X-Force #15: Trench Warfare

[superboyprime]

"The mutants, as we know from House of X/Powers of X, always lose. But not this time. Not if X-Force can help it. Beast is making bad decisions for the security of Krakoa. He’s cold and schemingly utilitarian in his approach. The greatest good for mutantkind is his concern, damn the consequences." - Benjamin Percy

Comments

[scorntx]

The cause of the X-Men 'always' losing (except in those realities where they don't) isn't Moira, or racism or Sentinels or Mutantkind / Moira / Charles's own hubris (delete where applicable), it's the fact they haven't smacked Hank over the head with a shovel already and had done with his stupidity.
Good thing Krakoa doesn't believe in the idea of prisons, otherwise they'd have the perfect place to keep him from doing anything.
(Heck, never mind prisons. Just a time-out corner, or a naughty step. Just something.)

... props to the artist, though. They're doing a spectacularly good job drawing Hank as looking like a smug tool.

[lencannon]

its definitely the racism also though

[tinygaylaura]

I'm convinced that Dark Beast from the Age of Apocalypse universe traded minds with the 616 version at some point in the early 2000's and that's why for the past fifteen years or so the Beast has just been becoming more and more of an asshole

[mastermahan]

It really is character leakage from the AoA storyline. Even without Xavier, almost all of the X-Men are still basically good. Even the more morally gray X-Men, like Logan and Gambit, or reformed villains like Rogue are still good.

Except for Hank and Havok. Hank had previously been this warm, friendly, upbeat guy who just looked monstrous. AoA revealed that he was apparently one mentor away from going full Mengele. Dark Beast wasn't a parallel universe doppelganger (barring retcons), he was the same Hank McCoy, with most of the same childhood, whose path diverged into being an unrepentant sociopath. Given how successful the AoA was, that characterization never left, and now Hank McCoy and Alex Summers keep getting slotted back into villain roles.

Which is too bad, because the gentle, loquacious Beast of the '90s cartoon (my favorite version) was a far more interesting character than this reflexively evil idiot.

[jlbarnett]

except of course they actually transferred Dark beast over for that role

[phantomfo]

Beast is one of the characters where I've thought about if I wrote Marvel. I'd probably try to address it as Hank's method of coping with the grief from losing so many friends. Even knowing that they come back, the accumulated losses of Jean, Piotr, Kurt, Scott, etc, took a toll and he's been walling himself off to prevent having to feel that pain again.

It's basically a variation of the approach they took with Speedball after Civil War.

[ebailey140]

Imagine being a fan of the late 1970s - early 80s Avengers. You wouldn't recognize this Hank McCoy. Maybe one of his old teammates will say something at the Hellfire Gala. "Damn, Hank, when did you become an asshole?"

[scelestus]

Right?? The Beast I always imagine is the one who had such a great friendship with Wonder Man, back in the day.

[starwolf_oakley]

They're replacing "Charles did a bad, bad thing" with "Hank McCoy did a bad, bad thing."

About time.

[lordultimus]

They're just saving the Charles reveal, it's totally coming.

[shakalooloo]

So, he's 'Hank' when everyone likes him, but 'Beast' when he's been bad.

[super_fly]

Or Henry Philip McCoy when he's been a very naughty boy

[blackmassvillain]

Dr. McCoy if you're nasty.

[tinygaylaura]

I guess the sailors on that naval sub forgot to bring good luck to their vessel with this sea shanty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWNWYdSHGSQ

[tcampbell1000]

The one thing I like about Beast's semi-heel turn is the believable way his friends... or maybe former friends, now co-workers... are responding to it. Jean is edging very close to just being done with him altogether. Logan's a more pragmatic sort who can match some of Hank's current coldness, but even he can see that there's a rising cost to Hank's actions, that trust is not an infinite resource.

[bruinsfan]

Kind of funny, given how many X-Men have been on the receiving end of Wolverine's claws when he disagreed with them over the issue du jour. He's stood as judge, jury, and executioner with no authority to do so any number of times, he just doesn't use a lab to mess with people.

[donnblake]

Or they flirted with his girlfriend... or tagged him out in baseball...

[1wordreaction]

Sublime?

[shadowpsykie]

i HATE BEast. i am sorry, but i am DONE with him.

[silverhammerman]

I think I said this when a snippet of this was shared before, but: I for one like Beast's turn as the X-Men's resident morally dubious buddy. It's an intriguing character arc that works for him as a guy who's always dealt with self-loathing and is following in Xavier's own frequently amoral footsteps. I do hope that Percy writes a comeuppance of some sort, but even afterwards I think it would be dreadfully boring to "reset" Beast back to standards.

I also quite like the data page/memo. It's amusing to see that even the Five's less horrible suggestion of what to do with Omega Red involves suggesting that they alter his backup, what has been presented in this era as more or less a soul, to be more "amiable" and show "gratitude". Also, Xavier's flat overruling of them points towards the fact that the Five's whole deal might seem glamorous now, but they're ultimately still servants and very much not in charge of their own labour. The Five should unionize, is what I'm saying. The page overall points towards some of the cracks in Krakoa which I think are really interesting, but still haven't really paid off.

[jlbarnett]

I'm not familiar with a version of Hank McCoy that has had a problem with self-loathing at all

[silverhammerman]

Totally fair, I'm certainly no authority on the character. I was thinking more about the body dysmorphia, which has come up again and again at least since Morrison's run, and was a big part of the version in the Fox movies.

Comics XF had an interesting article, essentially trying to piece together a coherent through line for the character. https://www.comicsxf.com/2021/04/20/beasts-dark-descent-from-the-silver-age-to-benjamin-percys-x-force/