Spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned. For more read our review of X-Force #12.
When it comes to Krakoa, it’s hard to place who is good and bad anymore now that Xavier has taken in every villain. Those former villains now have a fresh start and can do as they wish as long as they don’t break Krakoa’s rules. From Mister Sinister to Apocalypse, and now this week in X-Force #12, Omega Red, one-time supervillains are now brethren of your favorite and most peaceful mutants. But what if that was a cause for concern for one of the original X-Men?
Writer Benjamin Percy has been slowly seeding Beast’s discontent in how things are done on Krakoa and that all comes to a head in this week’s issue. We here at AIPT have been tracking the awful nature of Beast through the years and it appears we can add one more transgression to the pile.
Beast from Fleer Ultra 1994 Ultraprints trade card set.
From working with Dark Beast torturing people and grave robbing, to using Nightcrawler’s funeral as an excuse to berate Cyclops, and even putting the entire universe in peril when he brought the original X-Men to the future in Brian Michael Bendis’ All-New X-Men run. As AIPT Science Editor Russ Dobler put it, Beast is a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect — when a person overestimates their knowledge or expertise in a certain area.
From X-Men: Endangered Species
Credit: Marvel Comics
In the post-Krakoa age, Beast is nuzzling his way closer to a villainous territory as we saw in X-Force #6 when he argued a new plant lifeform wasn’t worth keeping alive since it wasn’t human or mutant and it could present an existential threat. Quite a position to take only a few months before Empyre brought the Cotati, an entire race of plant people to Earth!
He’s at it again in X-Force #12 and he’s putting fellow mutants on blast due to their place of origin. Early on in the issue, Beast helps Sage wake up and get back to work ASAP to which even she remarks…
Credit: Marvel Comics
Later in the issue–I highly recommend you read the entire issue to get the full picture–Beast sequesters Omega Red without any explanation. Apparently Beast doesn’t believe in due process.
Not much justice in that. As Beast rounds up Omega Red we begin to realize Beast doesn’t trust mutants who are from Russia. Whether it’s xenophobia or because he fears they have ties to specific terrorists remains to be seen, but without a fair trial, it seems to be breaking some kind of law in Krakoa. We further see in a data-page from Beast’s logbook he doesn’t even trust Xavier to which Beast called him “blindly optimistic.”
It gets worse. He then asks Colossus to come with him and slaps handcuffs on him so as to parade him in front of most of the mutants on the island. It appears he’s attempting to defame him and make him lose his heroic status amongst reputable mutants.
Wolverine doesn’t like that one bit.
I think Logan just did what we all wish we could do to the immoral and unconscionable X-Man that is Beast. Or as The Watcher put it in All-New X-Men Vol. 1 #25:
Credit: Marvel Comics
For more on Beast, read the stories below.
The Critical Angle: Why is Beast so awful?
Beast is still awful: The othering of plant people in X-Force #6
