Beast World: Infestation, Political Power and Decision Making
The Beast World Titans comic book event provided a story full of danger and action as well as surprisingly thought provoking reflections on real life political and moral dangers.
A good comic book is fun and exciting. A great comic book adds a larger significance. It shouldn’t need to explicitly reference real life problems, but should provide alternative perspectives and opportunities for insightful reflection.
The DC comic book event featuring the Titans, Beast World manages to take an admittedly ridiculous premise and makes it exciting, emotional and relevant.
The story is unashamedly focused on action. There are a ton of beast transformations and great opportunities for the heroes to go up against any number of new dangers.
What more can you ask from a comic book? Funny you should ask. We also want something relevant. Without too much moralizing or exposition, we should be able to see the links between the story and our own lives and our experience of the real world.
The most obvious element with Beast World is infestation and contagion. After years of COVID, we’re not going to be able to get away fears of infection any time soon. Which is fair enough. It takes time to process what has been a dramatic and challenging event in our lives. Thankfully, Beast World does it will visually appealing transformation of people and heroes into animals. Batman turns into a Wolf! Awesome.
The response of the heroes is exactly what we experienced: Treat the infected, protect ourselves. But there is also the heart-breaking scenes of heroes being faced with an infected loved one. Batwolf and Nightwing brought a tear to my eye.
But Beast World doesn’t stop with infestation.
In the face of the contagion, it takes the opportunity to look at the problems of political power and complexity of decision making. The two elements are connected. In some ways, a matter of cause and effect. In some ways, about bad decisions for good reasons. In other ways about corruption and manipulation by opportunists taking advantage of the suffering of others.
Faced with numerous people struck down by the infection of a transformation into beasts creates the danger of the hordes of beasts attacking people who have not been infected and destroying property and everyday lives.
How does Beast World do all this and provide action? Four elements illustrate the effectiveness of the story.
The Set-Up
The event starts with a massive piece of misdirection. And by massive we really mean massive. An destructive intergalactic evil, Necrostar, is released from its prison and threatens all life on Earth. Not only is the threat huge, but the alien is as big as a continent.
From the beginning, it is obvious this is going to be a team-up event and involve a number of superheroes. The set-up is clear and doesn’t take too much explanation, but it isn’t the danger that is going to be driving force of the event.
All the characters are totally focused on ways of defeating Necrostar, as you might expect from the magnitude of the danger, and are willing to put themselves at risk to defeat Necrostar.
It’s no spoiler to tell you Beast Boy pushes himself to the limit in order to combat Necrostar. Specifically, Beast Boy transforms himself into the intergalactic alien, Starro to push Necrostar back and allow it to be imprisoned.
With all the heroes focused on Necrostar and putting themselves at risk, they make themselves vulnerable to the opportunists. The end of the first issue then presents an important villain (but arguably not the only villain) in the form of Doctor Hate.
The Danger
The initial danger of Necrostar is only one element in Beast World. Which, if you think about it, is pretty impressive.
The danger results from opportunists taking advantage of the vulnerability of others as they put themselves at risk to save other people.
Here is where we have political manipulation and corruption. The initial danger was not the result of Doctor Hate, but Doctor Hate was waiting for the right time to strike and, when Beast Boy is vulnerable, Doctor Hate warps his transformation into Starro which creates a new danger.
Specifically, when Beast Boy (in his Starro form) returns to Erath, he releases an infestation of little Starros that transform people into beast forms of themselves.
While Doctor Hate is a danger, the characters facilitates the greater danger of Beast Boy’s infestation. The associates of Doctor Hate (Amanda Waller and Peacemaker) then use the danger they created as a way of further manipulating power and resources.
The heroes are initially focused on Necrostar and then their time is focused on the beast transformations. In the background lurks the danger of Doctor Hate and Amada Waller who create more problems.
The Opponent
Using Necrostar as an initial opponent who appears to be the big bad, but is only an appetizer, is impressive. As a reader, you spend the first issue totally focused on Necrostar and are then surprised to find that Necrostar isn’t the man opponent.
Doctor Hate provides a supervillain focus with supernatural powers and an appropriately intimidating outfit. Doctor Hate also provides continuity from DC’s previous comic book event, Knight Terrors.
While the intentions of Doctor Hate are made obvious by the character’s name, the other villains provide a more complex opposition to the Titans. Amanda Waller and Peacemaker’s action appear to be focused on manipulating the problem of the beast infestation (something they created in their association with Doctor Hate).
There isn’t a big scheme or a carefully laid out plan, more a great deal of preparation and a clear intention (destroy superheroes) with an opportunist approach that has no problem preying on the vulnerability of others.
This is a welcome relief in many ways. There are too many stories where the secret plans of the villain are revealed at the end with a great deal of explanation and we are expected to believe they have been planning everything all the time, but right at the end they get defeated.
Amanda Waller and Doctor Hate certainly have clear intentions and are more than capable of warping events to their objectives, but they are reacting to situation and prey on the vulnerable, which the reader can view as a more familiar set of circumstances.
Actions of the Heroes
The final element the story uses to providing thoughtful reflection on our lives is the action of the heroes.
From the beginning, the heroes are willing to put their lives in danger to protect others.
Amanda Waller does a good job of presenting bad deeds for good reasons. Her approach to the millions of mutated people turned into beasts is to eliminate them. Her reasons are multiple. It gives her a huge amount of power, it shows the heroes to be incompetent and, of course, it solves the massive threat of having millions of mutated beast people attacking non-mutated beast people.
For the heroes, their actions have good reasons and there is some complexity of decision making. This does create a little more dialogue than action, but it adds an element of challenge to the story. The heroes have great power. Cyborg is able to travel and transport others to any part of the universe. He is also able to command all computer systems on the planet including all defense systems. When the government (influenced by Waller) gives power of the military to Waller’s organization, the heroes have a tough decision. Do they let innocence people (admittedly transformed into beasts) get killed or take control of the military systems targeting those people?
In many stories, there is a clear villain and all the hero needs to do is oppose everything the villain does. In Beast World, the villain does not reveal themselves until the very end.
Is Beast World going to be remembered in the same breath as the Death of Superman or Crisis? Probably not. But it is a good read and provides great fun, gives us emotional scenes that add depth to the characters and makes us think about our own lives, what we’ve experience and what we face.
Pick up your copy of DC’s Summer event Knight Terrors for the origin of Doctor Hate and the set-up for Beast World (this is a paid affiliate link and as an Amazon Associate I will earn a small income from qualifying purchases, but won’t cost you any more).