Marvel Comics
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The X-Men’s corner of the Marvel Universe is flush with minor mutant superheroes. If you’re looking for the most important members of the X-Men, though, you’ll have to reserve a spot for Hank McCoy/Beast, the blue-furred, Shakespeare-quoting scientist.
Beast was one of Professor X’s original five students, along with Cyclops, Jean Grey, Iceman, and Angel. Originally written as a hotheaded brawler like The Thing from The Fantastic Four, he quickly grew into the team’s brains and heart. Beast was not a major fixture of the Chris Claremont “X-Men” run from 1975 to 1991, which wrote out half the original cast to bring in new heroes like Wolverine and Storm. (During the 1970s, Beast joined the Avengers instead.)
However, Beast returned to the team in the 1990s, where he was also a main cast member of the “X-Men” cartoon series (played by George Buza, who later had a cameo in the first “X-Men” film). That cartoon cemented Beast as the gentlest of the X-Men. He’s gone on to be a lead character in each subsequent “X-Men” cartoon, and has been played in live-action films by Kelsey Grammer and then Nicholas Hoult.
Grammar is set to return as Beast in “Avengers: Doomsday,” but recent Marvel comics could portend a more sinister turn. During the Krakoa era of “X-Men” comics, specifically Benjamin Percy’s “X-Force,” Beast grew increasingly ruthless and eventually became an outright villain.
The first story to depict Beast as a villain was the 1995 “Age of Apocalypse” crossover, set in an alternate timeline where Beast was a sadistic mad scientist working for Apocalypse. This so-called “Dark Beast” (to separate him from the real McCoy) soon crossed over to the regular Marvel universe and became a recurring villain, and some later stories took fascinating approaches to that flipped perspective on the character.
Beast is a great X-Man, but he might be a greater villain
Marvel Comics
Krakoa-era “X-Men” feels like it’s in conversation with Grant Morrison’s 2001-2004 run of “New X-Men.” Morrison’s final story, “Here Comes Tomorrow,” suggested that the primary Beast would fall down a dark path.
“Here Comes Tomorrow” is set 150 years in the future. The Earth has been ravaged and it’s largely thanks to The Beast, as Hank is now known (evoking the seven-headed monster from the Book of Revelation called “The Beast”). His fur has gone grey, and he wears a cloak reminiscent of Magneto’s. The Beast is now a mad scientist obsessed with evolution in the vein of Mister Sinister. He’s created an army of cannon fodder, the Crawlers, resembling old X-Man Nightcrawler but with other mutant abilities added to their DNA.
Marvel Comics
But halfway through, the story reveals The Beast is not what he appears. Decades ago, Beast was possessed by a malevolent microscopic organism: “Sublime.” Mutants are the first lifeform on Earth that Sublime hasn’t been able to inhabit, so it sees Homo Superior as a threat to its existence and is determined to cause a mass extinction. As Wolverine observes of The Beast: “That ain’t Henry McCoy, it’s just what’s left of his body.”
Despite that twist, the idea of Beast as a villain lingered — like Sublime hidden in The Beast’s cells — and re-emerged in the Krakoa era. The premise of the Krakoa comics is that the mutants of the world found a new nation on the eponymous living island. The X-Men’s covert ops team, X-Force, is reassembled into Krakoa’s intelligence agency, like a mutant CIA. Beast takes a leadership role in X-Force, and the weight of that responsibility breaks his moral code.
Beast, like Magneto, does evil things for a supposed ‘greater good’
Marvel Comics
Like Magneto (and at his worst, Professor X), Beast is someone who’s willing to do bad things for what he believes is the greater good. After all, he is a genius, and geniuses are excellent at convincing themselves that they’re in the right.
For instance, Krakoa is initially bereft of allies. They bribed their way into international sovereignty by offering the rest of the world advanced medical technology, but the world still hates and fears mutants. The South American nation of Terra Verde repurposes its plant-based biotech (“telefloronics”) as an anti-mutant countermeasure; the telefloronics merge with a human host and turn them into a rapid-healing super-weapon, but if tampered with, they can take control of the host.
Beast eventually hijacks this technology to seize control of Terra Verde; the country is conquered by Krakoa in a hidden coup d’etat and becomes Krakoa’s public ally, but secret vassal. Then, during Krakoa’s “Hellfire Gala,” when dignitaries from all over the world visit the country, Beast tries to use the Terra Verde ambassadors to spread the infection (and his control) to other countries.
Eventually, Beast became the final villain of Percy’s “X-Force.” So far gone, he needed a literal reset; the “original” Beast died, and was replaced by a clone that only has Beast’s memories up to when he was in the Avengers. Beast is back to being a hero in post-Krakoa “X-Men” comics, but is tormented with knowledge of how bad he could and did become.
The X-Men are one of the few superhero teams with many former villains on the roster, but the reverse can also be true: Sometimes, heroes like Beast become memorable villains. Will Marvel Studios take inspiration from that idea for “Avengers: Doomsday?” It’d certainly be a way to spice up a familiar character.