Amazing Adventures (1970 series) #11

Late at night at the Brand Corporation offices, a nervous security guard named Bennie is unaware he is being stalked by a gray and hairy beastlike creature. When Bennie reaches the genetics lab, he uses a device to melt the lock and then the Beast drops on him, battering him around but Bennie, going mad, fires his gun, wounding the Beast. Then soldiers, alerted by an alarm, arrive and exchange gunfire with the guard while the Beast hides inside the laboratory and fingers the combination that allows him access to the private lab of Professor Henry McCoy where he discovers the time has run out and his metamorphosis is permanent….

Henry McCoy, the X-Men member called the Beast, was the first of the team to graduate from Professor Charles Xavier’s school for mutants and his teammates wished him well as he moved on to his new life as a genetics researcher at the Brand Corporation. Arriving at work on his first day, Hank was greeted by the man in charge, Grant, and shown around the facilities and introduced to his assistant Linda Donaldson; he also met Professor Maddicks, the chief researcher, a hostile fellow who did not want Hank’s help. Over the weeks that followed, Hank worked hard and his relationship with Linda turned into a romance so he danced over the rooftops in his X-Men uniform, with the confidence he never knew as an adolescent. Hank began studying his own genetic structure and soon discovered the hormonal extract, the chemical cause of mutation. He went to inform Grant but overheard Maddicks plotting with others to break into Hank’s lab at midnight. He knew he had to stop it but he couldn’t allow himself to be recognized so he decided to mutate himself, being careful to return in an hour for a second dose, lest the mutation become permanent. He drank the extract and turned into a hairy gray monster and so went after the bad guys….

And now he has discovered that he lost track of time and his hideous new form is permanent, all because he was trying to prove some vague point in his mind. Blaming Maddicks for his plight, he hunts the man down, finding him under guard by the soldiers, Bennie having confessed before he died from bullet wounds. Beast smashes the door down and fights off a squad of soldiers, discovering he can quickly recover from a gunshot wound. He grips Maddicks by the throat but stops himself from killing the man, realizing he himself is the only one to blame for the tragedy. He flees and so does not see what happens next. Maddicks is approached by Agent Nine of the Secret Empire, there to punish him for his failure and take his place. She shoots the pleading scientist and we see: Agent Nine is Linda Donaldson….