Off The Shelf -- X-Force #20

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Today, Sam reviews X-Force #20 by @Benjamin_Percy and @joshuacassara

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Transcript

X-Force #20 “The Secret Garden”

Written by Benjamin Percy

Art & Design by Joshua Cassara, Guru-dFX, Joe Carmagna and Tom Muller

If one drew a Venn diagram of the various crossovers, major and minor, within the X-Men universe since Jonathan Hickman took the reigns of the title in 2019, it would appropriately look very much like one of Hickman’s complicated data charts that were so often seen in the early stages of House of X / Powers of X. 

Because it feels as if the past few years have been one major event after the other, I did a quick review of major X-Men crossovers and events in the past. In the 80’s we had five, including Dark Phoenix, Days of Future Past, Mutant Massacre, and Fall of the Mutants. Honestly if you count true cross-title crossovers, there were only three. In the comics boom of the 90’s there were thirteen and ten in the early 2000’s. Some of these were tremendously significant, while others felt more like filler or served less as crossovers than as separate runs (X-Men Gold, Blue, Red etc).

It feels though that since 2019 and HoX/PoX it has been one major event after another. First we had the twelve issue run of HoX/PoX, followed by the thirty – Thirty! – issue X of Swords event. Now we’re in the end run of the Hellfire Gala, another twelve issue series across all of the X titles. In between these events we’ve had the more loosely connected Dawn of X and Reign of X series, which served to build the new mutant world and bridge the gap between the big events. 

Hickman seems to be a master of the grand master plan. While the titles prior to him seemed quite often to be a disjointed mess highlighted by a few stellar arcs, the current run has been an exercise in civil engineering. 

The Hellfire Gala to me has been a bit of an enigma. Honestly I saw more press about the mutants’ fashion designs going in to this than anything else. Prior to X-Force #20 I didn’t have much reason to believe that it was going to amount to much. As with most things in the X-Universe as of late it’s been a slow burning fuse, but now at least we’re seeing the dynamite that fuse is attached to.

X-Force #20 shows the Hellfire Gala in full swing. The gala has many purposes behind it: diplomacy, deal-making, and not a little shock-and-awe. The event is put on specifically by the Hellfire Trading Company, the business arm of Krakoa which deals with the sale and distribution of the mutant nation’s botanical medicines and is headed by the telepath Emma Frost. The X-Force team of Beast, Sage, Wolverine, Domino and Kid Omega are serving as bouncers to the event. However we soon see that they are doing much more that minding the psychic pink rope and giving Tony Stark a hard time.

When Krakoa was first set up as a nation-state for mutants, X-Force was tasked to be its intelligence/counterintelligence bureau, operating under the radar of the rest of the mutants on the island, including most of the Quiet Council. Where the mutants project a level and air of moral and ethical purity over and above that of humans, X-Force dwells very much in the moral grey areas hidden from everyday sight. 

No more is that grey-ness present than in it’s blue fuzzy leader, Beast. It’s been quite interesting to see the tack the writers have taken him so far. In the past, Hank has been seen as one whose superior ethics is on par with his superior intelligence. He was often seen as one of the team who was above reproach while yet humble enough to recognize that he wasn’t. The Beast that lives now on Krakoa is one that is much darker (no pun intended for those that get it) and far less above reproach. Where in the past he may have struggled with morally difficult decisions, he now seems to revel in them. More than that, it’s clear that he has his own agenda in mind and is keeping that agenda from everyone, including Charles Xavier.

This is not the first time we’ve seen Beast be up to some very shady doings. Back in X-Force #10, it became clear that Hank was not only operating under the radar of the Quiet Council but of his team as well. This resulted in a confrontation between him and Jean Grey who was a member of the team at the time. Beast’s efforts at self-justification, that the lies were in the service of a “greater good”, caused Jean to leave. Beast felt no other consequences to his actions though beyond that though, which is something many readers pointed out as a problem.

Now at the Hellfire Gala, Beast continues to have his own plans at work. Many are suspicious, including members of his own team as well as Xavier himself. Charles telepathically questions Beast’s motives at one point, to which Beast responds “Charles, you explicitly told me you were better off not knowing…I haven’t let you down yet, have I?” Sage also questions Beast regarding his covert espionage on human delegates, something that was never part of their assigned task. He again points back to the rightness of their cause and the lack of actual harm done. 

A page of text, which could be out of Beast’s journal or log, shows what’s really going on behind the veneer of moral superiority. In it he compares his situation to that of a god who, after descending from heaven to watch over the people of earth, protect them and give them good things, is met with grateful praise. But he goes on to say that if you “swap out the celestial figure with a certain blue-furred mutant – then suddenly everyone is opposed. Because most people are stupid and illogical.”

This transformation of Beast into a darker version of his better self is not really that new. The Age of Apocalypse showed us the Dark Beast, who was basically Hank McCoy without the moral anchor. While that Dark Beast was much more flagrant in his ethical abuses, this dark Beast is much more subtle. This transformation is even present in how Beast is drawn, as he is often pictured with his eyes obscured by his glasses or his fur. He is both present and impenetrable. 

Finally it’s Emma Frost that reveals that Hank has basically taken control of the nation of Terra Verde through the use of Krakoan flowers. This revelation surprises even Sage, the X-Force who has been basically in charge of all of the information on the island. And as that news is revealed, we see that the Terra Verde delegation to the Hellfire Gala, who had been acting very strangely since they arrived, have turned into botanical monsters.

Unfortunately this dark Beast is one much more familiar to us than his Age of Apocalypse counterpart. Charismatic leaders in public life have had a tendency to fall as of late, whether it be the leader of an influential ministry who has been leading a double life, or politicians who have found themselves in scandal after scandal. Several common threads tie these instances together: a lack of accountability, a lack of consequences, secrecy, and a belief that they are above the rules of morality of everyone else. The belief in the righteousness of the cause can lead to the ends justifying the means, which then leads to using others to pursue those ends. These flaws are not only in Beast but in its very founders, Xavier and Magneto. Krakoa’s laws and principles presume that they are the betters of humans in every respect. Perhaps Beast’s intention was to follow in the paths of its two heads, and in doing so committed the same errors they did. The mutants have Krakoa have built a society built upon many things, but pride has become the fatal flaw its engineers failed to take in to account. And with the next and possibly final arc of Hickman’s run being called Inferno, it’s likely that pride will bring all of Krakoa down around them.

Unfortunately the takeaway for some witnessing the real-life downfall of those such as Bill Hybels and Jerry Falwell Jr. has been only “there but for the grace of God go I”. There’s a tendency in Christianity whenever someone has a moral failure or grievous sin to look only at the sinner and not at the system around the sinner. This is especially true when we may live in a similar system. Sin is a heart issue, yes, but sin never happens in a vacuum. The men – and let’s face the fact that it is almost always men – who find themselves embroiled in these scandals often operate in systems where accountability and transparency are absent. They rely on trust and take advantage of that trust whenever necessary. They consider themselves above the guidelines they place on others. And all of this happens because people in their circle let it happen, whether through sins of omission or commission. 

When concerns about Ravi Zacharias first surfaced in 2017, RZIM declined to investigate the allegations. This allowed the abuse to continue unabated, and witnesses and survivors were only heard after Zacharias died. The result has been not only tremendous damage to the apologetics ministry he founded, but the pain and suffering of countless thousands who had put their trust in the man and his ministry, especially the women he preyed upon who suffered in silence. 

For decades, we’ve seen Beast as the quick-witted, pun-loving, genius who you couldn’t help but admire. The situation has changed however and he’s now a part of the ruling elite, seeing himself not only superior to humans but to most other mutants as well. It’s ironic that I found a quote from Beast back in Uncanny X-Men 511 where he confronts Scott Summers and Emma Frost about the secrets they’ve been keeping from him, saying, “Secrets, Scott. Secrets, Emma. In these times -- these awful, fractious times -- We... are all we have left…These secrets will kill us. And I won't stick around to watch it happen.” 

And here he is, watching it happen.

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