History: Hank McCoy was born a mutant, his powers being heightened agility and the ability of using his feet almost as good as his hands. He was also cursed, however, with a disproportionate body. He has a brilliant mind, and he loves studying sciences, though he is often heard quoting Shakespeare.

Hank was a founding member of the first group of X-Men, with the Angel, Cyclops, the Iceman, and Marvel Girl (Jean Grey). They all together fought the first mutant foes and world menaces, but Hank desired to get a doctoral degree at the University, so he left the group to became a brilliant doctor in biochemicals.

During the course of his works, he drank one of his experiments, turning into a beast-looking being, his body covered by blue hair. His own powers then became increased, and his mind kept intact.

During a brief period, he joined the Avengers, but returned much later with the X-Men. Before this, he spent some time with the first X-Factor team, when they still pretended to be mutant hunters.

He recovered his human form for some time, using information from Dr. Carl Maddicks that was to give Maddick's son. Unfortunately, after being kissed by Infectia, the Beast began to lose intelligence, losing it even more quickly whenever he used his powers. But during the first confrontation with the Smilefaces of Hodge from The Right (just at the beginning of Inferno), Apocalypse's former ship returned him to his blue form and to the top of his intelligence as well.

He rejoined the X-Men after the Shadow King crisis, and is currently working with Moira McTaggert and Xavier on the Legacy virus.

The only real connections he has had with the GenX kids is in issue #21 where he is teaching the kids a little something about genetics, mutations, their powers, etc. It's the first actual time we see the kids even in class. Amazing. I go to school almost every week day and these kids get taught one class and it's with some really cool blue-haired guy named 'Beast'. Ugh, why me? Getting off topic here. He also was partially responsible for persuading Skin to join the Academy (in Uncanny X-Men #318) when he was having doubts about things and didn't really want to have anything to do with the X-Men anymore. Hopefully Beast will come back to the Acadamy and teach the kids some more because I really like the character and Bachalo's drawing of him is absolutly fantabulous.