WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for King in Black: Marauders #1 by Gerry Duggan, Luke Ross, Carlos Lopez, VC's Cory Petit, and Tom Muller, on sale now.
The formation of Krakoa has led many X-Men and other mutants to change, some in some pretty drastic ways, but perhaps no one has shifted further away from the person they used to be than Hank McCoy/Beast. As the head of the intelligence division of X-Force, Krakoa's equivalent to the CIA, Hank has become a ruthless military commander and his cruel and inhumane tactics contradict his past objections to earlier versions of the team, making him the Marvel Universe's biggest hypocrite.
This became especially obvious in King in Black: Marauders, when Beast ordered a mission almost identical to one he once condemned Cyclops for giving.
X-Force has always been the most aggressive mutant superhero team. When Cable transformed the New Mutants into the first iteration of the team, it was meant to combat mutant and other threats more proactively and X-Force only became more dangerous from there. After "Messiah Complex," Cyclops formed a new version of the team, led by Wolverine, to protect the then-endangered mutant race. Beast was taken aback by the extreme tactics the team was using and was especially disgusted when Cyclops ordered him to reverse-engineer Bishop's time-traveling technology so that X-Force could be sent into the future to protect Cable and Hope Summers from Bishop. It was clear Cyclops was planning to have X-Force kill Bishop and Beast was so angry that he left the X-Men after the failed time travel mission. Beast would later return to aid his fellow mutants during "Second Coming", during which the existence of X-Force was exposed to the rest of the X-Men. Beast went so far as to interrupt Nightcrawler's funeral to blame his death on Cyclops, although X-Force wasn't at all responsible for the events leading to Kurt being killed.
Years later, things have changed. Not only is Beast himself now the head of X-Force, but he just ordered the same assassination mission he condemned Cyclops for, only with the roles reversed and an extra target added. In King in Black: Marauders #1, Kate Pryde's team is sent to rescue Cyclops and Storm, who have been possessed by two of Knull's symbiotes. But a flashback reveals that Beast secretly ordered Bishop, now a Marauder, to kill Cyclops and Storm if he determines they cannot be saved. Beast has become so callous that he won't even directly state what he's saying to Bishop, telling him that "If you can't free them one way... free them the other." The Marauders didn't actually reach Cyclops and Storm before they were freed by other means, so it's unclear what Bishop would've ultimately decided to do. Still, the mere fact that Beast gave the order shows the kind of hypocritical monster he's become.
There are two key differences between Cyclops' decision and Beast's, one of which arguably makes what Beast did worse and one that might make it better, if only marginally. The first is the contrast between Bishop's former situation and Cyclops and Storm's current one. When Cyclops ordered Bishop to be killed, the latter was an unrepentant villain in control of his own actions. Bishop was planning to kill millions with a series of global attacks to kill Hope. In the current storyline, Cyclops and Storm are unwilling victims, being controlled by the symbiotes, and therefore not responsible for their actions, at least not fully, which makes Beast's decision to target them crueler. In Beast's defense, the mutants do now have the Resurrection Protocols, which presumably would allow Cyclops and Storm to be revived in new bodies if Bishop does indeed kill them. But as Wolverine has noted, the Protocols don't erase the trauma of being killed.
Ordering hits on two of his oldest friends also isn't the only horrible thing Beast has done since joining X-Force. He recently arrested all Krakoans of Russian descent to interrogate them for possible connections to an attack by Mikhail Rasputin. This is another hypocritical move as this kind of profiling is the exact opposite of the ideals of tolerance the X-Men are supposed to stand for and Beast has claimed to serve. Fortunately, even Beast's X-Force teammates seem to realize this is wrong, with Wolverine attacking him when he publicly arrested Colossus. However, Beast's role in King in Black: Marauders, in which Pyro mentions him in connection to X-Force, suggests that they haven't taken the necessary next step and removed him from his position.
0 Comments