What If? Beast and Thing had continued to mutate. These stories rarely end well, but Thing’s does. Thing ends up cured, and Alicia’s blindness gets cured as well.
Not so for Beast, who ends up savage. He crawls back to Professor X for help, who dumps him in the savage land.
And a third story, not on the cover, has Galactus freeing Norrin Ladd from being Silver Surfer.
I agree with your assessment of the conclusion of the ‘Beast’ story- the X-Men’s abandonment of their star pupil to the tender mercies of the Savage Land runs absolutely totally contrary to everything I ever learned to believe about the X-Men. And we are given to believe that THE ANGEL came UP with this hockey-puck of an idea???? Oh, sure!! Why wouldn’t the X-Men, instead, simply incarcerate Hank in the bowels of the mansion as they did with Morbius following their capture of the Living Vampire in ‘Marvel Team-Up’#4 ( at least until Morbius escaped in ‘Adventure into Fear’#20 ) The infamous, notorious “sub-basement” of the mansion from which the Professor retreated to in order to prepare a defense against the impending Z’Nox invasion ( as related in ‘Uncanny X-Men’ #65 ) would have been the ideal place for this purpose, while the Professor consulted with all the great scientific minds of the world- including Mr. Fantastic and the Black Panther-to at least TRY to find a cure for his most beloved student!! It’s questions like this that make me wonder why am I not writing these things-???? Grade: “C”