{"id":5644,"date":"2020-09-24T22:20:37","date_gmt":"2020-09-24T21:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5644"},"modified":"2020-09-24T22:20:37","modified_gmt":"2020-09-24T21:20:37","slug":"juggernaut-1-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5644","title":{"rendered":"Juggernaut #1 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

JUGGERNAUT #1<\/strong>
“Picking Up the Pieces” <\/strong>
by Fabian Nicieza, Ron Garney & Matt Milla<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Juggernaut.<\/strong> The Juggernaut is Cain Marko, Professor X’s evil stepbrother, who became “unstoppable” after getting powers from a magical crystal. “Unstoppable”, in practice, tends to mean “gets zapped by a telepath” or “gets buried under concrete”, or “falls down a well” or some such thing – but he does<\/em> always come back in the end. He debuted in X-Men<\/em> vol 1 #12 way back in 1965, and this is his first miniseries, though he has had some one-shots over the years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the book was included on the X-books’ reading list and it does come from the X-office, it doesn’t have the normal Krakoa-era branding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Juggernaut smashes through a wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 2.<\/strong> Tribute to the late Joe Sinnott.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 3.<\/strong> A basic primer on where the Juggernaut stands going into this series. We’ll come back later to what he was actually doing in his last appearance, but this is a common thread in Juggernaut stories – he’s often a rather directionless character who has the power of an A-list villain but none of the direction and drive to really make use of it. He’s also been largely reformed for extended stretches in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 4-6.<\/strong> Juggernaut works for Damage Control and comes upon a superpowered squatter.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Juggernaut<\/strong> is wearing a new version of his costume. From his comments to D-Cel later, it sounds as though we’ll get that explained in due course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Damage Control<\/strong> is a company that does emergency rebuilding work after superhero battles, using unique hi-tech equipment. Originally they were played for comedy but they’re quite convenient to the Marvel Universe and wound up being used more widely. The two agents seen here are Maria Menklin<\/strong> and a guy called Prasad<\/strong>, both of whom seem to be new characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Nine Realms<\/strong> are Asgard and its related realms. It doesn’t entirely make sense for Prasad to talk about energy from the Nine Realms, since one of them is Midgard, i.e. Earth. Let’s assume he means one of the other Eight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Crimson Cosmos Dimension<\/strong> is the home dimension of the demonic Cyttorak, from which Cain gets his powers (via the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Dark elves, trolls, alien invasions, robot uprisings… you super-types are always making a hell of a mess.”<\/strong> Maria is referring to War of the Realms<\/em>, Empyre<\/em> and Iron Man 2020<\/em>, all recent events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 7-8.<\/strong> Flashback. Cain finds himself in the Crimson Cosmos without his powers.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the footnote explains, this picks up directly from Uncanny X-Men<\/em> vol 5 #21, part of the Matthew Rosenberg run. At that point, Juggernaut was a member of the makeshift X-Men team who remained behind on Earth while everyone else was off appearing in Age of X-Man<\/em>. In that story, General Callahan of O*N*E blocked Magik’s powers, which (for some reason) caused her demonic side to take control. The demonic Magik then stole the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak and teleported the de-powered Juggernaut away to who-knows-where. This, evidently, was “where”. Cain identifies it as Limbo, presumably meaning the demonic dimension Limbo that Magik rules – though it’s rather quiet for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the Juggernaut since Uncanny X-Men<\/em> vol 5 #21 – he was in the recent Punisher Kill Krew<\/em> miniseries. However, PKK<\/em> takes place immediately after War of the Realms<\/em>, and so it ought to come before Uncanny<\/em> #21 in Juggernaut’s personal chronology. No problem there. He’s also currently appearing in Amazing Spider-Man: The Sins of Norman Osborn<\/em>, which is a storyline in progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 9-16.<\/strong> Juggernaut encounters D-Cel.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

D-Cel has deceleration powers, so she can’t stop Juggernaut, but she can slow him down an awful lot. She’s trying to be left in peace, but she’s massively outclassed by Juggernaut. For his part, he seems to mean well and to be trying to steer a potential mutant in the right direction. (D-Cel insists later that she isn’t a mutant, and instead has a good old fashioned science accident origin.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 17.<\/strong> Juggernaut starts befriending D-Cel in the hospital.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Damage Control couldn’t even spring for Mt Sinai?”<\/strong> Bellevue is a public safety-net hospital. Not sure what D-Cel has against Mount Sinai Hospital, which seems to have pretty decent rankings<\/a>, but maybe this means more to New Yorkers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 18-19.<\/strong> Flashback: Cain reaches the Crossroads and leaves his old armour there.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Crossroads is a dimensional nexus introduced in Incredible Hulk<\/em> circa issue #300, and the Signpost is an established feature of it. Heaven only knows how Cain found his way from Limbo to the Crossroads. This is not my area of continuity at all, but as far as I know, the idea that you need to make a sacrifice to the Signpost in order to get a direction is new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 20-22.<\/strong> D-Cel persuades Juggernaut to take on the Hulk.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

RoxTube<\/strong> is obviously meant to be a version of YouTube operated by Marvel’s all-purpose evil corporation, Roxxon. Immortal Hulk<\/em> has already established that Roxxon has been moving into social media (though if you want to nitpick, that book called the service YouRoxx).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 23.<\/strong> Trailer. No mutants here, no Krakoan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. JUGGERNAUT #1“Picking Up the Pieces” by Fabian Nicieza, Ron Garney & Matt Milla Juggernaut. The Juggernaut is Cain Marko, Professor X’s evil stepbrother, who became “unstoppable” after getting powers from a magical crystal. “Unstoppable”, in practice, tends to mean “gets zapped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5646,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5644\/revisions\/5646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}