Hank Ma Beloved! - Tumblr Posts
My favorite parts:
And ofc the poem at the end! This is just too wholesome!!!!
Trope
Hit me with something... but please hit me softly. I'm still trying to get over the comics
Badass Bookworm / Genius Bruiser:
A Science Hero who reads Shakespeare, quotes poetry, can lift well over 10 tons and once flipped freaking the Juggernaut on his head. There is a good reason Hank is Trope Codifier (and picture) for Genius Bruiser.
Genius. Bruiser. Badass. Bookworm.
Beast.
Your honour, I am utterly incapable of being normal about Hank McCoy.
THE MARVELS (2023) dir. Nia DaCosta Kelsey Grammer as Dr. Hank McCoy
02. entry made on the best night of their life.
From an Avengers journal found placed, with great care and love, in an Avengers archive maintained by Edwin Jarvis. The book was clearly old, but has been re-spined and maintained so that it won't age, a fact helped by it being digitised and vacuum sealed.
On the front is a very leisurely, very attentively drawn signature for one Henry P. McCoy - an effect that Hank apparently decided to ruin on purpose by slapping an official 'BEAST' sticker on the front, perhaps because he was so eager to show off his merch.
WAHOO! Henry Philip McCoy, Hank to his friends, the Bounding, Bouncing, Bludgeoning Baby Blue Beast to his enemies - and now, to the whole world? AVENGER! I honestly didn't think I'd make it, yanno? I thought, there's no way they're going to let me on the team, they already have brainboxes, they've already got strong guys, they've got everything, they're the freaking Avengers - but then! BUT THEN! I think the Edward G. Robinson gag really sold them on it, I'm not sure, but regardless, they were definitely impressed. The Mighty Thor, the Winsome Wasp, the Invincible Iron Man, THE Doctor Pym (DOCTOR PYM, CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?), the - Moondragon, person, honestly she's kind of intimidating I'm not sure what her deal is - BUT THE AVENGERS WANT ME! God, I could kiss you, Toad! Well, not actually, but, you know. Sentiment! They keep saying it's not official, that I'm still on probation, yadda yadda, but I'm here! I'm at the Avengers Mansion! I COULD SCREAM! In fact, I think I'll go outside and do just that! Iron Man told me to knock it off. IRON MAN TOLD ME TO KNOCK IT OFF WITH THE SCREAMING! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? God. I've never been happier.
If you could make movies about Hank, how many would you do and what could we see in them? Like an origin story, specific storyline etc. Would it be live action or a cartoon/animation, if live action who would you cast as Beast?
Now this is a fun thought experiment!
So, I actually think that if I was going to focus specifically on Hank, I would want multiple series, each separated according to decade or periods of his life, as it were, and we're going to mix media a little bit. Bear with me. This is probably going to be a multi-part series, so, here's the first part.
60s/First Class
So, we start off with a live action series that begins in medias res - alarms are blaring, people are rushing through corridors, klaxons are bathing corridors in red light. Through it all, a young man with a frightened but determined look on his face fights through the tide until he reaches a room full of radiation suits. He pulls one on, takes a few deep breaths, and then pushes through into a reactor room that's clearly going critical.
No music. No dialogue. No sound, except for the thumping of a heart beat and the sounds of this intricate mechanism being cajoled, being calmed, being put right again, until eventually the alarm lifts. Now it's just the sound of heavy, panicked breathing, and the man keels over at the railing nearest to him as a group of men in identical radiation suits rush to him. He blacks out.
When he comes to, he smiles at the woman sitting beside his bed, and moves as if to kiss her, but she smacks his arm, before embracing him and kissing him. A doctor moves in to talk, but there's still no dialogue, just soft music. A small montage of people in suits, offering the man in the bed a lot of paperwork that he signs. Before long, he's well enough to leave the hospital, and he and his wife drive to a farm. They stand on the outskirts, arms wrapped around one another. Camera pulls back, revealing the name on the mailbox.
McCoy.
Cut to the intro, which is nuclear flames, genomes shattering, a mysterious, animalistic figure gazing out of shadow with yellow eyes that turn into spotlights, revealing the title of the show.
'X-MEN: BEAST - FIRST CLASS'
17 YEARS LATER
A young man who's the spitting image of the man we saw in this prologue sequence is being harassed by a young woman with blonde hair. They're talking about the last quiz they just had to take in Biology, and the young woman tells the young man that he needs to stop hiding who he is. How brilliant he is. He tells her that he's on the high end of normal, and she scoffs. They walk by a football tryout, where the coach is harassing his team, telling them that any old nerd could do better than them.
"You, McKay - over here, show 'em what I mean."
"It's McCoy, sir, and I don't know quite what you mean?"
The coach becomes ever more insistent. McCoy shrugs, shaking his head. He kicks the ball. It sails clean, hits the goal - at the other end of the pitch. The coach is flabbergasted. He wants McCoy for the team, but McCoy is uncertain - until the team kicks off, saying they don't want this gorilla on their team. One of them, identified as Janssen by his jersey, is particularly venomous, and McCoy gives him a coldly furious look.
"Coach, what position does Janssen play?"
Smash cut to the same number on the team, but with MCCOY on the back. Sports montage, naturally, with MCCOY as star player, intercut with the occasional side-eyed look from a parent or onlooker whenever he does something a little too amazing.
Jen is the love interest of the movie. She's great.
Final game of the season. Crowds are roaring, full football Americana experience. MCCOY is in full swing, but we aren't seeing things from his perspective, we're seeing things from somewhere up in the bleachers - from some kind of scope. It zooms in hard on MCCOY, a finger tenses, squeezes - misses. Screaming, hysteria. The scope view panics as MCCOY comes charging towards it, and we zoom out to see Janssen as McCoy clambers up the side of the bleachers with unnatural ease.
They fight. McCoy knocks the rifle away, but he's a little too strong, and Janssen nearly falls over the edge, and it's quite the drop. McCoy grabs him and stops him from going over, but he can't use his other hand to hold on to the bleachers and Janssen at the same time. He knocks off his shoe, and we get our first look at an oversized foot that looks to be as dextrous as a hand. McCoy moves to use this odd limb to help Janssen up.
Janssen hisses. Says he'd rather die than get help from a filthy stinking mutant that crawls all over human girls like he's a real man. He smacks McCoy's hand away, drops. We don't see the impact, but McCoy does. His eyes widen. He yanks off the football helmet and throws up, staggering as he climbs back up, just in time for the officials to come storming in. He looks red-faced, shaking. He looks guilty.
We cut to the farm. The McCoy family are quiet, withdrawn - worried. The parents keep looking outside, where their son has taken to disassembling and reassembling every piece of farm equipment available to him, as if that's going to make him feel any better. Edna and Norton talk, and they feel guilty, Norton especially, about the legacy they've given poor Hank, as we pan up over the kitchen counter and see a newspaper headline exclaiming about the mutant panic taking over the nation.
A knock at the door. Norton looks pale, so Edna answers - to a man dressed like some kind of Conquistador, which he identifies himself as. He brings out a sword and seems to cast some form of electricity with it, striking down Edna and Norton, drawing their son back to the house with a speed that defies thought, and it's only this lightning sword that stops him from bowling the man over right there and then.
The Conquistador wants this young man, Hank, to do him a favour - use his father's ID card to steal some specific components from the nuclear power plant he works at. He looks basically identical to him, he shouldn't even be questioned. His sword twitches in the direction of Hank's parents, and his jaw sets. He agrees.
A short, tense sequence at the power plant. Hank does the deed, but it's dangerous and it goes wrong, the alarms are sounded - but he gets away. He escapes to a warehouse where his parents are being held by the Conquistador's men, and the man is raving, rambling.
Hank trounces them, effortlessly. It's superhuman to watch, and Edna and Norton are wide eyed as Hank frees them, all of them silent. Norton opens his mouth, apologises. Hank doesn't understand, apologising for what? Norton gestures at Hank's obviously overgrown hands and feet. For that. That's his fault. Hank's expression darkens, and Norton realises what he's said without thinking, and he looks to Edna, but she doesn't know what to say. Behind them, the Conquistador is getting back up, pulling up his sword, aiming it at Hank's back.
A ruby red beam comes out of nowhere, blasting it away, and Hank turns around, to see . . .
The Professor explains who he is. What the people with him are, what Hank is - a mutant. Hank already knows, and the Professor smiles a little, because of course Hank does. The conversation continues, and Hank is interested, intrigued, even - he keeps glancing back at his parents, but they look very uncertain, even as they do their best to give him smiles and make sure he knows they're okay.
"There will be sacrifices, Hank. This won't be an easy life. But it will be a worthy one."
Hank agrees, but before he walks off with Xavier and the other X-Men, he embraces his parents one more time. He's holding them tighter than they are him when he lets go.
The series then adapts some 60s X-Men, some First Class stories - I'd definitely want to pull in the story where Hank and Bobby first becomes friends during a vacation road trip across the US; the Unus the Untouchable arc, where Hank becomes a wrestler; a momentary flirtation with Jean Grey, before he realises who she's pretty much destined to end up with; the beatnik foot cult; Magneto.
Costumes change, villains go by, and Hank is enjoying himself, growing, but as he grows older, he seems less satisfied.
Especially since we find out that Xavier wiped Jen's mind, and she no longer remembers Hank. For their safety. Hank is. Not pleased. It's the first wedge between him and the Professor, and they paper over it, but. It sticks.
Towards the end of the series, he receives a letter in the mail, and when it comes time to do Danger Room exercises, he's conspicuously absent. Xavier is oddly reticent to talk to him, and instead suggests that Scott, Bobby, Warren and Jean talk to him instead. Hank is in his room, the letter in his hands, and seeming torn. They all talk.
Hank wants to leave the X-Men. The very concept shakes them a little - the last time this happened, Unus attacked and they were nearly defeated - but the newfound confidence of having done this for a few years now means that they understand why Hank wants to move on. Everyone's been thinking about it, actually, Hank's just the first one to have a place he wants to go to rather than just 'not the school.'
They embrace. Bobby in particular takes a little longer than everyone else to let go, and it's clear it's killing him a little that Hank is going, but he does let go.
The final scene of the series is Hank in civilian clothes saying his final goodbyes. There's not a dry eye in the house. Jean kisses him on the cheek, Bobby hugs him way too hard, Scott clasps his shoulder, Warren gives him a fistbump. The Professor shakes his hand. They're all sad to see him go, but this is for the best.
Hank gets into his car, and starts it up. He looks back at the Mansion, the X-Men, wistfully, thinking, for a moment, that he should stop and go back. But in the end, he puts the car in gear and drives. As he leaves the Mansion, he adjusts the rear view mirror.
For the audience, Hank is replaced by something wearing his clothes. Dark furred. Monstrous. Unfamiliar. Familiar. Yellow eyed.
End credits. End of the series.
To be continued.
I actually have no idea who I'd want to play a young Hank, I'm not as up to date on young actors as I'd like, but I've been recommended someone called Noah Centino for a 17-20 year old Hank, so, sure? Whoever they are, they need to be able to pull off Hank's distinctive Superman curl.
I'd definitely want an almost sort of 'The Incredibles' tone to the X-Men sections of this series, where it's all deathly dangerous but the X-Men almost don't seem to realise until they do. Michael Giacchino does the score, because the man can do no wrong.
Headcanons & Musing
Hank is this kind of guy who spends his days with poetry, philosophy and working in his lab or teaching. He is a diplomat who prefers to go to the theater than fighting on the battlefield.
But Hank is also that kind of guy who could easily rip you apart, while quoting an entire Shakespeare play if he wanted to.
And a little extra to this (x) because I love Hank in this scene.
Comic Stuff
Aaaaaawwww look how happy he is!!! Happy Hank!!!!
And so understanding and loving!!!! Also Hank's dad!!! He wins the best dad of the world price!!!!! He's also so sweet and loving no matter Hank turned out to be this kind of man!!!
This part was just so funny!! The 'Would you like to make an appointment to murder me' and the 'I'm not joking!' had me rolling. Hank you would be a very good german guy. In this country nothing works without an appointment!
AND HE WAS EVEN SPEAKING GERMAN!!! This was so random but I loved it. Especially because I didn't expect that so at first I didn't even realized it's german and thought huh... this words sound just like the german words 🤣 Also the Spidey express!!!
AND THIS PARTS!!!!!! THIS IS SO WHOLESOME AND CUTE AND SWEET AND SO AAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWW!!!!! Best parents ever!!!! They don't care that this guy could kill them with a snap!!!! And the hug at the end!!!!
Yesterday I posted a fancast for Simon and today I post one for Hank... Or more like for younger Hank/human Hank cause Kelsey Grammer is a perfect Beast and I'm so happy MCU decided to bring him back.
But the think is dude's already really old. He's already 68. It would be difficult to let him play a young Hank and all that stuff without using a body double and cgi, which tbh I really hope they won't do and just cast a younger actor and leave him as old Beast.
So my fancast for a younger version of him is:
Henry Cavill
I've seen some edits of him as Hank/Beast and it just looked so perfect. Can't get this out of my mind anymore!
I mean look at him!
He's perfect as Hank/Beast. Especially in the last pic!
Nothing against Nicholas Hoult. I love him as an actor but Henry!!! They even have the same name so please!
Headcanons & Musing
I just looked up the name McCoy cause I wanted to know the origin of this name and wikipedia said something about scottish and irish...
And only because of that my head made up the headcanon that Hank has scottish/irish origins and he has an eccentric great uncle who still lives there...
This uncle can't barely stand anyone around him except Hank. Hank's his favorite from the whole family and he has no problem with letting everyone know.
When this uncle heard about Hank's mutation and that he turned all blue and furry this uncle immediately bought several blue clothes and accessories to show his support. From there one he always wore something blue.
He never mentioned anything and just silently accepted and supported his nephew.
The uncle is also a very proud, stubborn and headstrong man and always refuses to let others help. So everytime he and Hank meet and Hank wants to help with something the uncle just shoos him away and complains that he's not a senile old man and can take care of it himself. "Boy sit down for havens sake!" he then orders.
Yes he was an army man and had a very high rank there.
Beside Hank the only other living being he openly likes is his dog.
So, a very dear friend of mine asked me why I think that Hank is such a performer - why he's so good at it, why he enjoys it so much - and it's one of those things that I think is so integral to Hank's character that really determines if you 'get' Beast or not.
I think the borderline of it is - he enjoys the attention, he enjoys the affirmation, the praise. There's some lines of dialogue from his parents that state that he was basically the best case scenario they could've hoped for, considering his father's radiation accident - sure, he was weirdly strong, sure, his limbs were oversized, but he was otherwise extremely healthy and intelligent and not deformed like they feared he would be.
So there's a degree of a miracle baby thing going on, where they showered him with love and attention and found it hard to be genuinely angry with him, and especially as he went on, as he got more and more plaudits for being brilliant, I think he chased that high a little bit.
He throttles back a bit when he's older, to try and hide because mutant and he does like being normal even if he loves being praised and affirmed as well, but everyone is telling him to keep going, to be as brilliant as he can be - which, to him, means be VISIBLY brilliant, be VISIBLY great at what you do.
And even when he joins the Avengers, even after he achieves that status symbol, he's STILL chasing that affirmation, he's starting to create impossible standards for himself. He feels notably down when he isn't contributing in fights or with his scientific acumen, he takes it hard when people criticise him, and he starts to feel the need now to be a public face for mutantkind.
It's not really something he mentions as being a thing in Avengers because 70s Avengers wasn't all that interested in addressing the mutant angle, but it does become a plot point in New Defenders, where a college student calls him out for being one of the most public mutant faces there is (remember, this is before Xavier outed himself, so, like, the public mutant faces are probably Hank, Magneto, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver . . . PROBABLY A LOT OF VILLAINS, and the X-Men, but they're secretive and known only as a weird paramilitary group) but not DOING anything with that status. And then he takes that hard, and forms a mutant advocacy group, because he wants to be good and be seen to be doing good.
There's also the aspect of needing to aggressively perform both masculinity and humanity - especially in Avengers, he's so hypersexual and so casually intelligent (he spends an entire issue just alternating between the dozen languages he knows for fun) because he wants you to consider him a man, and a human, before he's a Beast.
That's an element of his character that you see really obviously in his human form, where he's a fucking walking thesaurus, but there, it's to stand out, to seem smart, there's a degree of smugness and 'look at meeeee,' but the instant he turns blue and furry, it's more about 'look at me not being a freak.'
That only intensifies when he becomes feline, where you see a sort of melding of the two - he's a lot less casual with his speech, he almost slides back into his Big Words mode, but he also wants you to consider him friendly and approachable, so how much he drops a million dollar quote or word starts to oscillate depending on his audience. He changes depending on who he's talking to.
He also almost never shows his teeth when he smiles.
As for why he's so good at it - practice, a lot of reading, and I think a degree of underrated emotional sensitivity. In his way, he's more empathetic and kind and gentle than Jean can be - granted, Jean was fucking MEGA PISSED over the affair with Scott, but if you look at the way he treats Emma, it's very soft and teasing and nurturing, and he stands up for her even against his best friend Jean, who had psychically brutalised Emma.
She has the cheat code of telepathy, but Hank is just - naturally warm and tender. He's a very sensitive soul, not just in terms of being vulnerable but just knowing what people need to hear and being there for them. He's even capable of empathy for Mr. Sinister of all people.
If Percy had even an ounce of this insight into Hank's character, X-Force Beast would just be a performance. "This is what Krakoa needs, so I'll become it," but he just. Doesn't. Get. That. There are glimmers of it! HE'S SO CLOSE. SO CLOSE TO GETTING IT.
This SHOULD be why X-Force Beast is so overtly evil, why he's so despicable, why he's so stupidly villainous - because it's a performance, because that's the only kind of evil Hank can do, and it's KILLING him to do it. One last great performance, to save everyone he loves.
THAT. THAT. WHERE DID IT GO, BEN?
And, like . . . he's getting . . . a reaction. It isn't the reaction he wants, it isn't a reaction he enjoys, but it's a reaction, people . . . ARE paying attention to him, so in a way, that's telling him to keep going. Like, that'd be such an interesting, fucked up dynamic to lean into, that this is just a bit that went too far, that Hank can't stop himself, that his emotions are all fucked up and no-one can tell it's a performance anymore and no-one can pull him out, that he became the performance, but no.
Just evil.
It just sucks because I bet we're not even going to get a resolution on X-Force Beast's feelings about Krakoa and the Hellfire Gala. About the idea that he was the necessary bastard, that it all failed, that he sacrificed everything for nothing. Judging by X-Force #48, he's probably just going to do some Bond villain shit and get taken down. In his own villain turn, he's just - stripped, of all emotional complexity. There isn't a character there. It sucks, man.
It isn't even subtextual. It's just. It's there.
Like, Hank's fatal character flaws are: a complete insecurity in his own self-worth, a worrying fear that he's failed at everything he's ever tried to do, an anxiety that he's not truly human, never will be, never can be, and will in fact only get worse.
THOSE ARE ENOUGH TO BE GETTING ON WITH.
And he ameliorates those things by being charming and funny and playing to type so people like him.
Like, if these writers understood Hank, they would USE that by emphasising the fact that Hank's insecurities and fears and anxieties are growing to such a scale that it's affecting his ability to make emotional reads on people, and thus he's playing the WRONG role that he thinks they want from him, because that's tragic, and that's understandable, but instead they make it that he's just got an ego, or that he's just plain evil.
LIKE.
YOU COULD LITERALLY HAVE HANK BE PAGLIACCI.
"Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain.
Doctor says, "Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up."
Man bursts into tears.
Says, "But doctor...I am Pagliacci.”
Hank is always playing the clown, because it makes people happy and that makes him happy, but when they aren't happy, when the jokes don't work, there's no clown to make him feel better. That's when the bottom falls out. That's when you start getting the troubles. And that is tragic.
THAT is how you justify Hank doing horrible things, by making him chase ever greater jokes to tell, ever greater acts of devotion and amusement and entertainment for his audience, desperately hoping it'll bring the soothing balm of someone telling him he did good, because that is horrible, and that is real, and that is so sad.
But nah, evil.
Yay!!!! Today I got my very first Hank 😍
I wanted to get one for so long now but they were always so expensive. Especially because most of the time I found figures that came from aboard, which means I also would had to pay very much for shipping and depending from where it came from also customs/ import fees. So in the end I would have paied around 100€ just for one figure, which is way too much for me. I rarely pay 60€ for a game because this is too expensive for me.
But now I finally got one here he is:
Isn't he beautiful 😍❤️
They're perfect!!! I really love them, they're so cute! Thank you so much.
Hey I saw some of your icons and I really love them. They're so cool and adorable.
I wanted to ask if it's possible to make some for Hank McCoy/Beast. It would be great if one of them could be based of the Kelsey Grammer's version from the OG movies and the other one from his MCU cameo in the Marvels?
And if it's possible to ask for three: I don't know if you're also doing them based on the comics, but if you do, could you maybe also do a feline Hank? But really only if it's not too much to ask.
The icons are so simplistic in design I wasn't sure how to give Kelsey Grammer specifically, but I hope you still like it
SMASH OR PASS: Hank McCoy aka Beast, Marvel Comics
[All official art from the comics or the 1992 X-Men animated series)
Please reblog for greater sample size, as per usual!
Headcanons & Musing
>> It's so funny to me, since I started to talk about Hank with Muffins and read the comics I realized how much more similar Maggie is to Hank. Much more than I had previously thought. At first I thought yeah they have same interessts and such but no. I literally made Maggie Hank's female mini me without knowing it!
Like I always saw Hank as the calm Professor/Doctor. Someone who is strict and serious but also loving, friendly, helpful and fun and comfortable to have around. In a way the calm save space for people to go to when they need some time to calm down, the anchor in a storm etc. And yeah he is exactly that.
But I had no idea that he also has this other side. The side that makes him go wild, where he jumps around as if he was a bouncing ball. The guy who climbs up buildings and swings around the area.
And this is kinda how I always imagined little Maggie as a wild child, always trying to climb up everything. That child that runs wild and goes crazy, who wants to know just everything and jumps around with so much energy that everyone thinks how can such a tiny person have so much energy in her body? Yes when she gets older she also gets more calm and introvert and such but mostly because of her abduction and the fact that for several years she had no contact to the outside world. This is what changed her. But if this chapter had never happened, if she had always been with her family. Then she still would be this wild nerdy child, climbing and jumping around.
And tbh: I love it! I love that Maggie is so much more like her dad than I thought, cause it makes sense. He's her hero, her greatest rolemodel, the one she looks up to the most. She wants to be exactly like him. She's that kind of child were people go: "Yeah... she clearly is her father's daughter. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. No need for a paternity test here, that's Hank's kid no doubt." <<