The Pope’s Comics: Examining The Hero Pattern: Beast

By Bethany W Pope

 on November 19, 2021

Welcome to “The Pope’s Comics,” our new regular column by award-winning novelist, poet, and Comic Watch contributor Bethany Pope! Bethany brings a wealth of knowledge on literature, LGBTQIA+ issues history, gender, comics, and so much more. We sincerely hope you enjoy!

This week I’m going to be examining Lord Raglan’s Hero Pattern as it applies to the bouncing blue-eyed Beast. Hank McCoy was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1963, making him one of the oldest of the X-Men. The character has experienced a long evolution over the course of the decades, but his story has largely resisted remaining within any of the traditional mythological patterns.

It’s obvious, of course, that a rather Jungian Jekyll and Hyde story surfaced in the early days of the character, when his self-experimentation rendered him all grey and fuzzy, before the narrative settled (around the time his fur turned blue) into a Beauty and the Beast-type situation. But these themes quickly faded to a secondary importance within the series.

In any case, this was a very interesting character for me to examine, even if the pattern doesn’t completely fit. Situations such as this are important in academic studies. If your thesis never fails, you might have discovered the truth. But it’s more likely that you’re fudging the numbers. 

In any case, this pattern is based upon The Hero: A study in Tradition, Myth and Dreams by Lord Raglan. As always, I’ve corrected the language of the pattern in an effort to stymy the overwhelming Victorian sexism, but I’ve left it largely unchanged beyond that. Here’s the pattern in its entirety:

Incidents which occur with regularity in hero-myths of all cultures:

1. Hero’s mother is a royal virgin;
2. His father is a king, and
3. Often a near relative of his mother, but
4. The circumstances of his conception are unusual, and
5. He is also reputed to be the son of a god.
6. At birth an attempt is made, usually by his father or his maternal grandfather to kill him, but
7. he is spirited away, and
8. Reared by foster -parents in a far country.
9. We are told nothing of his childhood, but
10. On reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future Kingdom.
11. After a victory over the king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild beast,
12. He marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor and
13. And becomes king.
14. For a time he reigns uneventfully and
15. Prescribes laws, but
16. Later he loses favor with the gods and/or his subjects, and
17. Is driven from the throne and city, after which
18. He meets with a mysterious death,
19. Often at the top of a hill,
20. His children, if any do not succeed him.
21. His body is not buried, but nevertheless
22. He has one or more holy sepulchres.

And here’s how it applies to Edna’s blue-furred, blue-eyed boy:

4. The circumstances of his conception are unusual, and

Hank’s father, Norton McCoy, worked in a nuclear power plant and one day there was an accident which required him to risk exposure to high levels of radiation in an effort to save the plant (and the town) from complete destruction. This exposure left Norton profoundly sick (the story fed into some very 1960’s fears) and, although he recovered and returned to his family’s farm soon after, his DNA was affected enough to cause his son to be born with visible physical mutations.

7. he is spirited away, and

When Hank was in college, he was pressed into the service of a villain known as The Conquistador. Xavier rescued him and invited Hank to become his student. Well, ‘invited’ is a strong word. Xavier actually erased all knowledge of Hank from everyone except Hank’s parents. This counts, emphatically, as being ‘spirited away’.

8. Reared by foster -parents in a far country.

Henry was already in university when he was rescued/abducted, so he had little growing up left to do. Nevertheless, Beast often describes Xavier as his ‘father’ within the text. There might be just a smidgen of Stockholm syndrome in this relationship.

9. We are told nothing of his childhood, but

Aside from a few stories about unusual preadolescent agility, and exploits during college-level American football games, we are shown next to nothing about Henry’s childhood. 

10. On reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future Kingdom.

The man has six PhDs. I’ve only got the one (so far) and I practically live on the university campus. It’s more than arguable that, for Hank McCoy, the lab is his Kingdom. Certainly it’s the place where he’s done the most good, and caused the most harm. Often to himself.

11. After a victory over the king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild beast,

Here’s where we come into the deepest depths of Jungian study. When speaking about archetypes, it’s important to remember that all of the images, broken or whole, which exist within you are you. To live is to do battle with the trolls in the vaults of heart and mind. To write is to sit in judgement of yourself. (Badly paraphrasing Ibsen, there) Hank McCoy’s greatest enemy has ever been himself. This assertion is made painfully obvious when you look at the time that he gained his trademark beastial form. He experimented on himself, in his hubris (as he has done, many times, since) and then he had to struggle with his disgust at what he had become. He had to live with it. And when he failed? Well. Check out the next entry. 

18. He meets with a mysterious death,

Not every death is literal. Most of the important deaths (of love, of friendship, of the idea of the self) are metaphorical. When Beast, after a long struggle, regained his human form, it came at the tremendous cost of his intellect. For a man whose entire sense of self is wrapped up in his conception of himself as a genius, this is a major death indeed. 

Of course, since this is mainstream comics (where nothing is as certain as the status quo) his intelligence was eventually restored (along with heightened physical prowess) as a reward for saving his dear friend from an accidental death. That’s how it goes. 

Henry McCoy scores a total of 7 points. This makes him arguably (and appropriately, given the character’s attitude towards myth) more realistic than most comics characters. Alexander the Great existed — though mythical attributes were later hung on his story, like garlands — and he also scores 7 points. I don’t care for the direction of the character, and I debated including him at all (given his incredibly low score) but it’s as important to see the figures who don’t fit the pattern well as it is to analyze the characters who do. This is especially important when discussing characters who have existed as long as this one, since one of the prerequisites for mythological development is that the character exists for a long time and be written and elaborated upon by many authors. Whichever way you cut it, Hank fits the bill.

Poet, novelist, fencer, pirate, Za-Za, and Comic Watch regular contributor Bethany Pope lives in China. They also hold an MA and PhD in creative writing. Their latest novel, The Hungry and the Lost, goes on sale December 1, 2021 from Parthian Books. You can follow them on Twitter at @theMasqueWriter.