Writing: Steven Seagle
Art: Chris Bachalo
What Went Down:
Bishop opens and narrates this one-off story as he and Deathbird have
crash-landed on an alien planet. Bishop
internally recaps the circumstances that have led him to this point, and then
rescues Deathbird from the wreckage.
They are beset by a group of alien scavengers who shoot Bishop with a
harpoon, so he can’t absorb it. They
fight off the scavengers, and an alien named Karel, who speaks perfect English,
offers to give them transportations.
Karel explains that the scavengers are called the
Ursaa. He also tells them that he is a
freedom fighter whose world was invaded by the Chnitt, the same aliens who shot
down Bishop’s ship. The group discovers
that Karel’s camp was attacked by Chnitt while he was rescuing Bishop and
Deathbird, so he takes them to his friend Tu.
Karel tells Bishop that he has come to this planet to retrieve a weapon
that will raze the Chnitt from his home.
The planet they are on is a trader’s planet, so Karel plans to use a
warp gate to return home. Bishop thinks
he might have a chance to get back to Earth.
Deathbird internally chides him, saying that she loves him and will
force him back to the Shi’ar.
Back in Alaska, the original X-Men are helping Scott and Jean
pack their belongings; they are leaving Alaska because people around them know
they’re mutants. Scott tells Jean that
the buyers for their house have backed out, so they don’t know what they’re
going to do. Some kids throw a brick
through the window and scare everyone.
Scott tells them to let it go. Suddenly
Jean senses the psychic event from the Psi-War story (in X-Men #77-78), and is
knocked into a catatonic state.
Back on the trader planet, Deathbird is attacked by a
Chnitt, which looks like a giant spider.
After killing it, Bishop realizes that Tu has sold them out, and
probably died for his troubles. After acquiring a transport, the group is
almost eaten by a giant monster. Right
before they reach the warp gate, the group discovers a giant ball that has been
tracking them. The ball is attacking the
city, knowing that Karel has the secret weapon, nullifier charges, which eat
metal. Bishop decides he cannot allow
the alien citizens to suffer on their account.
He takes one of the charges and tells Karel and Deathbird to go through
the gate without him. Bishop climbs a
roof, throws a charge, and destroys the ship.
After destroying the giant ball, Bishop runs to the warp
gate just in time to see it collapse for no reason. Bishop laments his loneliness, until he
discovers that Deathbird has remained on the planet to be with him.
How It Was:
Bishop and Deathbird’s wacky space odyssey continues as they make their
way to a completely generic sci-fi planet.
I don’t even think it has a name; it’s just called the trader
planet. It’s obvious that Marvel is
testing the waters to see if Bishop might be able to sustain his own book—years
later he would go on to receive it.
While the designs for the Chnitt are really great,
everything else is just so forgettable.
The reader knows right from the beginning that he’ll never see the bland
Karel ever again, or his plot-convenient grenades. Even the mothership at the climax of the
story is just a giant ball that fires lasers. Some of the action set pieces do
look pretty cool even if they don’t really drive the plot.
So why did I enjoy this issue so much more than I thought I
would? The answer lies in the
Bishop/Deathbird dynamic. It’s really
not what super hero readers are used to.
Deathbird is so attracted to Bishop that she fails to pick up on how
their worldviews are so different, and Bishop is so repulsed by the idea of
being with a villain that he can’t see how attracted he is to her. I like how Seagle forces Bishop to be the
level-headed one of the group, while Deathbird is the wildly impulsive
brawler. Their interactions and the ways
they play off each other are great. It’s
just great to see how even they can’t tell whether their feelings for one and
other are genuine affection or familiar comfort.
It’s also nice to see Seagle trying to address the problems
writers have been having with Bishop since the Onslaught event. With his purpose for existing nullified,
nobody has known what to do with Bishop.
Seagle tries to play up how out of place he is, and how weird it must be
to interact with people who are supposed to be dead. It’s a bit of a stretch to say that Bishop
hasn’t made friends with anyone from the team, but this might just be Bishop’s
way of softening the blow of losing his teammates. Playing up the fact that Bishop is always out
of place is as good a way to go as any.
The Scott and Jean scenes are rather abrupt; Scott’s
injuries seem to have disappeared, and I can’t tell if the couple is supposed
to be going back to the X-Men or leaving just to escape the townspeople. I do appreciate that the Psi-War is tying
into the greater Marvel Universe; it’s just a shame that there is only really
one more issue where Jean deals with these events. I don’t remember liking this as much when I
first read it, but now I feel I can better appreciate just what Seagle was
trying to do.
B
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