A. Why This Matters
X-Force #18 by Benjamin Percy, Garry Brown and Joshua Cassara saw the bizarre, wholly unexpected death of Dr. Hank McCoy—the Beast; he was neither the focus of the story nor on that issue’s cover. But he’ll be back by X-Force #20, working security for the Hellfire Gala event this June. What might have been a major tragedy in another era is just another momentary glitch in Krakoa’s state apparatus. But if anyone clearly represents the fact that there’s something rotten in the state of Krakoa it’s Dr. McCoy, the nation’s intelligence and black-ops director. Increasingly, he seems like a glaring symptom of some deeper malaise yet to be identified—but which must stem from Xavier, who gave Beast complete carte blanche in pursuit of protecting national interests. The once-good doctor has taken this for very broad values of interests, as in what might titillate an obsessive-compulsive research scientist unconstrained by conscience.
And frankly, in McCoy, writer Ben Percy has found the perfect candidate to examine the secrecy quietly eating away at the Krakoan state, while the island plays host to a mutant cultural renaissance in complete ignorance of the hidden Machiavellianism at play among the Quiet Council. After all, the Beast has over the past 20 years trended toward a Jekyll and Hyde fate—a study in atavistic urges turned deadly when desperately repressed by a hyperrational mind.
The groundwork for Beast’s dark turn was laid decades before, most explicitly with Amazing Adventures #11 in 1972—where Hank underwent his bestial transformation, in a not-wholly ambiguous fit of masochism—courtesy of author Gerry Conway and further developed by Steve Englehart for six issues. But I’d argue that Hank’s dangerous self-repression and self-loathing goes back to his first appearance. He and Cyclops were the two out of the O5 X-Men who couldn’t pass as normal. As with Scott’s uncontrollable optic blasts, Hank’s particular form of gigantism subtly ate away at his self-confidence and self-acceptance.
Unlike Scott, who in the Krakoa era seems to have elided his erstwhile trend toward becoming Magneto Jr., Hank’s made one atrocious decision after another over the course of Percy’s X-Force, resulting in various forms of torture at best and, worst of all, one sneaky order of genocide (of the nation of Terra Verde, X-Force #6 and 9).
Before X-Force #18, I felt certain we would be dragged through another kind of protracted torment as we watched Beast’s dark descent into full Dark Beast mode (More on that doppelganger below!). I entertained this likely vision as a long trajectory that would end with Hank’s death and resurrection as the more innocent Bronze Age version of himself—while recognizing that even then he’d have to deal eternally with the inner drama of his lifelong self-loathing. But at least it might’ve offered the kind of fresh start that Krakoa ambiguously promises for all mutants, regardless of their former alignments and/or atrocities. Yet even if partially redeemed in this way, Hank must still answer for his worst crimes. One can only hope when he’s made to stand trial that he’ll be forced to stay for the consequences, as he dismissively did not for the much lesser—albeit cosmic—crime of coercing the teenage O5 X-Men forward in time to the present, ultimately a factor in the collapse of the multiverse in the leadup to Hickman’s 2015 Secret Wars.
Even if there’s merit to speculation that Hank has partially melded personalities with his alternate-reality doppelganger Dark Beast, the X-Force director must be held to account, whether or not he first gets to strike out to operate on his own, after the fashion of his Age of Apocalypse counterpart, or perhaps just as Sinister’s work has always tempted him.
The potential in Hank’s memories and personality being redacted by Xavier with Cerebro’s assist seemed implicit in Scott’s own ambiguous appearances in HOX/POX both before and after his resurrection. While the same could be said of Jean, what added to the ambiguity around Scott was the mystery of whether or not he was still missing an eye before the fatal mission to Orchis. We just don’t know—as we don’t know what exactly happened in the six-month gap before House of X #1.
The central ambiguity around Krakoa’s existence is much less its raison d’être—which is no doubt contested, recapitulating the assimilation/self-determination divide. No, it’s much more centered on its state apparatus and its murky infrastructure, both the state’s and the island’s. It seems like Hank is standing guard over these intentionally nebulous aspects of worldbuilding. Or rather, Beast did stand over that gap—until he fell into one himself, in X-Force #18.
Until Beast returns and his dirty “state” secrets come to light, we should think about why Percy’s choice of Beast as Krakoa’s amoral national security director and mad scientist gone rampant—second on Krakoa only to Sinister—is perfectly in line with Hank’s character trajectory since at least X-Men #27 (1993), where he got a tantalizing look at Sinister’s vast shadowy operations. Whatever later regrets author Fabian Nicieza expressed about subsequent interpretations of Beast’s inferiority complex and temptation toward “Sinister” research, there were already more than enough moments of dark enticement sprinkled throughout Hank’s post-O5 X-Men career to justify his much darker 21st-century depictions—to say nothing of the likely PTSD that must’ve followed his devolution in X-Factor #19-31 (1987-1988) and Cassandra Nova’s psychological torture in New X-Men #117 (2001), persuading him he was once more devolving. Really, it’s a wonder Hank’s veneer of sanity has stayed intact at all.
Now, dear reader, if you still have the stomach for it, let’s take a look at Hank’s suffering through the years, and his worsening failures of conscience.
B. History of a Repression – Beast/Hank/Dark Beast
Despite inevitable inconsistencies in characterization occurring across many decades and creative teams, there are three character beats for Hank that have persisted: Hank’s always tried to be a model minority, making him the most ideologically assimilationist of the X-Men; he’s always shown degrees of self-loathing, more so as he transforms; and he’s always been tempted by amoral experimentation, first on himself and eventually on others—even reality itself! Quintessentially, Hank offers an obvious opportunity unlike any other heroically-aligned mutant for a Jekyll and Hyde arc.
Even in the Silver Age, Hank exhibited self-loathing over his unnatural beefiness and absurd agility, which began well before adolescence. The teen dubbed “Magilla Gorilla” by his peers eventually joined with Xavier’s X-Men only to quit soon after, already exasperated by humanity’s fear and hatred (X-Men #8, 1964). While his time in pro-wrestling proved a brief distraction, Hank inevitably left again—still the only one to have broken with his adopted mutant family. To be fair, he had a couple years on his teammates, and his untapped intellectual potential drew him to the private sector as a geneticist. Did going solo start him—and his neglected genius—on the path of temptation?
Hank soon found himself in dire straits, forced to take his own untested serum for somehow turning baseline humans into mutants, thus transforming himself into the furry Beast. Initially, he appeared quite atavistic, à la the classic Mr. Hyde, but after his brief solo series, he reverted to his basic persona: obnoxiously intellectual but endearingly bubbly and bouncy. From the moment of his transformation, it was clear he could’ve simply revealed his identity as the erstwhile X-Man—in what would’ve been an act of selfless heroism. He didn’t choose that path.
Knowing that publicly revealing his identity would backfire, Hank was eager to try out for the Avengers, quickly achieving probationary status but implicitly showing how much he preferred these nonmutant superheroes to his own peers. Apparently, the X-Men didn’t measure up.
But Hank was never a superstar Avenger, and even his inferiority complex was an unoriginal echo of Dr. Hank Pym’s, which had been a central drama to that title from its 1963 inception. Beast seemed happy with the cover his Avengers membership provided in letting him be seen in public as Hank McCoy without fearing humanity’s hatred. Indeed, passing as a state-sanctioned superhero, he was beloved by fangirls in the street (see Avengers #164 by—unsurprisingly—Jim Shooter and John Byrne, 1977). Even when the X-Men appeared to have died in X-Men #113 (1978), after grieving with Jean and Xavier, Hank returned to the super-team basically like nothing had happened, immediately involved with very silly fisticuffs and shenanigans and picking up nightclub ladies who merely seemed to fetishize him.
Still, Beast’s self-loathing and fear of humanity did, surprisingly, erupt in just one issue of the Avengers, #178 written by Steve Gerber, the bizarre satirist who gave us Howard the Duck and Man-Thing—and never wrote for the Avengers except this single Beast story. Beyond depicting Hank’s turmoil as ever-present but deeply repressed, this Gerber tale doesn’t make a lick of sense.
And while Beast did ally with the X-Men for a brief time, primarily to assist with controlling Jean’s threat as Dark Phoenix (X-Men #134-137, 1980), after her funeral in #138, he returned to the Avengers—arguably when the mutants were in much need of veteran field experience. But Hank’s never been one for inspiring leadership; instead, it was Angel who fulfilled this role for the team at that time. When Hank did finally quit Marvel’s premier super-team, fed up with his “blue buffoon” persona, he joined the Defenders—looking to cure his comatose girlfriend Vera Cantor—whom he otherwise treated very poorly. Hank was never really there for her nor honest about his emotions, all while occasionally distracting himself with other women (including Dazzler!).
Essentially, Beast’s “fun-loving persona” was another overly insistent manifestation of his repression, no less than his compulsion to analyze, control, and/or contain other mutants, never himself. In Defenders #116 (1983), J.M. DeMatteis subtly pens a telling critique of Hank’s forced superficiality as a cover for his self-loathing. It’s still sad and exasperating that Hank was stuck on this interminable loop of incurable repression and irritating clownishness. DeMatteis’ psychologically perceptive skill as a writer was exceptional during this era—the complete opposite of Jim Shooter.
At the start of X-Factor (1986), which editorial wanted firmly and nostalgically Silver Age in tone and character, Hank was kidnapped, forced to create a “cure” to mutancy, and had it tested on himself, causing total fur loss. This editorial dictate was just another ham-fisted shove to get the O5 regressed—visually and psychologically—to their “fun” Silver Age selves. Appropriately, not long after Louise Simonson took over the title with X-Factor #6, Hank suffered devolution, which condition lasted for an entire publication year—a long time!
While he was cured and returned to his blue-furred self, Hank still hadn’t learned to love and accept himself, whatever his mutation.
While Hank has otherwise suffered very brief bouts of something like devolution—whether in intelligence, behavior, or physical form—throughout his career, his anxiety over the possibility has proven much more debilitating. In Grant Morrison’s New X-Men, Hank’s susceptibility to such fear left him vulnerable to psychic attack. After undergoing a catlike mutation in #114, Hank was tormented by Cassandra Nova (possessing Xavier’s body) into believing himself no more than a mindless, feral beast quivering in abject terror at his loss of agency. She then manipulated Beak into beating him comatose with a baseball bat (#117, 2001).
Unlike Wolverine—who’s also been devolved at least once—Hank continues to deny his darkness and so has become more volatile, victimized by what he represses (literalized in his conflicts with Dark Beast). He’s a mess of hubristic delusion—and so we have the makings of a classic tragedy.
C. The Even Darker Turn of the ’90s
When in X-Men #34 (1994), Hank discovered one of Sinister’s wrecked and abandoned cloning facilities, he nearly wept at the loss of scientific knowledge that might’ve assisted the fight against the Legacy Virus spreading through mutantkind. For the first time, Sinister was beginning to be portrayed as a geneticist with interests beyond just the Summers bloodline, and his own antiviral research and extensive support technology were built out to give him serious weight as a ’90s edgelord. X-Men scribe Fabian Nicieza made Sinister a marked contrast with the Beast, whose own scientific prowess seemed to have been eclipsed, perhaps thanks to the mad scientist’s ethical void.
Not only did Hank preemptively concede a kind of moral defeat early on in the Virus’ spread, the good doctor handed over the homeless mutant Threnody—already a hapless subject of a mad geneticist in Sinister’s occasional employ—to the dubious ministrations of Sinister himself (X-Men #27, 1993). After years of servitude and torment, she escaped without any assistance or interest, ever, from the erstwhile Avenger.
Still, despite Hank’s ongoing inferiority complex (see him lamenting Xavier and Moira not consulting his genetics expertise in X-Men #24), he remained obsessed with finding a cure, which once led him to endanger his best friend, Iceman, and himself (X-Men Unlimited #10, 1996). The fact that, in 2021, Hank and Bobby haven’t been seen palling around in years is glaringly symptomatic of the Beast’s moral and emotional decay. That it feels like the deep bond that persisted for decades between the two most repressed students of the O5 never even existed is deeply troubling.
How selfless has Hank’s scientific pursuit been, even in working against the Virus? There’s a strong sense that he was motivated by hubris, a hurt sense of pride, and anxious self-doubt, which is strongly echoed in his much later efforts in (supposedly) giving his all to fight M-Pox (mid-2010s).
As Hank lost himself to his lonely obsession, Dark Beast started impersonating him, and once the interloper from the Age of Apocalypse understood his counterpart’s basic history, he started to realize the truth about his own obvious status as a living metaphor for the dark night of 616 Beast’s soul: “The more I get to know myself, the less there is to find out” (X-Men Unlimited #10).
So, Dark Beast began taunting Beast with the intimation that he—the Reality-616 Hank—could all too easily become just like his AoA counterpart without Dark Beast’s interference at all. (Perhaps in an effort to distance himself from the anxieties induced by tangling with his twisted doppelganger, the good doctor began using an image inducer while in public, to pass as a human while on dates or giving lectures.)
So, the question remains: Has Hank’s eternal anxiety over his insistence on taking strong ethical stances proven merely symptomatic of his kneejerk disavowal of temptations he’s never openly acknowledged even to himself?
D. Mutantdom’s Lost Decade Begins
During the Legacy Virus years, Hank played second fiddle to Moira MacTaggert’s genius. Later, his dead-end quest to reverse 2005’s Decimation (which he concluded was a question of “magic”) initially led Hank to seek aid from a rogues gallery of mad-genius villains, which only left a stain on his soul, especially after working closely, and fruitlessly, with Dark Beast (Endangered Species, 2007). Already, he’d been tempted by Dr. Rao’s “cure” for mutancy in Astonishing X-Men #2 (2004), and even the human supremacist politician Graydon Creed knew of Hank’s self-loathing (X-Men: Blind Science, 2010). While he’d given up hope of “curing” himself, his subsequent quest as savior of the species only resulted in his further degradation.
Hank’s usefulness was downgraded to engineering ingenious tech as needed by others. Most notably, he was drawn into destroying an alien dimension thanks to Forge and ordered by Cyclops to engineer time-travel devices for a mission that Hank was left in the dark about (Astonishing X-Men #25-30, 2008-2009, and X-Force #12, 2009). For years, he flipflopped between working with the Avengers and returning to Cyclops’ X-Men, without an ounce of enthusiasm. He was quietly devastated being left out of the open secret of Warren’s return to his lethal Archangel form (Uncanny X-Men #507, 2009). And with his insistent moralizing—correct or not—Hank found himself very much on his own again but unwilling to deal with or share the secret of his self-loathing, fooling only himself.
Following his torture and brief devolution in government captivity (Utopia, 2009), Hank definitively broke from Cyclops over the open secret of X-Force and alliance with Magneto (Uncanny X-Men #511-519, 2009).
After the horror of Xavier’s murder (AvX, 2012), Hank must’ve felt vindicated upon discovering Xavier had wanted him to inherit his place with the Illuminati (New Avengers #3, 2013). Since Hank’s sojourn amongst the entitled super-geniuses who felt they alone were ultimately responsible for planetary security was a Hickman storyline, it’s unsurprising Hickman’s plans for Krakoa’s intelligence chief would follow on from this era of Beast’s moral disarray.
While secretly working with the Illuminati to decide which Earths must be annihilated to avoid annihilation themselves, Hank joined Wolverine’s nonmilitant X-Men, where he underwent life-threatening mutation. This is what decided his mucking about with time itself, to bring the O5 back from their earliest days, allegedly to show Cyclops the error of his ways post-Decimation—but also to get his younger self to cure him. Teen Hank did rescue a dying Hank from what turned out to be the degenerative effects of the serum that first transformed him. Teen Hank’s fix resulted in Beast’s current, more humanoid form. (All-New X-Men #1-5, 2013.)
The X-Men put Hank on trial for what mucking with the timestream, but instead of owning up to his hubris and recklessness, he left in a huff—to join the Inhumans! (Uncanny X-Men #600; Uncanny Inhumans #1-4, 2015-2016) Hank failed to make headway, on solving the Terrigen Cloud killing what few mutants remained. Seeing the crisis as a way to redeem his failure with the Legacy Virus, Beast unsurprisingly worked hard to self-sabotage, again. When Hank knew the last Terrigen Cloud would fatally poison mutants, he didn’t tell Medusa—who worked swiftly to help destroy the airborne Terrigen and call truce once she understood she’d otherwise be responsible for genocide. Not facilitating communication between the two camps and urging mutant exodus to space only emphasized Hank’s status as a self-hating mutant.
E. The Age of Krakoa – Hank’s Poisoned Status Quo
Currently, Hank might have Xavier’s boundless gratitude for one of the doctor’s increasingly rare successes: removing Xavier’s brain from the Red Skull (Uncanny Avengers #21-22, 2017). We just don’t know. Why? Because Xavier hasn’t mentioned it since his spirit returned from the astral plane months later (in the body of Fantomex, Astonishing X-Men #6, 2018).
Regardless, post-X of Swords, Hank is now Xavier’s most trusted and unquestioningly loyal lieutenant since Jean left the Quiet Council with Scott. How the tables have turned!
The fussily moralistic voice of the O5 has slowly but surely twisted himself into the role of gleefully sadistic spymaster and genocidaire. This wild trajectory was inevitable for someone so repressed and self-loathing placed near the levers of power in a super-high-stakes venue. Still, this doesn’t mean this “dark” Beast is his true and final self. Undoubtedly, he must be held to account. Yet—Hank McCoy needs help! Someone must help him find and heal himself—even if, once justice is served, he’s permanently confined.
Hank’s ego is now at its most inflated and unmanaged. He’s a walking disaster, to himself and others. But after Xavier has his own head checked for serious ethical glitches, if Hank dies again, someone—maybe Jean—could perhaps justifiably decide to resurrect him without any memories postdating the appearance of the Legacy Virus. So, Hank could be returned as his lovable Bronze Age self, ready to hang with Wonder Man or Iceman for a boisterous night on the town. That could—if handled with care—be depicted as poetic justice for the reckless and jaded man who temporally abducted the teenaged O5.
But would such a resurrection solve Hank’s lifelong mental health issues? It might be his only hope after Benjamin Percy is done with him! And it might lend him just enough stability, and temporary humility, to allow someone to help him work through his layers of repression and trauma.
Leah Williams could surely find an excellent mutant therapist to work with Hank. If X-Force spreads poison and destruction, X-Factor is at least trying to radiate joy and healing. And Hank’s work environment is killing him. One of the many powerhouses resident at the Boneyard might try an intervention. But I’m guessing money would be on this new X-Men team—herald of a new democratic ethos on Krakoa—picking a fight sooner rather than later with Krakoa’s CIA—which has frankly become much scarier than anything the Council’s done; even Sinister is currently looking pretty vanilla next to the (dark) Beast …
Special thanks: The initial impetus for this character piece wasn’t just the shocking nature of Beast’s crimes early in Percy’s X-Force—I’m also grateful for the Cerebro podcast’s episode 11 discussion of this deeply conflicted character: Connor Goldsmith and Spencer Ackerman made me take their real-world political examination of Dr. McCoy quite seriously indeed. Additionally, Beast’s character file on Uncannyxmen.net provided crucial information. Cheers!
