As a boy, Bishop among the last of the mutants branded with the M tattoo in the internment camps. After the Summers Rebellion, he was raised by a woman he called only "Grandmother," learning about the wise Xavier and protecting his sister Shard until the day Grandmother died. When Bishop and Shard were attacked by gang members and saved by the X.S.E, they resolved to join the force. Bishop graduated top of his class, and soon came to command a squad. He was always suspcious of fellow recruit Fitzroy, but could not gather evidence to act upon it until it was too late, and Fitzroy had lured Shard into a trap of Emplates, who turned her into one of them. In one of his hardest acts, Bishop had to kill Shard to save her from herself. To try and preserve something of his sister, Bishop left the X.S.E. and went to work for the mysterious Witness in return for his storing Shard's memories in a computer.

After rejoining the force, Bishop came to our time through one of Fitzroy's portals, along with his partners Malcolm and Randall. When they were killed during a battle with criminals from the future, Bishop was foudnby the X-Men. Though he initally thought they must be impostors, since they didn't match his idealized views of his childhood legends, he eventually accepted them and was invited to join the team. He often spoke of a traitor to the team who would destroy them all, which many assumed to be Gambit or later, Sabretooth, but who turned out to be Professor X himself, in the form of Onslaught. It was Bishop's presence in the battle with Onslaught that may have prevented his future from coming to pass, as his energy-absorbing abilities took the brunt of a lethal blast and saved the X-Men from certain doom. While it took time for him to adjust to our era, and to actually living among the legends of his youth, seeing them as the humans they were and not the near-mythic figures they had become in his time, Bishop has learned to live in the now and is a key member of the X-Men family.

Bishop was also the only X-Man to live through the so-called "Age of Apocalypse," and it was his knowledge of the true timeline that allowed the heroes of that reality to set time right again. After the X- Men saved the Shi'ar Empire from the Phalanx, Bishop was "saved" by Deathbird when their ship was destroyed. Believing the other X-Men to be dead, Deathbird kept Bishop in paralysis until she was convinced that he loved her the way she professed to love him. Bishop was then stranded with his would-be lover on a trader's planet, having missed the opportunity to use a local stargate before it was destroyed. Whether or not Bishop returned Deathbird's feelings wasn't definite. The two spacers happened upon a Stargate and went through it, but ended up in the future on an Earth controlled by the Shi'ar. The daughter of Lilandra and Professor X, a telepath of tremendous power, had killed most of the heroes, including her father, and annexed the Earth to her Empire. The few surviving heroes had formed Team X and operated out of the old Alley. With Bishop's help they attacked the Shi'ar and Deathbird fought her future niece and paralyzed her. Then Bishop and Deathbird were sent back to their own time.

Unfortunately for Bishop, Deathbird betrayed him when they happened upon the inert form of The Living Monolith floating in space. Intrigued by the human mutagenic signature coming from this "asteroid," Bishop didn't see Deathbird pull a stunner out. He awoke back on Earth and made his way back to the Mansion, only to find that the X-Men had been disbanded. Feeling quite alone, Bishop went to find his sister. He found her a broken mess in a charnel house created by Fitzroy. Before they could reminisce any further, Fitzroy's new Chronobots appeared from the future and attacked. During the fight Bishop was knocked out and transported to the future Fitzroy now resided in. He was taken in by some young mutants, who remembered the legends of "The Last X-Man" told to them by their leader, Witness (future Gambit). Sadly, though, Fitzroy learned of their location and destroyed the camp. Bishop assumed command of the surviors, and had them switch the M they painted on their faces to an X. Soon after, Bishop was sent by Clan Hellfire to find Gol-19, a Sentinel that the last of the X-Men had reprogrammed to work for them. Gol-19 told Bishop of the last X-Men's final stand, and revealed to him the location of Cerebro, which Bishop then used to locate the Chronomancer. Bishop's followers grew in number as they trekked towards Chronokeep, and a veritable army attacked the Keep. Bishop went to find Shard, but was betrayed by her to Fitzroy. While Fitzroy laid his plans to master time, Bishop was freed by Michael and Link and ventured out to confront his nemesis. While Bishop was initially subdued by Fitzroy, Shard, who had escaped Fiztroy's control, appeared and transformed herself into energy as she jumped into Bishop, forcing her to rechannel her at Fiztroy as an energy blast. While the blast missed, it distracted Fiztroy long enough for Bishop to reach him and stop him from entering the giant portal he had opened. Bishop held Fitzroy across the portal until it collapsed and cut the villain in half. However, Bishop was so saturated by the ambient energy from the portal that he vanished in a temporal blast himself.

He emerged in the present, deep in space and crahsed into a Shi'ar space station, where Professor X and his "Cadre K" (mutant Skrulls he was teaching) were looking for Deathbird, who had already killed the station's crew. Earth had recently been encased in an energy barrier and turned into a prison planet by a pan-galactic committee, and Deathbird had a key to get inside. Bishop ended up going after Deathbird, and almost killed her before she opened up an airlock and blew out into space. Bishop then allowed himself to be captured and sent to Earth on a mission for Xavier, where he reunited with the X-Men. Shortly thereafter, however, Bishop joined other members of the team on a secret mission to find the lost Books of Truth, prophecies written by the precog Destiny.

With this new team of X-Men, Bishop has again taken on a policeman's role, often posing as an agent or officer in order to solve crimes, such as that of Jeffrey Garret and also the attempted murder of Emma Frost. His skills in this area are respected by all the X-Teams. In addition, during a dreamtime experience Bishop found out that Gateway was a long-lost ancestor of his, giving him an even stronger familial connection than he has had in a long time.