Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics, X-Men | Tagged: Beast, Jim Shooter, tom brevoort

Tom Brevoort Was Against The Redemption Of Hank McCoy, The Beast

Tom Brevoort was against the redemption of Hank McCoy, The Beast, just as Jim Shooter was with Dark Phoenix

I am reminded very much of Jim Shooter, Jean Grey and the Dark Phoenix Saga, here. Shooter wrote decades later, of editor Jim Salicrup, and creators Chris Claremont and John Byrne;

"When I read the X-Men make-ready that included the scene in which Phoenix destroyed a Shi'ar starship, killing hundreds, and an inhabited planet, killing billions, curious, I asked Jim Salicrup to show me whatever else was done on the storyline. Because Claremont and Byrne were very efficient, on time and professional, the next several issues were well along. The climactic issue was still in the plot stage, I think. I think Byrne had not yet begun to pencil it. At any rate, I discovered that Chris (and John) had backed down from the idea of Phoenix becoming the X-Men's Doctor Doom. The plot indicated that Phoenix would somehow be mind-wiped and let go. Back to living at the Mansion, hanging around with Storm and company, sitting at the same table for lunch, etc. That, to me, would be like taking the German army away from from Hitler and letting him go back to governing Germany.

"Did I have a "moral" issue with that? Yes. More than that, it was a character issue. Would Storm sit comfortably at a dinner table with someone who had killed billions as if nothing had ever happened? Nah. I don't know whether most people grok this idea, but the Editor in Chief is charged with governing, managing and protecting all of the characters. It was my job to make sure the characters were in character, and I was the final word on what "in character" was. Not Chris, not John, not any freelancer. The company relied upon me to manage and protect the company's intellectual properties.

"I told Chris that the ending proposed in his plot didn't work. It wasn't workable with the characters, and in fact was a totally lame cop-out, storywise. I demanded a different ending. Chris–enraged–asked me just what that might be. I suggested that Phoenix be sent to some super-security interstellar prison as punishment for her crimes. Chris said that the X-Men would never stop trying to rescue (?!) her and that the story would become a loop. I said that then he should come up with an ending.

"I wasn't privy to Chris and John's conversations that night, but whatever. The next morning, Chris stormed into my office and said that there was only one answer–they'd have to kill Phoenix. I said fine. I don't think he expected me to say that, since killing characters just wasn't done in those days. Chris waffled a bit, but then I became insistent! She's dying. That's it. Chris left my office, obviously found a phone somewhere and, a few minutes later, I got a call from John that started with him asking me if I was insane. I insisted on the "solution." It was done–brilliantly, if reluctantly–by Chris and John. And that's was the issue that propelled the X-Men to the top for, what, two decades?"

Tom Brevoort, the Senior Vice President, Executive Editor and X-Men Group Editor at Marvel Comics, just gave a big interview to AIPT, in which he talked about the character of The Beast. Who, as Bleeding Cool reported, had turned full mad scientist fascist running Krakoa, including torture, experimentation and murder of innocents. The finale of which saw the Beast die, but an earlier version of himself resurrected and redeemed using the Krakoan Protocols, without the memories of his current self. But then, recently, in the Rising From The Ashes issues, it was revealed that this version of The Beast did not die, but was revived, restored as the Chairman of the mutant activist terrorist group 3K, now with knowledge of the future of the Age Of Revelation. And it seems that it's the result of Tom Brevoort having his own Jim Shooter moment. Tom Brevoort said,

"When Jordan D. White and Ben Percy were first laying this all out and revealed their resolution — essentially killing off the bad Beast and introducing a new, younger Beast who was from the past and never even involved with Krakoa, I didn't love that. It felt like you let the character do all of this stuff and make all of these morally gray compromises, and then you're washing his hands by going, here's a fresh one who didn't do any of that stuff, and it's all OK now."

However, Tom Brevoort wasn't in charge of the X-Men at the time. And now he is. So he got a chance to fix it.

"So when I was taking over X-Men, I started looking over the lay of the land and felt we had to do something with this, especially given that the specific world we're entering into is a world that has itself already passed beyond the two poles of the X-Men — Xavier and Magneto. While they're still there and around, we've kind of evolved beyond them in this new post-Krakoa landscape. The question is, who are the characters that are going to be the poles and the pillars of this new world? And it's always easy to come up with characters who are heroic and positive, but who are the darker characters in this? And boy, the idea of Beast as a darker character seemed appealing in that environment."

How many Dark Beasts are there out there now?

"You have a paradigm that essentially boils down to Cyclops and Beast. Or even Beast and Beast. That's super good fodder. So we talked to Jordan about it and told him early on we're definitely keeping him around. But it's been a part of Jed's plan and our plan right from the jump. The Chairman's been Beast all along, going back to that hidden QR code page in X-Men #1. X-Men #23 is out now, and X-Men #24 is all about that original version of Hank McCoy. It's 20 pages of 3K and exactly who he is, exactly what he's about, and what 3K's about. That's the second of the two Age of Revelation epilogue issues before we put the gas down again and propel ourselves forward into the next bunch of stories."

Of course, the influence of the Beast stretched further than the X-Men, into the Avengers and the Defenders…

"Beast has relationships with everyone. Not just all of the main X-Men characters, but also characters beyond the X-Men family. And while he's become radicalized over the course of his life due to the experiences that he's lived, those relationships still exist. So there's just so much meat on the bone there for a character to have to grapple with the ethics and the ethos of the life he's living."

So, how long will the Beast be kept in the dark about his darker self and 3K?

"And it immediately opens up a whole bunch of doors and questions about the slightly younger Beast who's walking around with the X-Men team with the knowledge that there's another me in the world. And Hank and the X-Men will get there pretty soon because we're not going to keep that secret from them for too long. I can't imagine the existential crisis that would trigger in somebody. There's another me walking around who's a little bit older, who's lived through a bunch of stuff that I don't remember, and who made a bunch of choices that I think aren't that good. But when you come down to it, is he me? If he is Hank McCoy, who am I? There are all kinds of angles on this that I think are very fruitful for fascinating storytelling."

And looking forward to the next couple of years for X-Men stories,

"The most obvious character here who will be big going forward is Beast. Both Beast A and Beast B are going to be pretty important and central."

Well, there is that summer X-Men event coming. How about you call it The Beast With Two Backs? That's Shakespearean, that is. It's in Othello and everything…

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!