Oh My Stars and Garters! Hank McCoy, the Beast Appreciation 2024!

[Mungho]

I don’t read this as an abrupt turn to evil but when considering the Olaf (and accurate) saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” then I would suggest that a possible interpretation is that Hank made the wrong decision for the right reasons and as such started on his path to Hell.

I have limited knowledge of the character, time periods in question, et al but I can see (but don’t necessarily agree) why people point to this as a turning point (more like a bearing in the general direction of) in path Hank’s paths toward self-destruction.

It would if this story and some others are cherry-picked THEN you have a clear decline toward evil. But with Threnody, his motiviations here are the complete opposite of what caused his decline in character later: Pride. Here, he's admitting he's not the smartest or most learned man regarding mutant genetics. Sinister is. That Threnody had the best chance at survival and for helping cure the Legacy Virus if she went with Sinister. It IS a grey decision.

Later on, during Extinction when he was desperately searching for a way for mutants to survive, he even joined forces with his evil self, Dark Beast. But when the latter almost murdered an innocent child, Hank beat the **** out of DB and realized he couldn't compromise his morals.

The long painful decline of his moral character occurred when he brought the O5 to the present. Starting from here, Hank became defined by pride and hubris. That no one else was capable of doing things the right way as he saw it. The next 7 years writers would write Hank in this way, other writers would pull him back and say he's been wrong as seen in that story I posted of him with Wonder Man. Then the next writer would drag Hank back to being a smug jerk. It made him look positively schizophrenic.

So, yes, if you cherry-pick stories in a vacuum, it looks like a steady decline into evil with no upsides.

Edit: I felt the need to clarify. I may be blinded by my love for Beast, but me and others see, instead of a steady, slow decline to evil, a pattern of erratic behavior from Hank starting in 2012 when he brought the O5 to the present. The character since then seems more like a prop being pulled in various directions by writers with their own wildly divergent ideas for Hank. This is what I meant by him seeming schizophrenic.

What I WILL NOT Believe, as I've heard some others say, is that starting in the 90's, there has been a great collaboration among all the writers since then to steadily write him to be evil culminating in Percy's run. Percy even implied Hank has been evil from the very beginning of his life, which makes it all the more odd that he brings back a supposedly 'untainted' Hank from his younger days.
What I will not

[ARkadelphia]

It would if this story and some others are cherry-picked THEN you have a clear decline toward evil. But with Threnody, his motiviations here are the complete opposite of what caused his decline in character later: Pride. Here, he's admitting he's not the smartest or most learned man regarding mutant genetics. Sinister is. That Threnody had the best chance at survival and for helping cure the Legacy Virus if she went with Sinister. It IS a grey decision.

Later on, during Extinction when he was desperately searching for a way for mutants to survive, he even joined forces with his evil self, Dark Beast. But when the latter almost murdered an innocent child, Hank beat the **** out of DB and realized he couldn't compromise his morals.

The long painful decline of his moral character occurred when he brought the O5 to the present. Starting from here, Hank became defined by pride and hubris. That no one else was capable of doing things the right way as he saw it. The next 7 years writers would write Hank in this way, other writers would pull him back and say he's been wrong as seen in that story I posted of him with Wonder Man. Then the next writer would drag Hank back to being a smug jerk. It made him look positively schizophrenic.

So, yes, if you cherry-pick stories in a vacuum, it looks like a steady decline into evil with no upsides.

Edit: I felt the need to clarify. I may be blinded by my love for Beast, but me and others see, instead of a steady, slow decline to evil, a pattern of erratic behavior from Hank starting in 2012 when he brought the O5 to the present. The character since then seems more like a prop being pulled in various directions by writers with their own wildly divergent ideas for Hank. This is what I meant by him seeming schizophrenic.

What I WILL NOT Believe, as I've heard some others say, is that starting in the 90's, there has been a great collaboration among all the writers since then to steadily write him to be evil culminating in Percy's run. Percy even implied Hank has been evil from the very beginning of his life, which makes it all the more odd that he brings back a supposedly 'untainted' Hank from his younger days.
What I will not

Good stuff. You know more about this character than I do but your analysis seems sound.

I will admit that going all the friggin’ way back to New Defenders strikes me as being ridiculously unnecessary. In general, I don’t like retcons at all so I feel it should be done surgically, if at all. In this case, yeah. Retconning needs to be done.

But doing some very rough math, if the character has been around 1964 or so, that’s 60 years of development since he doesn’t have any real BIG gaps in his history since he was introduced. Even when X-Men was cancelled, he was in Avengers then Champions. So Nee Defenders ended in roughly 1984 I think which means they’re taking away 2/3 of his history. Completely unnecessary.

[Thundershot]

I wonder if this new Hank will get his ANXM memories back like others did… he also studied magic, too, iirc.. (it’s been a while and I was only skimming things then). That’s never been picked up again, has it?

[Mungho]

Good stuff. You know more about this character than I do but your analysis seems sound.

I will admit that going all the friggin’ way back to New Defenders strikes me as being ridiculously unnecessary. In general, I don’t like retcons at all so I feel it should be done surgically, if at all. In this case, yeah. Retconning needs to be done.

But doing some very rough math, if the character has been around 1964 or so, that’s 60 years of development since he doesn’t have any real BIG gaps in his history since he was introduced. Even when X-Men was cancelled, he was in Avengers then Champions. So Nee Defenders ended in roughly 1984 I think which means they’re taking away 2/3 of his history. Completely unnecessary.

Thank you. I don't see how the editors could let Percy wreck a character to such an extant that they had to do this. Even then, they could have only had it go to just before Krakoa started or right before he brought the O5 to the present, the start of his big decline. I'm still hoping that MacKay and Brevoort will do something to fix this mess. I know now they can't retcon the whole thing, but showing that for example my theory that Hank lost his soul before Krakoa and the clone has it would do a lot to fix him.

I wonder if this new Hank will get his ANXM memories back like others did… he also studied magic, too, iirc.. (it’s been a while and I was only skimming things then). That’s never been picked up again, has it?

Like so much else, yes, it's never been brought up again.

[DurararaFTW]

I mean, the point of Defenders Beast is too have the fun Beast back. AXNM Beast is profoundly miserable and selfloathing, the whole magic thing is him abandoning the pursuit of science altogether for something else in an effort to make a clean break. So I get why they don't bring that back into it. As a variant Beast living in the same time as his future self AXNM was bad enough but he'd be pointless as the one and only Beast left.

[Mungho]

I mean, the point of Defenders Beast is too have the fun Beast back. AXNM Beast is profoundly miserable and selfloathing, the whole magic thing is him abandoning the pursuit of science altogether for something else in an effort to make a clean break. So I get why they don't bring that back into it. As a variant Beast living in the same time as his future self AXNM was bad enough but he'd be pointless as the one and only Beast left.

Forgive me, but what is AXNM? I was gone from the X-Books 2010-2022, but I have read quite a bit to catch up. Do you mean X-Men vs. Avengers or X-Men vs. Inhumans or something else?

You're right of course about bringing back a fun Beast, but they could have brought him back from just before cat-Beast, when his terrible self-loathing started.

[DurararaFTW]

Forgive me, but what is AXNM? I was gone from the X-Books 2010-2022, but I have read quite a bit to catch up. Do you mean X-Men vs. Avengers or X-Men vs. Inhumans or something else?

You're right of course about bringing back a fun Beast, but they could have brought him back from just before cat-Beast, when his terrible self-loathing started.

Teen Beast, part of the 05 that Bendis had Beast bring to the present from the past for a while.

[Mungho]

Teen Beast, part of the 05 that Bendis had Beast bring to the present from the past for a while.

Oh! Of course, I know about that era. Teen Hank felt he was useless, studied magic, and turned into a demon TWICE.

But, wouldn't clone Hank have those memories too? I'm guessing it will never be addressed.

[Mungho]

Let's try some more single pictures:

Hank by artist Mark Pacella:



Hank with, well, what once was his friends cries:



And from the recent episode of the show:



Blushing at Trish Trilby. Don't do it, Hank, she'll just hurt you in the end.

[Hakka84]

I've not followed Hank that much, but I wouldn leave out his bringing the O5 to the present from "his crimes".
I mean, yes, he might've done something ethically... let's say debatable. But during Black Vortex, when he's enhanced by the Black Vortex, he understands how wrong he had been and admitted he had be guilty of hubris.
Also, if it wasn't for the future!X-Men-guys who meddled with X-Men #1-past, the time-displaced!O5 would've returned very soon to their own time, fixing any "crime" Hank did. So yes, Hank was wrong in what he did, and he might've not thought through that enough, but without the future!villains, he would've fixed things in few hours/days.

The issue is that he eventually fell in the same (wrong) path for no reason. One would expect that someone who learned a lesson like that Hank, would think twice before getting involved in other ethically debatable things. Authors did him so, so dirty.

[Mungho]

I've not followed Hank that much, but I wouldn leave out his bringing the O5 to the present from "his crimes".
I mean, yes, he might've done something ethically... let's say debatable. But during Black Vortex, when he's enhanced by the Black Vortex, he understands how wrong he had been and admitted he had be guilty of hubris.
Also, if it wasn't for the future!X-Men-guys who meddled with X-Men #1-past, the time-displaced!O5 would've returned very soon to their own time, fixing any "crime" Hank did. So yes, Hank was wrong in what he did, and he might've not thought through that enough, but without the future!villains, he would've fixed things in few hours/days.

The issue is that he eventually fell in the same (wrong) path for no reason. One would expect that someone who learned a lesson like that Hank, would think twice before getting involved in other ethically debatable things. Authors did him so, so dirty.

Yeah, again the greater context is something that gets lost. You still have people say Scott abandoned Madelyn and his son to shack up with Jean.

That's what I mean, Hank realized several times during the 2012-2018 period that he screwed-up and that his pride is the problem. But EVERY time after that revelation, the next writer would drag him right back to being a smug jerkass. I've literally never seen a character get so ****-on and ever aspect of their character thoroughly destroyed. People would point to Spider-man as being worse off, but despite almost constantly being ****-on for 20 years, at least he's still a hero. Compare this to Hank, with the only way to make bad-Beast look worse would be to make him a child-molester.

I've heard people say that the Black Vortex thing was retconned as to not have happened. I've heard of several things that have been retconned, but a friend of mine said it's very rare for Marvel to actually retcon something outside a few extreme examples. Then there's the thing of completely ignoring something that's happened but not officially been retconned(I've heard of IvX being one such thing). I really would like it if this never happened:





I haven't liked Storm since I read this. If I was Hank, I would never speak to any of them ever again.

[Hakka84]

Yeah, again the greater context is something that gets lost. You still have people say Scott abandoned Madelyn and his son to shack up with Jean.

That's what I mean, Hank realized several times during the 2012-2018 period that he screwed-up and that his pride is the problem. But EVERY time after that revelation, the next writer would drag him right back to being a smug jerkass. I've literally never seen a character get so ****-on and ever aspect of their character thoroughly destroyed. People would point to Spider-man as being worse off, but despite almost constantly being ****-on for 20 years, at least he's still a hero. Compare this to Hank, with the only way to make bad-Beast look worse would be to make him a child-molester.

I've heard people say that the Black Vortex thing was retconned as to not have happened. I've heard of several things that have been retconned, but a friend of mine said it's very rare for Marvel to actually retcon something outside a few extreme examples. Then there's the thing of completely ignoring something that's happened but not officially been retconned(I've heard of IvX being one such thing).

That's news to me. Someone more knowledgeable knows more?

Anyway. If it helps, there had been an habit in the 2010s to have a character's growth erased in the next title, and the character out back in the same hurled that they had overcome just few months before. Or, at least, I can say this for Warren too (three times he overcome/fixed Archangel and the next time he was in a title he was back to the same old "I can't control Archangel"). Hank got it worse, yes.

I haven't read the crossover, but I read plenty of times here on the forums that Storm was... not well characterized during that X-Men Vs Inhumans and acted not like Ororo would do, so pretend it never happened.

[Mungho]

That's news to me. Someone more knowledgeable knows more?

Oh, I meant that I hear various people around the internet say 'Oh this has been retconned' and such. Like, someone on reddit said the whole O5 being brought to the present was retconned, and I went here and asked if that was true, because that seemed odd. People here said no, it definitely wasn't retconned.

Like I said, it seems to be very rare that Marvel/DC out right retcons things. No matter how much I want it, Percy's X-Force will not be on of those.

But, MacKay could retcon an explanation for Hank's behavior during X-Force, right? Soulless, Sublime, a Mummudrai, something that shows the clone is the real him? It's just sticking in me that Beast as a character would lose so much history.

Anyway. If it helps, there had been an habit in the 2010s to have a character's growth erased in the next title, and the character out back in the same hurled that they had overcome just few months before. Or, at least, I can say this for Warren too (three times he overcome/fixed Archangel and the next time he was in a title he was back to the same old "I can't control Archangel"). Hank got it worse, yes.

I haven't read the crossover, but I read plenty of times here on the forums that Storm was... not well characterized during that X-Men Vs Inhumans and acted not like Ororo would do, so pretend it never happened.

I should. My OCD again needing to take ALL of a character's history as one lump. I've heard you can't do that, EVERY character has moments you won't like.

That time Hank made a better inhibitor-collar for Rogue 2-years after IvX he went off with Storm completely happily, no animosity:





She was out-of-character when Percy briefly wrote her in X-Force, not even shedding a tear for Hank when Logan threw his headless body on the council table. In fact EVERYBODY who ever appeared in that book was.

[K7P5V]

You're right of course about bringing back a fun Beast, but they could have brought him back from just before cat-Beast, when his terrible self-loathing started.

I know, right?! X-Treme from Claremont/Larroca was the last time I enjoyed Henry (T^T)

[From The Shadows]

I know, right?! X-Treme from Claremont/Larroca was the last time I enjoyed Henry (T^T)

Hank was great in X-Treme. Loved Larocca's version of him.

Anyway... Hank being a clown.