets just who the heck Bishop is? It is SO convoluted. So he’s from the future, sure. But just how much of this future do we have to know to ‘get’ Bishop? Plus, I found out that ‘after the crash‘, he became an anti-hero. Seriously? OK, so he needs a back story, or fore story or what not. But give me a break, the Wikipedia is BORING to read. Does anyone give two craps about ANY of this stuff?
So again I keep wondering, ‘Just who the heck is Bishop?’ The character is going to be in the next X-Movie, X-Men: Days of Future Past with Omar Sy cast to play the part, and it would be nice to know a bit about him before then, right?
It seems like the best part of Bishop was his initial anonymity and that red scarf. Oh, and the artwork by Whilce Portacio. Whilce’s stuff was so solid that I would buy it on name alone (even later when it was sometimes months late). Add in Xavier’s evil son, an evil clone of Cable (another enigma at the time), and then add on top a whole alternate universe to kill one and keep the other…again, have you read the Wikipedia? It’s convoluted to say the least. How was your average reader supposed to follow all of this through crossovers and die-cut crap and all that?
Sure, I jumped ship like so many others when the it got too deep. Too many $6 comics with ‘Speculator’ on the hologram cover. Sure, I tried to get back into comics, I loved them the decade before, but by then Marvel was all ‘manga’ style and the art had gone out the window. DC you say? Perhaps, but to be honest I am one of those they’ve only just reeled with their whole ‘New 52’ thing in the last couple of years. Liking some of their stuff so far. Marvel…well…
The thing is, I just don’t know when it is safe to jump back in. Is this another of the annual ‘let’s reset to #1 to boost sales’ gimmicks, or is this really a good place to get aboard? How can I trust Marvel without feeling like everything’s a mini-series or some set-up for a Day’s of our Lives mega-event. By the time I figure out that the re-boot is for real….I won’t want to shell out all the money for the back issues I’ve missed. Maybe I am (extremely) late to the party on this one…I mean, is what I am feeling typical of ex-Marvel collector’s?
I think, maybe, I’ve been spoiled by DC and just how successful their ‘New 52’ re-launch has gone. I was into the X-Men but now…it’s just too much work. Perhaps Marvel needs a ‘New 52’ kind-of-thing aimed at returning to the Marvel Universe of the 1990’s. Seriously.
The movies, you say? They are getting a lot better at it and they get props from Moby for making it work on the big screen. I still need to see the last Spidey one, and for my money Spider-Man 2 was the best of the Raimi trilogy. Why are the middle movies always the best? Note to Hollywood, just make the second/middle movie from now on.
OK, I feel better now. So…somebody please, in less than 20 tweets…why should I care 2 tweets about Bishop?
Wow. You may be the first person I have heard refer to DC’s ‘New 52’ as “successful”. I have not read much of it yet so I don’t really have an opinion on the New 52 (beyond saying that Robin is a rather stupid idea that sprung from the ‘Golden Age’ when it was the hot trend to give superheroes teenaged sidekicks and I think they should just drop him and quit trying to force him onto comic book readers.).
I never liked While Portacio but this is in part due to him being assigned the wrong books to draw when he was at Marvel. Mike Zeck’s Punisher is the only Punisher that matters and Klaus Jansen’s version on the regular series seemed gross to me. But when While Portacio replaced Jansen I thought “Holy crap! Get Jansen back!”. I know he is actually a good artist but his style, like Jansen’s, is not suitable for all types of books or characters.
I am a Huge Raimi fan (from Evil Dead 2 & Army of Darkness mostly but Darkman was decent as well) but his Spider-man trilogy was horrid IMO. The first one followed the 1989 Batman template (Plot was quite literally the same, page for page.) and the second followed the template of 85% of all superhero movies (friend of hero (often a scientist) suffers bizarre accident/tragedy and goes insane turning into major villain and dies at the end).
But I am one of those guys who feels that literally 95% of ALL comic-book to movie translations are horrible…because they are, but still.
As for Bishop, you should not care one iota. Bishop is another of Liefeld’s (notoriously awful comic book artist who almost worked for Silverwolf) blunders. Liefeld created a LOT of downright bad, stupid, two dimensional characters that other writers occasionally got hired to perform miracles with and make more interesting.