Originally Posted by Sleezy
Grant Morrison shrunk the team, and gave each character a singular, unique personality. For the first time, I felt like these were real people, and not superheroes with stuttering dialogue. Beast, being the topic of discussion, started to show his feelings about his condition - his insecurities, his weaknesses. Morrison began to challenge him finally, not just with trying to find a cure or something, but with real issues that he couldn't do anything about. When a writer does that, the characters suddenly have a real, human (or mutant) purpose. While before Beast was the go-to scientist to destroy the somethingorother virus (which is the dramatic equivalent of turning on a light when it's dark), now Beast does things for his X-mates because he WANTS to, because he CHOOSES to, because he possesses a personality that makes that possible.
Grant Morrison's E for Extinction was fantastic for the X-men, and especially for beast. However, Beast's best work (an opinion shared by all of his fans) was his avengers/uncanny days when he was transformed into the digressive blue species. The shots of beast seem to be the still simple cliche of the intensely smart and laughing yet menacingly looking humble creature. However, we slowly see the development of someone that was needed and someone that was complex and self conscious and almost unfairly brutalized for his existence.
Grant Morrison essentially took what we knew about beast and put it in the star role. Several fans of beast were kind of sick at the patronization that Beast went through in the comic books, however, and many more were quite angry.
The bottomline is that New X-men was nice, an addition to Beast's library. But it is not his defining moment in comics, nor his most popular. Beast's apperance wasn't forced by these comic books,not in the least.
If you would like to correct your ignorance on beast, check out the uncanny x-men or x-force days. Beast being an important character with multiple angles is provided in these comic series. E for Extinction was just harping on the fact.
I still do not know one beast fan to this day that quotes E for Extinction as the best work done on beast in terms of his development as a character. It will reach the top ten, but never the top, because it is just what we already knew condensed into smaller versions of the beast.
Beast as a Major character happened much earlier than 2001, but I'm sure you've only been reading comics in the 90s, when he was neglected, so an uninformed opinion such as yours would be acceptable. But it should also be correctable. go back to the 70s for the best of beast.