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Of the handful of Mutant characters created for the 1990s X-Men run, Bishop stands out as a perennial favorite. With a very of-the-era hairdo and Wild West-leaning scarf, the time-traveling mutant's visuals are still beloved today - but, as it turns out, one of those visuals hasn't been fully understood as it was intended. At least, that's what Bishop's creator, Whilce Portacio, says of his iconic M-eye tattoo.

Portacio was recently on Rob Liefeld's YouTube channel to discuss his time on the X-Men (among many other things) with his peer and fellow Image cofounder. At one point in the discussion, the conversation drifted toward Portacio's original intention for the character, with which the artist said Marvel didn't follow through.

"They never asked me about the M," said the artist.

Naturally Liefeld, just like you and I, dear reader, wanted to know more.

"Bishop is a mutant," began Portacio, "And now he's going to hunt down mutants, but there's a reason. He's hunting down bad mutants, because he wants mutant world and the human world to coexist. [...] So he builds The Pool and he becomes the commander of The Pool. And to show the difference - because he's now making two classes of mutants, right? So when you get caught and put into The Pool, you're branded with an M. You're a bad mutant. It's it's the scarlet letter, right?"

OK, we get the reference, but then why do Bishop and his comrades bear the mark? After all, as Portacio himself says, "They're not bad guys. They're the good guys."

"Bishop is young," he answers, "He's not a kid, but he's still young and he's still forming his ideas. So, he thinks this is the way to go, but he's not really sure. So, as a measure, he puts it on. So, every day he wakes up, looks in the mirror, he could see what he's doing. He could remind himself the seriousness of what he's doing."

Again, seems like a sensible enough answer to me. But as the story Portacio had for Bishop would have unfolded (which involved a bunch of those 'bad mutants' being let loose on society), the mark would take on a slightly different meaning as well. 

"When he gets transported into the past into our timeline," the Image cofounder expands, "Then the question should be 'Why doesn't he take it off? Is it just a tattoo?' Well, he doesn't take it off because after [...] the prison is messed up, the bad guys are let loose and now it's havoc on the world and stuff. So his decision was wrong. In our day and age, he could look in the mirror every morning and say, 'I'm not going to take this off because I want to remind myself every day I went against my kind.'"

"That's what I loved about character," Portacio concludes. "You can't just create somebody cool. You got to give them something. It's got to be different. Even if it's wrong or if people can look at it and go, 'I don't know about that' - if you make it come from a place where he was hurt or the world went wrong and this is his reaction to it, people will not say, 'Oh, that's good.' But they'll understand. And if they understand, they connect to that character."

And now we understand a little bit more about Bishop, and about Whilce Portacio, as well.

To me, my X-Men fans. Want more about Marvel's mutants? You don't need Cerebro to find what you should read next... we made a list!

• The best X-Men comics
• Every Omega-Level X-Men mutant ranked by power
• Why the Krakoan Age of X-Men was ended by Marvel
• How to watch the X-Men movies in order