Ready or ‘Naught, here he comes! Marvel’s Juggernaut has been around since the early days of Marvel’s Marvelous band of Majestic Mutants (Sorry – Just letting my inner Silver Age Stan Lee out!) debuting way back in X-Men #12. This new Title, complete with the required multiple covers, including at least a handful of homages to Amazing Spider-man #300, landed with a thud at my Local Comic Book Store two weeks ago. I only bought it because, quite frankly, Juggernaut is another long-running character that has never had a solo title.
Mostly everyone knows the story. Cain Marko, Charles Xavier’s stepbrother, is a mystically powered one-man wrecking crew. With his helmet on, he can withstand telepathic assaults and has gone toe-to-toe against some of the most powerful Marvel heavyweights, including The Incredible Hulk.
One of my favorite covers of the early 80s is Amazing Spider-man #230 during the Roger Stern and Jr.Jr. years. Juggernaut, at that time still teamed with Black Tom Cassidy, looks like a force of nature. With his Spidey sense screaming the Amazing Spider-man is shown swinging towards the gruesome image of his foe who is teeming with rage and unimaginable power. Knowing this, how could I not take a chance on this new series? I picked up the Skottie Young variant cover because, well, I tend to enjoy the simple and clean lines of his work much in the way I enjoyed Fred Hembeck in the ’80s.
Written by Marvel workhorse Fabian Nicieza with Ron Garney (Captain America, Daredevil) on art duties, the new title takes us to a more mature and introspective Cain Marko. We find him working with Damage Inc. using his considerable talents for good for a change. His life takes a strange turn when he discovers a young mutant girl with considerable powers in one of the derelict buildings he’s been assigned to level. The brash young girl has plenty of power and swagger so she attacks Marko. But as we all remember “NOTHING stops the …”
Generally, I find it hard to rate a single issue of a new series but this one checked off a lot of boxes for me. I enjoyed seeing an old character become more relatable and I enjoyed the overall flow of the story and the clean artwork. I give this issue a solid 4/5, hoping that the next few chapters continue to be similar page-turners and build on the momentum of the Premier Issue.
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