X-Men supremo Brayn Singer sneakily revealed the addition of two more cast member’s to X-Men: Days Of Future Past, tweeting cast chairs for James ‘Warpath’ Proudstar and Bishop.
Bishop, who played a key role in the Days Of Future Past story arc when it was adapted for the 90s animated series, is a time-travelling mutant from a future dystopia. He could be responsible for the film’s one confirmed time-jump if his back-story is – like the cartoon – woven closely into the Days Of Future Past arc.
Created by Whilce Portacio and Jim Lee for 1991’s Uncanny X-Men #282, his powers include energy absorption and redirection – whatever you fire at him, he reuses.
Warpath – aka, James Proudstar – is the brother of an earlier X-Man, Thunderbird, who joined the team alongside Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Storm in 1975’s gamechanging Giant Sized X-Men #1 – it’s possible these two characters will be amalgamated. Thunderbird was killed the same year he was introduced and the character fairly poorly developed.
Warpath was created by Chris Claremont and Sal Buschema for 1984’s New Mutants #16, and given his similar abilities to Wolverine – he’s a capable hand-to-hand fighter and expert tracker with enhanced agility, strength, sense and stamina – he could be taking on the Logan ‘role’ in the prequel team. It was after all the similarities between Thunderbird and Wolverine that led to him being killed.
Artist Dave Cockrum told Wizard in 1993, “We created him as an obnoxious loudmouth, and we already had an obnoxious loudmouth in Wolverine. So one of us decided to kill him off after all, just for shock value.”
Pick up X-Men: The Ultimate Collection, containing all five films so far, on Blu-ray for £19.75 and DVD for £15.29 from Amazon.co.uk. X-Men: Days Of Future Past is due in cinemas 18 July 2014.
