Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Marvel Comics, X-Men | Tagged: Beast, hank mccoy

Marvel Will Fix Hank McCoy In 2024 For Reasons You All Already Know

Spoilers for all sorts of things Marvel. The solicitations for X-Force #49 for February 2024 tells us to "witness the return of…Beast?!"

Spoilers for all sorts of things marvel-related ahead. The solicitations for X-Force #49 for February 2024 reads, "In a simpler time, the bounding Beast partnered up with Avenger Wonder Man! But after Beast's fall from grace, is there any chance these two can see eye to eye? In a last desperate attempt to take down Beast, witness the return of…Beast?!"

So, what has been happening to Hank McCoy of late? Well, quite a lot, really. Hank McCoy, the Beast, is an original member of Marvel's X-Men, a former member of Avengers and Defenders, and, of late, the resident mad scientist of Krakoa. Bleeding Cool has followed his descent into said madness, doing the supposedly necessary things that no one else will do to ensure the survival of the X-Men and Krakoa. But it has always been a bit like this, such as the time he left the X-Men in their first year, upset at all the anti-mutant prejudice, only to come back with this kind of attitude when the rest of the X-Men are fighting Unus The Untouchable.

But he settled down a bit after that. However, in Brian Bendis' All-New X-Men eleven years ago, Hank McCoy decided to completely disrupt the time-stream by dragging the original five X-Men younger selves to the present day, all to stop a make-believe mutant genocide he claimed Scott Summers would be responsible for. This, of course, was an outright lie to convince them to come with him, abducting teenagers on false pretences, which would even cause the Watcher to be disgusted.

In Inhumans vs. X-Men,  when Hank McCoy learns the dire fact that the Mists are impregnating the entire atmosphere of the planet and would leave Earth uninhabitable to mutants, instead of standing up to fight or sharing his findings with the Inhumans whom he has been working with for months…

…he decides that it means all mutants should run away. Another planet, another dimension, another timeline, whatever came to hand.

Which leads to a big fight for eight months. The war between mutants and Inhumans ended, as does the threat of the Terrigen Mists when Queen Medusa is actually told that the point of no return is fast approaching, and she destroys the Mists herself, rather than see an entire group of people suffer and die for it.

If Hank McCoy had only told Medusa, the whole war could have been avoided. Next, in Secret Empire, he did a deal with the Nazi Hydra and the Nazi Captain America to keep a mutant nation in West California in return for propping up the fascist government of the USA.

But during the Krakoan Era, Hank McCoy has gotten way worse. He has been launching hit squads, killing world leaders, creating genetic methods of warfare, with his mistakes getting out of hand and having to be dealt with, with any dead dismissed.

Hank McCoy has pushed for interning any Russian mutants on Krakoa, in public, aiming to create fear and paranoia amongst Krakoans.

Hank McCoy is consistently lying, deceiving and trying not to get caught. So naturally, he might as well be opposed to open mutant immigration to Krakoa, even though that was originally the point.

Then, he opened a space prison outside of the jurisdiction of Krakoa, Earth or Arakko. Killing them, torturing them, experimenting on them. Mister Sinister has a version of the Dark Beast imprisoned in his labs, but the 616 Beast seems far worse.

And then commit cold-blooded murder, some against aliens whom the Beast happened across or petty criminals.

And he's pretty happy to turn his prisoners into an instant defence mechanism when it goes pear-shaped. Some thought that maybe the Beast was actually the Dark Beast from Age Of Apocalypse, hiding out on Krakoa. Immortal X-Men dismissed that possibility, as he is held prisoner by Mister Sinister.

Recently, Beast has stepped up his justifications as well.

Because Hank McCoy is also just trying to save everyone, like Nathaniel Essex was. Is. Will be. And he's using clones of himself as well now.

As well as brainless Wolverine clones as attack dogs, Krakoan Kaijus and more. So the question is this. How do you save The Beast? Absolutely destroyed as an amoral activist, mass murdering genocidal figure in Marvel Comics, a mutant Goebbels, how could he possibly be redeemed in the mind of the Marvel masses?

Wolverine tried to find out what the Beast had been doing on Krakoa using the Cerebro memory back-ups of the Beast to try and access that memory and see for himself.

But they are not available. They've all been erased. Well, almost all of them.

The memories of his time when he joined the Avengers remain intact. The Beast could be revived using those files and those files alone. We could get this Beast back…

Might he be able to take down the current Beast? Or at least replace him? That is how you solve a problem like Hank McCoy…

Because apparently, this isn't enough.

Will someone do to The Beast what he tried to do to Cyclops by bringing back former versions of the X-Men?

Will the X-Men revive an earlier version of The Beast to try and either shame or take down the current one, using Krakoan resurrection technology rather than time travel?

Marvel may need to hurry up getting the Beast away from being a genocidal, mass-murdering fascist dictator in the comic books.

Unless, of course, Kelsey Grammer actually wants to play such a character in whatever Marvel has planned for 2o24, 2025 and 2026… I know his politics are fascinating.

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