Leadership Leanings

Before he began vying to lead the Defenders, Beast gained some practical experience in X-Men #137. During a showdown against the Imperial Guard, the mutant heroes split into two teams, with Beast leading Colossus, Storm and Wolverine. While Beast had demonstrated his ingenuity on plenty of occasions, this may have been his first time acting as a group leader.

Introduced in X-Men #107, the initial Imperial Guard consisted of thinly veiled stand-ins for the Legion of Superheroes from DC Comics. Not until #137 did the Imperial Guard add a handful of unique members.

This panel from X-Men #137 (Sept. 1980) shows the mutants' first encounter with Warstar, a symbiotic addition to the Imperial Guard.