#outofmuffins

Yeah, I categorically have to agree, Beast was criminally wasted on Krakoa.

Like, even if you do take the view that his heel turn was done well (it wasn't), it was a logical place for his character to go (it wasn't), and that his villain arc was satisfying (it wasn't), it's still, objectively, the stupidest thing to do with him, in and out of universe, because Hank is actually fairly unique among X-Men characters in terms of how he can interact with the Krakoan status quo?

So, let's explore some of the stories that we could have gotten during the Krakoan era!

Now, in the interests of fairness, this thought experiment will have a few ground rules, most notably that it has to treat everything that came before it, up to 2018-2019, as hard canon, and it has to flow naturally from that point. We're also not going to radically alter the rest of the Krakoan story, in part because I hate the wankery of 'oh, everything would have been fine if this one character had been here,' and in part because Krakoa was designed to fail, so we're keeping those themes and intents intact.

Ah, but I hear you say! How can that be so when X-Force can't happen without Beast there?

Easily, I say! One, because X-Force doesn't actually do shit in the wider Krakoan story - it's, like, genuinely worthless as part of the wider narrative, there's a reason every recommended reading list for the era skips it - and two, because we can just put Dark Beast in charge of it instead, and the story doesn't change at all.

Why not? If Sinister can be on the Quiet Council, why can't Dark Beast get his shot at a position of authority? He's still alive, so we don't have to worry about justifying his resurrection under the no clones rule, and it would suit Sinister's wider story beats to have an ally who owes him for saving his life in such a useful position.

But yeah, this legitimately doesn't change the story one bit. All you have to do is tweak a few bits of Jean Grey, Colossus, and Domino's dialogue, and nothing changes. So, X-Force is completely intact. You're welcome. Now, on with the show!

Option 1-A: Exile/The Nonconformist

One of the more interesting and maybe divisive choices I think we could go with for Hank - what if he just says no, I wouldn't want to be on your kooky culty ethnostate island? Or, alternatively, what if the Quiet Council string him along, get him to create their miracle drugs, and then exile him from the island because he's considered a rogue, unstable element?

It's within their character, especially Shaw, Mystique, Apocalypse and Sinister, to not want him around, and frankly, I don't think Jean, Charles, Kurt, or Ororo would really vouch for him, either. The X-Men have been established not to fully trust Hank, thanks to the time travel debacle, and he doesn't like them much, either, after they stabbed him in the back during Inhumans vs. X-Men and got him fired from Harvard, so it'd be very easy to more naturalistically pick up on the story beats from there with him just not being welcome on Krakoa or not wanting to be there.

It also fits with the wider course of his character, where Hank has repeatedly expressed unease at being an X-Man and left the team as a result, multiple times. Hell, this is where he's at with Charles and the X-Men as of 2018.

Not exactly champing at the bit, is he? He sounds tired, and over it.

This opens up a more realistic and, let's be real here, interesting dynamic than we had on Krakoa, where everyone is, by virtue of editorial dictate, now magically fine with one another to the point where they'll all live on the same island and also completely fine with establishing a new nationality for themselves.

We can argue about Krakoa's isolationism, capitalism, human policies, etc, but the fact remains, everyone was made a monolith and they all moved in together, and it was kinda lame if you stopped and thought about it. They did it because the X-office wanted all their eggs in one basket so they could hand them out to their writers and not have to share, not because it was a natural move for a lot of these characters.

As you intimated, it especially doesn't really make sense for Hank to do this - he's been an Avenger for almost as long as he's been an X-Man, a lot of his best friends are on that team, and his friendships with the X-Men are rocky at best, textually speaking. His very human and pro-mutant parents are still in Illinois, and still alive, as of 2018.

I also think it's an interesting move from the Krakoan side - you establish early on that there's some real double standard bullshit going on, just like you do with Sabretooth, but EXACTLY as with Sabretooth, it's against an 'acceptable' target.

It's also a good springboard from which to spur Hank into action - maybe this is his penance for his actions, exile from paradise, the punishment he kept saying he was ready to accept but that no-one seemed willing to dole out. Maybe this pushes him to clean up his act. Maybe this is what Eva Bell was talking about, when she talked about the Trial of Hank McCoy - the trial that determines that he's unfit to be Krakoan. This is really interesting emotional ground for him, too, to be ostracised again - does it hurt as much, does he rave, does he go ballistic, does he quietly accept it and cut ties?

Where does he go from here? I don't quite know! Maybe Jed MacKay gets to use him for his new Avengers team, come 2023, and he gets to join the fight against Orchis as part of Fall of X. Maybe we get a Defenders reunion, with Gargoyle, Moondragon, and a few new members. Maybe we get a Beast and Wonder Man team up comic! Hell, get him to join the Fantastic Four or Spider-Man as a supporting character - Hank has so many connections, you can literally use him anywhere.

Option 1-B: X-Club.

An offshoot of the above - what if Hank appears to be exiled/a non-conformist, but he's actually on a secret mission for Xavier? More specifically, what if he's been given the directive that he SHOULD have been given from the start - to find a way to oust Sinister from Krakoa, permanently.

Think about it. Hank is objectively smarter than Sinister, he just doesn't obsessively focus on genetics. He is the single smartest X-Man. If anyone can rebuild, steal, or substitute Sinister's genetic database, the one bit of collateral keeping every X-Man from obliterating him on the spot, it's him.

Enter X-Club volume 2.

Beast, Kavita Rao, Doctor Nemesis - throw in every scientist you've got. Their one mission: get their hands on Sinister's database. I'm thinking a five issue miniseries, short, sweet, loaded with science and sass. In the end, they fail, because the rest of Krakoa has to unfold, but guess what? At least they tried! At least the Quiet Council is trying! Maybe they get away with a small victory, maybe a portion of the database, maybe they only put a stop to one of Sinister's schemes (which would make it intertwine with Hellions nicely), but at least they tried.

You also get to play with some of the more interesting aspects of being an undercover operative - namely, the emotional toll of lying to your friends and family about what you've been up to. Imagine the charge of Hank having to shit-talk Krakoa, knowing that Bobby and Warren and Jean are all going to hear it, and then he has to go and fight for it, and he can't say a word about it? There's pathos and tragedy in there!

Option 2: Temporal Guardian

The X-Men cannot escape from crossing fate - uh, I mean, temporal drama and bullshit. Krakoa especially was rife with it, thanks to shit like Sins of Sinister and Moira X, so, why not let's actually interact with it, using one of the characters who has both the knowledge and the power to interact with time on a higher level?

Hank McCoy canonically had: 1) intricate knowledge of temporal physics, 2) temporal senses that made him mentally immune to changes in the timeline, and 3) the ability to move, completely independently, through time using magic.

The guy's just a fucking Time Lord at that point.

So, let's let him Time Lord! Imagine a circuit between him, Rachel Summers and Tempus - Sins of Sinister would be over like that. You're worried about the timeline where mutants always win or always lose? Just use the mutants at your disposal to metagame your way to the timeline you want! You literally have the tools, you just won't use them!

This is the most 'comic booky' of the options, but I honestly think this could have been fun as a gimmick for a book, battling across centuries for the fate of mutantkind, taking on all comers - hell, maybe you could even use Orbis Stellaris for something instead of having him just sit around in his dumb orb, and he decides to try and engineer a win using temporal warfare!

It'd be neat, is all I'm saying.

Option 3: The School

Remember how Krakoa didn't have a school?

You know? The island nation, didn't have an actual place where you'd go and learn shit? The thing we had when we were a superhero team, but the instant we decide we want infrastructure and a nation and a full on population, we just don't want it?

Think I found your dude.

It always struck me that the move to teacher made more sense for some X-Men than others, but for Hank, it really was the most natural fit in the world. Highly academic, empathetic, good with kids, open minded, versatile - he's perfect to lead a school. And, now that you've divorced the school from the X-Men, you avoid the issue you had when Hank took over the school during Here Comes Tomorrow, where the pressure destroyed him - he doesn't have to worry about the fate of mutantkind, he's literally just a teacher now.

But, 'just' a teacher? Of mutants? Ha!

This would be a really interesting coming of age/community book, I think, maybe more slice-of-lifey and akin to Wolverine & the X-Men volume 1 in content, though maybe not as whacky in tone. Academy X students, nascent mutants, people who just want to pick up a community college class, people who never got a formal education, hell, characters who find they need qualifications in things that they never got - you could literally throw everyone in here, and Hank can bounce off them all.

This is maybe the 'safest' place for Hank, the most obvious and 'boring,' but I think a good writer who's interested in the mutant metaphor and the generational aspect of it, as well as the passing vs. non-passing mutant dichotomy, would have a lot of material to dive into - your ideas, of Hank grappling with his role as role model to these kids, of working on his complicated feelings regarding his mutation, would slot in well here, I think.

A story where Hank arrives to teach a class in his human form, much to the shock, worry, and disturbance of all of his students, and the ramifications of such a choice, would be really interesting, and a good opportunity to comment on the Krakoan tendency towards disposable bodies and the cheapness of death, too.

That being said, I do think it's worth noting that Bendis' choices with Hank and the subsequent story flow seem to indicate that Hank's dysmorphia and dysphoria were associated primarily with his feline form, since he'd come to terms with his classic form and seemed more comfortable in his modern form immediately.

The switch from full kevlar vest, bandolier, pants and body coverings to the shorts says it all, doesn't it? One of these bodies is acceptable to display. The other is not. But, even if Bendis took away the feline mutation in favour of a design that appealed more to nostalgia, that doesn't mean we can't use this book to unpick that idea, and talk about Hank's feelings on that and why one is okay while the other isn't. There were aspects of this in New Mutants, and this would be a good way to handle it from yet another perspective!

Option 4: Reunion and Reconciliation

So, it's pretty fair to say that the O5 have drifted apart.

So.

Let's DO something with that, shall we?

O5 reunion book. Let's hash it all out. Every petty grievance, every massive failure, every way they've hurt one another, not been there for one another, let's DO IT. Let's hear Hank tear Scott a new one for not saving him from Osborn until the time was right. Let's hear Scott tear Hank a new one for breaking the space-time continuum just to try and hurt him. Let's hear Warren tear Jean a new one for the shitty way she treated him when they were time displaced. Let's do EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Let's put it all to rest.

Maybe this could only sustain a big giant size issue, but fuck it, it's a better use of page space than that Original X-Men one-shot that ended up being nothing but an advert for yet another Wolverine book! And it would be high key dramatic as fuck. Let's do that thing that often makes for the single best episodes of a TV show or movie - people in a room, around a table, TALKING at one another. There is so much history there, and you wouldn't know it by looking at Krakoa as it is! Scott, Warren and Bobby never even speak Hank's name, and god knows that Warren got shit fuck bugger nothing to do for most of the era once X-Corp died, so let's DO something, like, my god. These people are meant to be family - let's treat them like one.

And hell, while we're at it? Let's settle what happened with Abigail once and for all, too! Are they together? Are they not? What's the story, morning glory? I hate existing in this nowhere space where we don't know shit about fuck!

Option 5: X-Forces Beyond Our Control

All right, so, I've been outlining all of the above, and the assumption has always been that X-Force just ends the way it does in 616, though it's probably a little less homoerotic, Dark Beast probably just bites it at Logan's hands and it's all as uncritical as Percy's normal work.

Well, what if X-Force were good, actually?

What if we leverage some old history?

Bring Beast in as a supporting cast member for X-Force once Dark Beast, their Director, goes rogue.

Let's explore and unpack Sage and Hank's relationship - let's look at the way that Xavier wronged them both, made them both child soldiers, brought their genius to bear, left them emotionally unprepared for the future they faced.

Let's unpack Hank's lingering resentment over the choice that Sage made for him, that saved his life but 'trapped' him in the feline form for years.

Let's unpack Sage's jealousy and confusion over Hank being Charles' favourite, let's take the old man to task, let's see where this goes.

Hell, while we're at it, let's even do something with Colossus, and dive into Hank's guilt over Piotr's taking of the Legacy Virus cure so many years ago. Does Piotr even realise Hank felt that way, realise that he feels he probably killed Piotr? Does he forgive him? Does Hank forgive himself?

And then we lock in. Beast vs. Dark Beast. The final confrontation. It's been brewing since 1996, and it's about time we settled it.

So, those are my thoughts on what Beast COULD have been up to Krakoa, instead of being stuck in a 100 issue long diatribe about how 'Kissinger Was Bad, Mmkay?' by a sub-par writer. I also think that while you could choose one of these options, it's not out of the question to do ALL of them, if you really wanted to maximise your Beast per year values. They're not exactly mutually exclusive, if you think about it!

So, yeah, this is a problem endemic to X-Men comics of the late 2000s and early 2010s, where they wanted to duplicate the success and storytelling possibilities of Civil War by manufacturing a conflict between various X-Men, and then splitting them apart.

On the face of it, it's not a bad idea, there's mileage there, and if we acknowledge the fact that the X-Men are essentially a paramilitary political activist group agitating for change, well, leftists literally can't stop fighting each other long enough to mount a proper opposition to most right wing governments, so, that's just on brand, isn't it?

Unfortunately, while I don't think stuff like Schism is quite as damaging to a lot of the X-Men characters as Civil War was to, say, Mr. Fantastic or Iron Man, it really is unfortunate that the other thing they decided to lift from Civil War was that it wasn't particularly good.

Now, as you've intimated, one of the main problems with Schism and All-New X-Men is that by this point in time in the comics, Wolverine was THE X-Man. If you've read X-Men comics from the 00s and 10s, you know that the writers did still centre other characters, most notably Cyclops, Emma Frost, a few others, but because of the nature of a lot of these characters' development paths by this point, it made way more sense for Wolverine to stick with them, and vice versa, because their moral codes were slowly drifting more and more into alignment by now.

But this presents a problem, because Wolverine is the only X-Man who you can sell as being the other side.

He was the only X-Man with a solo series that ran consistently, for years on end, and was always relaunched when it ended; he had been added to the rosters of several high profile teams, including the New Avengers; and there was a notable bump in popularity to any comic that featured him, just as a matter of course.

So, if you're going to split off the X-Men and give them two leaders, he's pretty much the only candidate, because you need to sell comics. Doesn't matter what's best for the story or the most natural choice, you need to sell comics.

Despite the fact that Beast was right there.

It makes sense for Hank to break from Scott. It's consistent with his character - not just because he's still a heavily moral character by this point, but because he has a history of breaking from the team anyway, he's done it multiple times before. He is not dependent on the X-Men to give him meaning, and he's got enough bonds with other characters in the Marvel Universe that he can go and be in whatever and it isn't weird. He went on to be on the roster for S.W.O.R.D, Secret Avengers, all kinds of fun little things.

But there are two problems with making Beast the head of the opposition. 1) He is not a leader; every attempt he's made at leading a team in 616 canon has gone merely okay to downright poorly, if he doesn't just leave the team fairly soon after its inception anyway (as with X-Club). But, more, pressingly?

2) Beast does not sell comic books. He simply doesn't. What's that, you say? He's had three solo series by this point? Well, yeah.

Except, he hasn't, really. He had a three issue series in the 90s that was more about Karma, a three issues team up series with Wonder Man, also in the 90s, and then a succession of back-up stories in other comics through the late 00s that would come to be collected as Endangered Species. Marvel knows he is not a sales magnet.

So, instead, we have Schism. Wolverine makes the decision to split the team, and Hank is pulled in on some fairly tenuous grounds.

In another world, Hank's fourth series, S.W.O.R.D, with Abigail, succeeds, All-New X-Men never happens, or at least, it happens completely differently, X-Force blips out of existence, and I spend months talking about how cool S.W.O.R.D vol. 1 #43 where they all go to the tap dancing planet is.

But, alas, this is not that world.

Hank is dragged into Wolverine and the X-Men, and it's fine to pretty good. I'm fairly happy with the Hank we get there, where he's still fairly pissed off with Scott, but it doesn't consume his life and he's happy to just exist in his corner while Scott exists in his.

Then, Avengers vs. X-Men happens.

Aaaaand then All-New X-Men happens as a direct result.

There's that Beast vs. Cyclops framing you mentioned.

But, the problem is fairly evident once you really think about that final panel.

There's no actual argument here. At least, not as Bendis can conceive it. Because there's a narrative tension here, between what X-editorial wants, and what Bendis is willing to write - what most of the X-writers are willing to write, in fact.

The X-writers are, broadly speaking, unwilling to write Cyclops out of character, and they are unwilling to write him being wrong. How is that, you say? Because everything that Cyclops is saying here is just normal X-Men stuff, and this is being treated as some kind of political treatise when it isn't. It's pure fluff.

Bendis' choice of opposing points for Beast, Storm, Wolverine and co. is: we don't like Cyclops. That is where it starts and ends. They don't have a political viewpoint, apart from, I guess, just stay in their school and keep doing what they're doing . . .

Which is normal X-Men stuff. There is very little that Cyclops and his team do in the course of Bendis' Uncanny storyline that any X-Man wouldn't do, because Bendis is unwilling to commit to Cyclops doing anything actually morally wrong.

And because he also just doesn't give a fuck about the things that Cyclops has done that are, factually, morally wrong.

Such as the use of biological weapons.

The creation of a black ops kill team known as X-Force.

And all of these things, while morally wrong, are, arguably? The correct choice, the choice that was required of him to get mutantkind through. But that doesn't absolve him of guilt, of culpability. These are actions for which he cannot blame the Phoenix Force's influences, and they are actions which are conveniently ignored, so that Scott can be the saintly revolutionary.

Now, that's an awful lot of context, but it's important to set up the conflict as I think it could have gone down.

The version I've thought about previously, the version I've written the outline I'm going to share with you now, goes broadly along the same lines as All-New X-Men up until issue #5, but, with some key differences.

For starters, you take out the stuff with Hank talking about what he's about to do, you basically start right where Ororo, Bobby, Hank and Kitty are talking at the jet, and Bobby has the idea.

Hank is visibly ill, but it's not explicit what's happening - then suddenly the O5 are on the lawn, Hank is having his heart attack . . .

And in my version of the story?

He dies.

And suddenly young Hank has to deal with the trauma of watching his eventual death, so that it isn't just a Jean Grey goes psycho story, suddenly it makes sense that the teenagers are freaking out, because what the fuck.

And Hank didn't make it clear what he was doing, you cut all the bullshit about a mutant genocide, he just kept telling them that they NEEDED to come with him, so suddenly there's a core question of, okay, why DID he think this was a good idea? And it's not like adult Hank DOES anything of value in ANXM, so making it a philosophical debate, a talk about grief, a discussion about Hank's legacy with the X-Men and his leaving them during Utopia, about the way he drifted away from Bobby . . . suddenly, this is an actual character piece.

Suddenly there is a point. Hell, you can even make it a good character piece for Scott and Emma by making it that the Phoenix's presence was what triggered Hank's failed mutation, and suddenly there's a cost to what they did, there's a cost to the mutant race coming back.

Suddenly what they did with X-Force, driving Hank away, and their gamble on the Phoenix comes back to bite them, because this is another mutant body thrown on the pile. Collateral damage.

Now it's not just a ton of faceless Skrulls.

Now it's not just Nightcrawler.

Now it's Hank, too.

Hell, teen Hank and teen Jean hooking up even makes a degree of sense now because they BOTH know they die and they're simultaneously desperate to avoid it and also to make the most of what time they do have because suddenly they became aware of ACTUAL mortality at the age of 15-17.

I'm also going to quote the inimitable @brw with whom I've talked about this concept before:

"A little more mystery, a little more complexity. I quite like the idea of this Hank almost being martyr'd? Like how Magneto and Scott was, some young mutant kids who are understandably traumatised canonize yet another flawed figure into a saint-like position. It adds another layer of grief onto many of the X-Men, particularly Bobby I imagine who gets more and more frustrated seeing the friend he grew away from being misinterpreted like that, but then has to ask himself, did he know Hank well enough in the past few years to make that claim? Did he actually make an effort to know his friend? It just adds to the different layers of the idea of Hank's legacy, what it actually was, and how the figure of him is getting pulled in all different directions to justify their own means. I wouldn't put it past that era of Scott to potentially use Hank's memory to further his own goals, too, as an opportunity to further radicalise and collect more mutant youth, which would add hopeful an actually interesting layer of the conflict between Scott/Emma/Magneto and the school. Additionally, something about young Hank especially being required to deal with all this sudden grief aimed now at him. Yes, he's not the one who died, but I imagine when the inevitable funeral happens and he ends up meeting the Avengers and Fantastic Four, a lot of those complicated, ugly feelings of mourning end up directed at him, and he doesn't even know who half of these people are."

Honestly, it just opens up so many more doors, and, like, especially knowing what happens with Hank's story after that, killing him here to maybe be resurrected in Krakoa is such a rich story to be examined, so much more interesting than pretty much anything that you have in its place.

This way, you have to actually engage with his moral position on X-Force, his hypocrisy in joining the Secret Avengers, the Ghost Box laser strike, THRENODY; suddenly, we have to engage with the stuff that isn't war crimes or obnoxious corporate pandering decisions, we have to engage in actual CHARACTER analysis.

Side note: I absolutely hated this handwave that made Hank look like the most awful hypocrite about X-Force almost as much as I did him joining the Secret Avengers, but it's canon, so, in my version of events, we engage with this double-standard and it brings texture to the point.

Because here's the thing - if someone has a moral stance, and then they go back on it, yes, that makes them a hypocrite, but it doesn't suddenly make the moral stance that they stuck to originally wrong. If Hank is, textually speaking, against Scott's X-Force, but okay with Logan's, guess what, he's a hypocrite (I hated this decision, I hated it so much, it was literally JUST done to maintain the rotation of books at the time), but that doesn't mean he was wrong to oppose the black ops kill squad in the first place!

But yeah, let's dig in! It'd be especially interesting because you have to imagine that Hank was an icon and a role model for a lot of physical mutants, people like Beak and Broo, and especially if you do this story now, before Nightcrawler comes back, you have to examine what that means, that both of the most obviously mutated X-Men are gone.

What does that say about Xavierism? What does it say about Scott that he didn't just use Xavier's name for his school to 'honour' him, but now maybe he's saying that he's doing things that Hank would've wanted, and NOW suddenly Bobby Drake has a fucking story role because he DOES NOT AGREE WITH THAT, and he's the ONE person left alive who can say that to Scott's face.

And oh my god, can you imagine the funeral? Can you imagine what it'd be like for Simon? Can you imagine what it'd be like for Hank's parents? For them to have to bury their son, and for that son to be existing, right there, probably having to hide in the Mansion, just watching them memorialise a man he doesn't recognise and doesn't understand.

The pressure of that. St. Jean, St. Hank. Suddenly it makes sense. You almost don't ever have to answer the question why Hank did it, because it almost doesn't matter, what matters is what other people's answers are.

Again, quoting brw:

"How would you deal with people your age mourning the older you, the you who was a teacher who they loved and looked up to? People you know as villains like Wanda and Pietro apparently having grown into close friends? People who you've never met in your life being almost inconsolable over the death of a stranger who happens to be you? It would also enhance young Hank going off to study magic, rather than being yet another "Because Old me sucks and I don't want to be like him" situation, it's instead "Because I can't even do this work without reminding people and myself of what they lost and I need to make something my own.""

Suddenly, this is a character piece. Suddenly, this is a storyline with a point. Suddenly, this is actually a proper continuation of the conflict we had on Utopia, AND you can still have your Logan vs. Scott confrontations because Hank isn't alive to fight that battle. Easy, donezo. Bish bash bosh, fixed your problem.

So, Hank is one of those characters for whom dress is an important facet of their personality and their presentation - in some ways, just as important as it is for, say, Emma Frost, Sebastian Shaw, Monet St. Croix, Janet van Dyne, Warren Worthington; it's a very particular kind of character that obsesses over these minute details, but Hank is unique among them because fashion feels as though it was, in some respects, something he had to start paying attention to, rather than being an indulgence born of wealth or an expectation that came about as a result of social class.

Hank, being a farmboy who grew up in Illinois, did not originally have the same expectation of standards for dress as, say, Emma or Warren. So, naturally, you see a fair amount of variation of casual clothing when he's younger. Black turtlenecks, shirts, and, especially when he became more athletically inclined, jerseys and the like.

It's an underrated aspect of Hank's character, but he's very much a social chameleon. In Defenders #116, he has this monologue:

"I developed an interesting skill. I learned how to recreate myself - how to construct new personalities to win people over, and protect me from them at the same time. In my X-Men days, it was the 'intellectual' game. That was the Hank McCoy you first met - the guy who hid behind a smokescreen of big words and big ideas.

But inside I was the same scared kid I always was. I thought I was beginning to find myself when I left Professor Xavier's school, and went out on my own - but then I accidentally turned myself into this overgrown Muppet, and it was back to square one! My whole world fell apart!

To keep myself together, I put on a new mask. No more stuffy, brainy Henry McCoy. Now I was Happy-Go-Lucky Hank, the man of a thousand jokes! I'll tell you, sometimes I don't know who I am!"

Naturally, this all goes part and parcel with his dress sense, and you see it again when he joins the X-Men - not only does he conform to the Professor's ideas of what was best to wear, usually a smart suit (which was the general expectation for a lot of young men in the 60s, and it's sort of 'artifacted' over even though he logically can't have been born in that decade anymore), but he also tends not to show much variation in his costumes, either.

And a general consideration that you always have to bear in mind with Hank, in ANY form, is that shoes are pretty much always painful. He finds any excuse to take them off, and when he does wear them, unless there's a requirement for them to be of a certain style, he usually opts for something like a sandal. This naturally impacts his stylistic choices to a degree.

But, even still, he's dressing fairly normally for the moment. One has to imagine his clothes are, if not tailored, then probably being bought from a specialist store designed for men with larger builds, which probably contributes to why he's not sticking out very much when it comes to his sartorial decisions - but, realistically speaking, it's a conscious choice: he's trying to blend in.

"Fashion is the armour to survive the reality of everyday life," said Bill Cunningham - well, I think that's certainly true for Hank in this stage of his life. But, naturally, things are going to change for Hank, and I've always found it significant that he initially tries to continue presenting as he has before, with a mix of make-up, binders and encompassing suits, to maintain a through-line of normality.

"I'm a man again!" Literally one of the single most trans coded characters in all of fiction if you bother to examine him closely enough, but, whatever, we're here to talk about fashion.

Now, eventually, he realises that he can't do this for the rest of his life - he has to come out of his shell and embrace who he is.

So, now we come to one of the first decisions of self-presentation that Hank has, largely, had to make for himself. Explicitly, this is his choice of how to be viewed . . . and it is brazen. He isn't wearing a costume, really, he isn't wearing a helmet or a mask, he is almost buck naked! He's cast off the armour, and embraced who he is.

Now, he's gonna go back and forth on this, he's gonna have his up days and his down days, but it's still an important part of his character in this form - think about what it says, to have made this mistake that's going to define you for the rest of your life, and then to wear it on your sleeve.

Think about what it says, that Hank turned blue and furry and bestial, and he said, fuck it, I'm going to show the world what and who I am. Honestly, it's a powerful statement! Lauren Hutton once said, "Fashion is what you're offered four times a year by designers. And style is what you choose." Well, Hank is choosing this!

But, there's two other factors to consider.

One! Hank is on a team with a noted fashion designer, Janet van Dyne, who has all kinds of experience with fabrics and fashions and designs that have to fit on unconventional body types (for those who don't know the name, she's the Wasp, and her partner was Ant-Man/Giant-Man), so I've always been of the belief that almost all of Hank's clothes from this point on are van Dyne originals, either given to him or bought using his Avengers wages, unless they seem like they wouldn't fit Janet's styles.

Two! Hank is a sexual being now.

This man is roughly 21 years old. He's a superhero. He lives life on the edge. Every day could be his last. He has disposable income, a muscular body, wit, charm, and boundless intelligence.

Which means he's gonna fuck. And let's be real here, the man can get away with wearing nothing, he's doing it most of the time, but people appreciate it when you put a little effort into what you wear. It shows that you care. So, now we start to see Hank indulging in fashion.

This is one of my favourite outfits for Hank, because it is so painfully 1970s, and yet. Iris Apfel once said, "Fashion you can buy, but style you possess. The key to style is learning who you are, which takes years. There's no how-to road map to style. It's about self expression and, above all, attitude."

Hank possesses self expression and attitude in spades. The clothes do not wear him, he wears them. If you aren't aware of Derek Guy, writer of Die, Workwear! then you should do a dive into some of his writing, but here's a Twitter thread talking about some peak 1970s tailoring, and if you look at it, it's clear that Hank is cutting edge.

This is not a fashion disaster. This is chic. This is a man who exudes confidence, who knows that bright colours suit a man with an uncommon complexion, who knows that a suit and tie aren't quite appropriate for clubbing in the '70s, so he's opted for something open, something daring, something loud, something that suits him.

This outfit from the same issue is the same - I'm awfully sad we don't get to see more of it. The purple shirt is such a nice touch, and yellow is a hard colour to pull off in real life, but Hank makes it work for him.

Classic panel, classic look! Because here's the thing - if you take a moment to really look at Hank and Simon here, if you can see past the colours that the 1970s allowed men to wear without being considered garish, again, this is a well tailored suit, with a shirt that speaks to confidence and self-assuredness, to individuality. Again, he's not wearing clothes that cover up who he is, he's matching his skin tone and pitching his clothing to match.

You need to know what colours complement you, and bright colours, especially yellow, have always suited Hank.

But! He also knows that different social occasions call for different things. After all, Oscar de la Renta once said, "Being well dressed hasn't much to do with having good clothes. It’s a question of good balance and good common sense." Meaning that you can't always be sporting bright colours, sometimes you have to dress a bit more modestly - but there's a difference between modest, and boring.

This is a lovely outfit for Hank - a bit later now, this is mid-1980s, and you would think that this is dressing down a bit so that he can give a lecture, but, befitting the tone of his address and his personality, his outfit is formal, yet still spirited! Slate grey complements his fur colour nicely, but there are a lot of fun touches to elevate what could be a boring outfit, such as the bright blue cummerbund and bowtie (which is a touch oversized), and the white piping along his pants.

The powder blue accentuates his natural colour while working in tandem with the shirt and suit - there is no clash here, apart from the bright yellow button, but, given that he's wearing a Church of the SubGenius badge here, a parody religion that used the tactic of culture jamming to promote an avoidance in mainstream commercialism and the belief in absolute truths, that's probably intentional! He wants you to notice it! Command of colour balance! It's important!

It's also interesting to compare it to two later outfits he would wear while in his feline form.

On the left, a darker blue suit, a less loud bowtie - in conjunction with the glasses, he's notably more official and formal looking, which is appropriate for the occasion (here, he's dismantling the old Xavier school after the X-Men have moved to San Francisco, so it's almost a kind of mourning outfit), but still tasteful. He is not stodgy or ill-dressed, it's just a different take on much the same outfit.

Compare and contrast with what he's wearing on the right - still slate grey, but with a brighter bowtie, a tasteful red, and a waistcoat. Notably more buttoned up, notably more prim, and the bowtie is notably pitched up to attract attention - all of which is intentional. He's attempting to control where you're looking in a way that the outfit on the left is not, even though it's ostensibly the exact same ensemble. The dark blue blends with his fur, the slate grey contrasts - the one on the right is notably 'louder' and commands attention. These are choices. These are choices being made by a man that has come to effortlessly manipulate clothing so that you see what he wants you to see.

Even when it comes to casual wear.

Think about what these choices say. They speak to relaxation, to ease, to the projection of casualness. This is not a man who is afraid of dressing up when the occasion calls for it - but that's the point, isn't it? When the occasion calls for it.

Now, with all that established, I'm gonna just showcase some other examples of Hank's style, in the form of a moodboard I made quite some time ago!

And I'm going to shout out a favourite of mine.

White suit, cream vest, red shirt, purple tie - such a mixture of colours, and yet. It all just sort of works, doesn't it?

Oh, oh, and another favourite of mine!

Pinstripe vest with the arms cut off for the gun show? I'm sorry, but that is incredible. That is a style icon. That's sportiness and formality in one outfit, that says I can lay you out with one punch but I'm not going to because I'm a man of grace and gentleness. Have you ever seen an outfit that's more effortlessly Hank McCoy?

Now, naturally, this all falls apart when we get to Krakoa . . .

Immediately a downgrade. The fit, at least here, looks fine, but it's just so boring and practical and blends in - and, yes, I understand that it's a Hellfire Gala at which X-Force is providing security, but it just doesn't feel like Hank to me? And, I hate to point this out, but if the objective is to blend in, then, surely, if you're at a party at which everyone is wearing things like this . . .

Then wearing something bland and nondescript only actually serves to make you stand out more? So it's in this weird halfway house of boring enough to mark you out as security, but too boring to make you actually blend in.

And that's before we get into the bolo tie. Bolo ties, a type of necktie consisting of a piece of cord or braided leather with decorative metal tips (called aiguillettes) and secured with an ornamental clasp or slide, are usually associated with Western cowboy culture - you see Wolverine wearing these things, and it just doesn't fit any version of Hank's aesthetic?

It's also just a very loud kind of neckwear to be wearing if we're going with the security aesthetic, it draws attention immediately, especially the splotch of red that makes the X stand out - if we're going for something subtle, surely black on white would have been a better choice? To say nothing of the shorts, which - like, usually, those make a ton of sense for Hank, he's wearing them with the pinstripe vest I highlighted above, but again, it contrasts so much with the stately, boring aesthetic of the outfit?

All it takes is one look at everyone's outfit to see that Hank got a uniquely raw deal here - Sage and Domino look great with the asymmetrical fits, to say nothing of it complementing their natural colour choices; Wolverine looks fine, the bolo tie suits him; Quentin looks, bleh, but it's serviceable; and then there's Hank. Being humiliated in this shitty little shorts suit with a bolo tie that doesn't suit him. It's just so unflattering.

This is the choice of a man who doesn't give a fuck, which is not Hank - but, then again, this is X-Force, are we remotely surprised that this isn't a very Hank thing to wear? Even the clothing choices are off-base. And one of the other instances that comes to mind . . .

Ugh. It's literally drawn to be as bulbous and ill-fitting and unpleasant as possible. Even details like the band of the bow tie being visible are all wrong. This is humiliation by fashion, and I refuse to believe that it wasn't intentional.

Now, as for what I would have wanted out of a Hellfire Gala outfit for Hank? Honestly, I found a lot of them to be particularly garish and loud, but something that's still befitting Hank's outspoken style while not being embarrassing would be nice. I think that something like Colman Domingo's style would be appropriate!

Something impressive, something loud, but not garish, something that complements and accentuates the body rather than overpowering it. Hell, consider the larger body type that Hank was sporting during Krakoa - something open, that showcased his musculature but also his pleasing roundness, would have been rather avant garde, honestly. Kris Anka, notably for his fashion sensibilities, has even drawn Hank in this form (albeit slimmer) before, and he came out with something really quite lovely! It's possible!

Finally, I'll leave off with a piece by Sam Johnstone, and I'd like to draw particular attention to his blurb:

"Dr. Hank McCoy AKA Beast! – Kicking off the second year of Mutant Mondays with one of the most well known X-Men there is. There have been so many versions of Beast over the years, from gregarious and avuncular to sociopathically pragmatic, and that breadth of representation is one of the reasons I put off drawing him – how do you pick which version of the character to focus on? 

He’ll always be one of the most interesting characters from the perspective of ‘mutation’ – one of the few examples in Marvel comics where a character is not just allowed to change over time, but one who is defined by the incremental, unpredictable nature of that change, whether in his personality or in what literal form his body takes. 

Like so many people, my first exposure was though the animated series, but the moment that unlocked him for me was in New X-Men, where he reckons with the fear of what his changing body means for his sense of self. When his appearance becomes more feline, and his hands grow into paws and he loses the dexterity that was always the one way his physical mutation actually complimented his brain instead of contrasted it. So that’s the era I’ve tapped into here. I’ve taken the feline-era’s lion-like features down a notch, and imagined a version of that approach that blended the more animalistic aspects of his mutation with his avengers physicality. 

Now onto the fashion: I wanted to put him in some american ivy inspired menswear since I think his vanity is one of his most under-sung characteristics (and also, the browns compliment his fur), and the version of the character leaping around in underarmor is much less interesting to me than the version of the character who is definitely wearing fake lenses in his wire-rim frames. My ideal interpretation would have Hank really into tailoring, to balance form with function (Saying to cyclops "With the right materials and cut, you can do any amount of superheroing in a sport coat. Any choice not to is just personal style")."

I couldn't agree more with Mr. Johnstone here. Hank has a sense of vanity, an indisputable appreciation for what appearance means and what it communicates. I've talked at length about how his relationship with his body necessitates a degree of performance of not just humanity, but also specifically masculinity, a degree of gender presentation - he wants to be recognised as human, and not just specifically human, but warm blooded male, and his clothing sense should absolutely reflect that.

10. Frank Quitely.

Those thighs make this a fucking pin-up shot, man.

Snoot . . .

9. Nick Bradshaw.

Such a babygirl here.

This yellow tanktop is fucking iconic, to be honest. It's just so outrageously slutty.

8. Marc Silvestri.

Sublime Beast is just . . . mmm. That's a whole ass meal right there.

7. Chris Bachalo.

Albeit, only very specific issues. His artstyle can be - frenetic.

But, when he hits?

THIS MAN HAS THE RIGHT TO BEAR FUCKING ARMS, HOLY SHIT.

6. George Perez.

The man, the myth, the legend.

Bonus points for explicitly finding Hank to be one of his favourite characters to draw.

5. Sean Izaakse.

He's just extremely cute here, tbh. Just, no notes.

4. Simone Bianchi.

MMMMM, DADDY.

3. John Cassaday.

May he rest in peace. His Hank is a benchmark, to be certain. Just look at the gorgeous hair and fur detailing, it's stupendous.

2. Stuart Immonen.

It's a shame his art is attached to such a dogwater run, but he really did give feline Hank the swansong he deserved.

And he drew an astonishingly pretty classic Hank, too.

Phil Jimenez.

Probably an unconventional pick, but I really do just . . .

He really captured Hank's humanity. He's a 600 pound cat man with three inch claws, but he feels so real.

And oh, he's a fucking hunk, too??? With the gorgeous flowing locks???

And all props to the colourists, inkers, the entire art team, for all of these comics. They did stupendous work - and there's so many I haven't even mentioned!