BISHOP

On the long flight home from a deep-space mission, the X-Men’s craft came apart and Bishop was flung clear of his teammates, gravely wounded and alone among the stars. The rescuer who fished him out of the void was the last person any X-Man would have chosen: Deathbird, the winged Shi’ar princess exiled for murdering her own mother and sister in her hunger for the throne.

Deathbird nursed the time-lost mutant back to strength with a proposition in mind. Her sister Lilandra sat on the Shi’ar throne, and a battle-hardened mutant from another era looked to Deathbird like a useful weapon in a bid to take that throne back. Healing, hospitality and recruitment pitch arrived as a single package, the way they usually do with royalty.

The unlikely pairing ran through a string of interstellar adventures together — including a detour to an alternate Earth under Shi’ar rule — before Bishop finally fought his way back to his own world and his own team. He remains one of the very few X-Men who can say an attempted usurper of a galactic empire once served as his nurse, his host and his would-be kingmaker.