X-Force #23 Review: Embedded Agents

[magenta]

At least Hank even mentioned that Cerebro still has a backup of his jovial self and that he doesn’t want to die in fear that they’ll bring back a different Beast. Which is what most of the readers seem to want based on posts here.

Bring him back to…. Before the Legacy Virus. I think that’s where things started getting dark for poor Hank. Have him and Simon take a week’s vacation together.

OK, this is a reading I can get behind. Hank is like that grumpy teacher from Clueless and he just needs a healthy boinkfest to relax and be happy? Sounds good to me. Let's petition for a miniseries of Hank and Simon "reconnecting"!

[ericng]

This storyline is much more interesting than the boring 'plant-based' issues of previous storyline.

I just love these Russian mutants and the nested dolls.

[ermac]

The way Percy portrays Russia and Mikhail seems very... stereotypical?

Other than that, great issue. I love when Hank admits he dreams of genocide and wants to be Father of Krakoa.

[PyroFN]

Any one notice how Percy through Beast mentions how everyone misses the joyful bouncing beast ? It was like Beast was talking to us. Lol

Right?! And the problem with that assertion is that Beast says we need a bastard in this, which implies a necessity.

Problem is that Beast has had to have his butt pulled out of terrible situations he has caused throughout the entirety of this series. Not one single win Beast has had made any sort of positive impact on that of Krakoa.

You want proper bastards, look at Magneto, Emma Frost, or more accurately, Charles Xavier. All have made morally dubious decisions that have terrible moral implications. Hell, some even blew up in their faces further down the line as a sort of karmic retribution. Yet, we still saw the reasoning and the resulting success from those decisions that validated their behavior.

Xavier mind-wipes Cyclops, Scott went on to lead the Second Gen X-Men and save the O4 without the guilt of the secret teams downfall. The ramifications in which kept up the X-Men in good and created Vulcan in bad.



That is how you do a proper complex decision. What Beast does is just being a jack***.

[Wolverine12]

I thought it was odd Mikhail would consider a bear a threat to mutants. Has he even met his own siblings lol.

[Grunty]

I thought it was odd Mikhail would consider a bear a threat to mutants. Has he even met his own siblings lol.

He ran a pocket dimension with warped time layers, in which generations of mutants fought against each other or giant fauna for years. Compared to some of the mutants and the giant lizards, polar bears would be rather tame. Not to forget the basis for these mutants were original Morlocks. So it's not like he used mutants on the level of Wolverine as basis. So yes that line makes no real sense.

Heck, why use a Polar Bear as demonstration subject for genetically engineered soldiers anyway? It's a natural animal, against creatures designed to fight super powered beings. Now if they had used Predator X as demonstration, that would have been a different subject.

[Wolverine12]

He ran a pocket dimension with warped time layers, in which generations of mutants fought against each other or giant fauna for years. Compared to some of the mutants and the giant lizards, polar bears would be rather tame. Not to forget the basis for these mutants were original Morlocks. So it's not like he used mutants on the level of Wolverine as basis. So yes that line makes no real sense.

Heck, why use a Polar Bear as demonstration subject for genetically engineered soldiers anyway? It's a natural animal, against creatures designed to fight super powered beings. Now if they had used Predator X as demonstration, that would have been a different subject.

Using Predator X would’ve been awesome.

[Sunfire]

Okay....I just can't enjoy this book as hard as I have tried. The Russian Stereotype fest was my last straw. The writing is just so bad.

[Big Joe]

Percy's writing of Beast reminds me of the UK government minister who famously said "People have had enough of experts" in response to experts warning of all the bad consequences of Brexit that either already have or are in the process of coming true.

The extreme right wing Michael Gove, along with the rest of the UK government taking stupidity to a whole new level.

That's a nice analogy. You just absolutely know **** is going to happen if he carries on like this, it's like being involved in a slow moving train crash.

[Kingdom X]

Right?! And the problem with that assertion is that Beast says we need a bastard in this, which implies a necessity.

Problem is that Beast has had to have his butt pulled out of terrible situations he has caused throughout the entirety of this series. Not one single win Beast has had made any sort of positive impact on that of Krakoa.

You want proper bastards, look at Magneto, Emma Frost, or more accurately, Charles Xavier. All have made morally dubious decisions that have terrible moral implications. Hell, some even blew up in their faces further down the line as a sort of karmic retribution. Yet, we still saw the reasoning and the resulting success from those decisions that validated their behavior.

Xavier mind-wipes Cyclops, Scott went on to lead the Second Gen X-Men and save the O4 without the guilt of the secret teams downfall. The ramifications in which kept up the X-Men in good and created Vulcan in bad.



That is how you do a proper complex decision. What Beast does is just being a jack***.

Love this post. The other problem with Beast in this book is that he’s constantly being exposed. All the field agents on the team don’t like the decisions he makes and TWO council members (Jean at the time and Emma) have confronted him about his actions.

[Milici]

Love this post. The other problem with Beast in this book is that he’s constantly being exposed. All the field agents on the team don’t like the decisions he makes and TWO council members (Jean at the time and Emma) have confronted him about his actions.

Cecelia Reyes also called him out, everyone still work for/with him. They are all as guilty as him at this point.

[pkingdom]

Yeah that's why I'm sick of Wolverine too. Its one thing to call him out, but to go back to working for him or not doing anything to stop him afterward invalidates their complaints. They're all culpable and guilty at this point.

And like others have pointed out, for all his talk of necessary evil, every one of Beasts actions both did not work and were completely unnecessary. When confronted with a problem, he immediately went to the most terrible way of handling it without even considering other options. It makes him look like a psychopathic idiot.

[WallStreeter]

At least Hank even mentioned that Cerebro still has a backup of his jovial self and that he doesn’t want to die in fear that they’ll bring back a different Beast. Which is what most of the readers seem to want based on posts here.

Bring him back to…. Before the Legacy Virus. I think that’s where things started getting dark for poor Hank. Have him and Simon take a week’s vacation together.

They cut his Avengers ties, sadly. It’s like he never was an Avenger.

[Grunty]

(...)
And like others have pointed out, for all his talk of necessary evil, every one of Beasts actions both did not work and were completely unnecessary. When confronted with a problem, he immediately went to the most terrible way of handling it without even considering other options. It makes him look like a psychopathic idiot.

I mentioned it one of the preview threads, but the way Beast handled the mini soldier in this issue is pretty a summary of everything wrong with his character currently and to an extend X-force as a whole.

He takes a highly dangerous object, of which he knows how dangerous it is, without any precautions, into a completely unsecured lab, by his lonesome, does not wear any protection, takes a far too crude tool and uses it by hand, to examine said object and when that totaly screws up he runs to X-force to fix the problems he created.

The attack of the mini-soldiers was allready an emberassing display the first time around, because apparently they don't have any secruity measures or pre-cautions in place to handle potentialy highly dangeorus substances or bodies being brought to their island nation, but now it's worse because seemingly nobody learned anything for it.

Meanwhile X-force is clearly understaffed, disorganized, internaly squabbeling and entirely passive until Beast screws things up again.

The comic has over 23 issues made clear that the whole team has been a mess, that harms Krakoa's counter intelligence efforts much more than it helped (anything they did well could have been done better by a better organization) and should be entirely disbanded and replaced with entirely different staff from ground up. I hope this was the intention of Percy, because otherwise this would be quite awkward.

[Sutekh]

Issue 23 of Beast being a horrible person who makes all the wrong decisions that blow up in his face, while monologuing to himself about how smart that makes him. Ugh. Make it stahp.