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Nov 21

Juggernaut #3 annotations

Posted on Saturday, November 21, 2020 by Paul in Uncategorized

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

JUGGERNAUT #3
“Stuck in the Past”
by Fabian Nicieza, Ron Garney & Matt Milla

COVER / PAGE 1. The Juggernaut replacing a broken statue of Lady Justice, and weighing sand in her scales.

PAGE 2. This issue’s kind-of-sort-of recap page is referencing Amazing Spider-Man vol 1 #230 (July 1982), in which Juggernaut is trying to abduct Madame Web, and winds up fighting Spider-Man on a construction site. Unable to actually hurt Juggernaut, Spider-Man defeats him by luring him into newly-poured concrete foundations which apparently go down 40 feet or so, leading him to sink to the bottom. He was indeed stuck there for quite some time – his next published appearance was in Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #183, two years later – though previous stories have given it as anything from a month to six months.

PAGES 3-5. The start of the trial.

Cain is being sued by Carmine Angelo, apparently on the ground that the fight with Spider-Man caused the release of all that cement, bankrupting Angelo’s construction company. There are a couple of problems with this, not least that it isn’t what happened in Amazing #230 – the cement was already poured.

There’s also the point that if the cement belonged to the company, then you’d expect the claim to be brought by the company or its liquidator, not by the company owner. But that’s fairly easy to explain away – suing the Juggernaut is not a very attractive option since he doesn’t have any money, so it makes more sense for the liquidator to sell the claim to an aggrieved shareholder. As for why it hasn’t timebarred by now, no doubt New York law has all sorts of exciting exceptions in the Marvel Universe.

Another possibility is that there’s something slightly dodgy about this claim, which is why it doesn’t match up with the events of Amazing #230. Carmine Angelo is a new character, but the name might be a reference to New York mobster Carmine Agnello.

Despite being notionally the A-plot, this whole trial thing is a bit underdeveloped. Obviously the main point of it is to confront Cain again with the things he did as a villain, but the bottom line is that he walks away without facing any real consequences for them.

Bernie Rosenthal is a supporting character from early 1980s Captain America who did indeed go off to become a lawyer, and occasionally shows up in that role. Makes a change from it always being Matt Murdock, Foggy Nelson or Jen Walters, anyway.

PAGES 4-6. Flashback: Cain arrives at the forge of Cyttorak.

This continues the parallel story of how Cain got his powers back after losing the Crimson Gem. In the previous issue’s flashback, he found a frieze in Budapest which depicted Cyttorak and a blacksmith working at some sort of forge. Somehow or other, he’s traced that forge to North Korea. The smith turns out to be a zealot who has found a way to bring the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak to Earth in corporeal form, but who was hoping to be rewarded by becoming the Juggernaut himself.

The Crimson Bands of Cyttorak are a common spell used by Doctor Strange, which just summons up a bunch of red bands to encase an opponent. Cyttorak was mentioned first in that context, before Juggernaut was introduced a year or so later.

PAGES 7-16. Juggernaut fights Quicksand.

Quicksand is a Thor villain. So far as her powers are concerned, she’s basically the same as the better known Sandman. As far as I’m aware, she doesn’t have any previous history with the Juggernaut. Despite that, Cain knows her, and apparently knows her real first name (which I don’t think has been given before). D-Cel assumes that they met in prison, but Cain doesn’t actually tell us. Cain recognises that Quicksand is acting out of character, but considering that she’s using German words, that’s not a hugely astute observation. As we establish later, Quicksand is under Arnim Zola’s control throughout this sequence, so her own character isn’t especially important to anything that happens.

D-Cel. Quicksand has been sent to capture D-Cel, who she describes as “the mutant child”. D-Cel strenuously denies being a mutant, but the two Damage Control staff mention that they’ve scanned her, and she is.

We don’t know why D-Cel would be lying about this, or why it would matter – but when she first appeared in issue #1, she took great offence to Cain assuming she was a mutant. When pushed, she claimed that she got her powers in a “science accident” and changed the subject.

PAGES 17-18. Flashback: Cain the bands and they become his new armour.

They evidently never did this for the smith, so Cain reasonably assumes that Cyttorak wants him back.

PAGES 19-20. Cain settles the case.

This settlement doesn’t really make sense – why is the sand etc Cain’s to give, and what use are they to the plaintiff if he’s already lost his company?

Technetium 99m is the most commonly used medical radioisotope, which I assume is what Niket means when he says it’s “the most commonly employed radioelement”.

Arnim Zola is a Nazi mad scientist villain who dates back to the late 1970s, when the “Nazi who went into hiding” trope still made chronological sense. Still, he’s a cyborg, so he keeps on going. He has no particular history with the Juggernaut, and the private prison company Absolution Solutions is also new. More of him next issue, no doubt.

PAGE 21. Trailer page.

Bring on the comments

  1. Omar Karindu says:

    This is especially odd given that Nicieza used ASM #230 once before in his Avengers Forever-esque X-Men Forever series, the in-continuity that Paul did continuity checking for. (Not to be confused with the Claremont one.)

    ASM #230 gets referenced somewhat often where the Juggernaut is concerned. Marvel Team-UP #150 acts as a direct sequel to it, and there was also a sequel story by Roger Stern and Lee Weeks during the period when Amazing Spider-Man had the “thrice-a-month, rotating writers” set up.

    More generally, it seems like most efforts at “back to basics” with the Juggernaut go back to his original appearance in the Silver Age, ASM #230, and/or Juggy’s appearances in Uncanny #182 and #194 where he was given a broadly more sympathetic characterization.

  2. Douglas says:

    As to limitation issues:
    This handy chart on the NY Courts website (https://www.nycourts.gov/courthelp/goingtocourt/SOLchart.shtml) sets out relevant limitation periods for various causes of action. If the relevant tort is property damage, the limitation period would be three years: Civil Practice Law & Rules art 2 s 214(4) (https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/CVP/214).

    This, obviously, raises the question of “how do limitation acts apply in a floating timeline?” So presumably there’d first be an interlocutory contest for Court and lawyer alike to work out “how much time has passed since ASM #230”, an extremely complicated question.

  3. Chris V says:

    I don’t think people living within the Marvel Universe are able to realize the distorted time relativity under which they live.

    They would have to have some sort of concept of time for their own lives. They’d be able to say exactly how long ago ASM #230 occurred within their own universe.
    They wouldn’t be able to recognize how that timeframe keeps growing more compressed.

    Otherwise, that would be one messed up world…I know I slept for eight hours last Wednesday, but now I realize a week later, I only slept for three hours on that night.

  4. Chris V says:

    Imagine trying to explain birthdays.
    We had your second birthday two years after you were born. Now we realize we had your second birthday a number of years before you were even born.

    Jail sentences would be complete Hell. No wonder villains keep escaping.
    “I was sentenced to four years in jail. I served four years, but then was told that those four years were really only one year. Every time I get close to finishing my sentence, it seems like I’ve served even less time! What type of Hell is this?”

  5. The Other Michael says:

    When I saw Quicksand (a pile of sand animated by a human consciousness) speaking German, my immediate thought was she’d been somehow possessed by Swarm (a pile of bees animated by a human consciousness.)

    I think Nazi bee-sand would have been way weirder and cooler than Arnim Zola.

  6. Ben says:

    Heh, I also thought it was Nazi bee sand for a second.

  7. Luis Dantas says:

    @Chris V: gives the name “Sinister Syndicate” a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?

  8. Luis Dantas says:

    Also, “Sandswarm” has a nice ring to it.

  9. Si says:

    Oh, is that where The Technet get their name from? Well there you go.

  10. Jerry Ray says:

    Add me to the “thought of Swarm” list.

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