X-Men Unlimited takes a slightly odd tack this month.  Novelist Joe Mena provides two stories about the Beast.  One, drawn by Paco Medina, is set in the present day.  The other, with art by Homs, goes back to the early 1970s, when Hank was still adjusting to having turned himself into an ape.

They're not really linked in any way.  They're just stories about the same character at vastly different points in his life, to the extent where Meno seems to be writing a different character altogether.

The present day story, "After-School Special", is just plain odd.  The premise is that Hank gets drafted to fill in as school guidance counsellor when the previous one quits in despair.  What follows is a series of interweaving ministories about his relationship with three different students, in which he fails to make things any better, for no particularly apparent reason. 

Quite what point Meno's trying to make, I'm honestly not sure.  What's clear is that he's cramming far too much material into 11 pages, the characters never really come to life, and the whole thing fails to cohere.  Paco Medina doesn't seem to know how to handle this material, with some very cluttered pages struggling to accommodate everything.

The back-up strip has Hank returning home while he struggles to get used to being an ape.  This is a relatively unexplored area of the character's life - the transformation took place in a very short-lived run of Beast stories in Amazing Adventures in the early 1970s - and it's a nice area to home in on.  On the other hand, I don't recall the character ever having taken it quite this badly in previous stories. 

Basically, Hank regains his sense of self after being reunited with Jennifer Niles, his high school girlfriend, and seeing that she still recognises him for who he is.  An extremely token plot is involved.  Again, it doesn't quite work, partly because Hank's relationship with Jennifer is never adequately set up in the first place.  And anyone who does actually remember a character as obscure as Jennifer is also likely to remember (unlike the creative team) that Xavier wiped her memory, which kind of torpedoes the plot.

There are mildly interesting ideas in this issue, but they're not fully formed, and they don't really come across.  These are stories which could have worked in principle, but fall flat on the page.  Disappointing.

Rating: C+

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