IN THE WAKE
They say before things get better they inevitably get much worse. I've always hated that philosophy but this case does little to prove it wrong. Onslaught finally ended. Destroyed by the greater part of the Marvel superhero community. In the final confrontation,the enigmatic entity is battled by nearly every major hero in the Marvel Universe and was finally defeated by them all absorbing him into themselves. All but the mutants since by being created of a mutant...mutants jumping inside of him would only make him stronger. H'OK. So the X-Men stay behind and finally combine their powers to destroy Onslaught and his mass of non-X heroes. As with it's creation it's ending is just as contrived. Of course,they found a way for Scarlet Witch and Namor go in. Vision,who is a robot,also helped soak up Onslaught suggesting any object aside from living people might've worked. Yet the only solution Reed Richards,the smartest man on Earth,could come up with was to throw any hero not in a popular X-title(be they mutant or not) in to "die" absorbing the thing. Such is the level of storytelling here. Speaking of which,if you recognized that the faux pas in the Onslaught bonus was Psylocke reading Juggernaut's thoughts with his helmet on,give yourself 15 points.
Unfortunately,all did not become immediately well again with the passing of the plot device that plaqued Marvel for far too long. Aside from how badly Marvel as a whole was affected by this crossover,The Juggernaut's image had been decimated. As the tool used to make Onslaught what it was the hyping came at the expense of all the respect Juggernaut had earned before it. No more was he regarded as the force that could not be reckoned with who headlined the covers of anything he was in. Juggernaut fell from his high position on the totem pole and was now a grunt. With the Onslaught Universe no more his powers returned to being written correctly again for the most part,though in a number of stories Juggernaut was little more than a joke. How can someone nigh-invincible be a joke you may ask. Simple. All it takes is a little effort.
The Incredible Hulk #457:Juggernaut appearing again in the pages of Hulk? A classic match-up revisited? No. Instead of the two heaviest hitters going toe-to-toe in an what should have been one for the ages,we instead are treated to watch The Juggernaut pitted against a Celestial horseman of Apocalypse. Granted,the days of Onslaught are done so this is actually Juggernaut proper thank God. But Juggernaut is no match for Celestial power even on his best day. With Celestial empowering and armaments what was Hulk had now been transformed into War and humbled the Juggernaut. Although War didn't do The Juggernaut any harm it's the principle of the thing. The Celestial energy coursing about War seemingly on command even stopped Juggernaut's forward progress cold. To set up this humbling turn of events Juggernaut decides to gratuitously force War back across the desert a couple hundred yards for no particular reason. No fighting,no hitting. He just pushes him back. I guess to show off. This goes on for about a page. Then the energy kicked in and he is suddenly halted. And understandably dumbfounded by this.
Now there's nothing wrong with Celestial energy being capable of this as it's nature is unknown,but again,it's the principle. The Juggernaut was authoritatively overmatched. Even his calling card unstoppability wasn't sacred. Then right after the fight Hulk tore away the Celestial armaments and jumped away. Hulk was hyperaugmented solely for this one fight and back to normal immediately after it was over. Which means it being done served almost no other purpose than to knock Juggernaut around.
X-Men #70:The new look X-Men taking on what used to be the their greatest foe? Of course not. Juggernaut isn't good enough for such things anymore. He comes to the X-Mansion and is snubbed and at times ignored as if he were a minor nuisance below their concern. When he finally does get their attention they all take turns speaking to him as though he were a third rate loser. Magneto clone "Joseph" threatens threatens to kill him. Not the most plausible threat to someone like The Juggernaut but it's left to linger while Beast insults Cain so condescendingly you almost want to cry. Juggernaut doesn't respond to either since he's too busy looking frightened by the exclamation that there's a bomb in the mansion(...the Hell?). Then fourth rate loser Maggot threatens to have his slugs chomp into Juggernaut. But Juggernaut only laughs and walks away since he finds Maggot as the best and brightest of the new X-Men pretty funny. Can't say I don't echo that.
Uncanny X-Men #361:In this one Juggernaut's formidability is worked around yet again by having his powers stolen once more. Only this time it's in post-Onslaught fashion so naturally it's much less dignified. Juggernaut is for some reason this time dying from it unlike the other times this has happened and is staggering around with his body getting smaller and feebler. His armor is drooping over him making him look like a total clown. One would think he'd just take the armor off and oh,I dunno,put on something that fit. But I guess he wouldn't look as stupid then which seemed to be the whole point.
He starts fighting with the X-Men for a little bit before Gambit makes his return(which is what the issue was really about;Juggy was just comic relief I guess) and joins in. Gambit readies a card but Juggernaut weazes,passes out, and falls down like a drunk before Gambit even has to throw it. Gambit then retrieves the gem into which Juggernaut's power was siphoned and housed and returns it to him.
Nothing's a bigger boost for your ego and self-image than to have people you used to beat up regularly to save your life out of pity.
Uncanny X-Men #369:In this one we find out when Juggernaut's power was returned it was tainted with an evil outside influence. This influence takes over Juggernaut's mind and uses his immense power to tear his way through space-time into it's dimension. Black Tom enlists the X-Men to help free Cain from the control he was under. The team is thinned until only Professor X and Wolverine make it to Cain via his mind. In there they find that an entity is controlling Juggernaut by keeping him subdued with his worse fears. Cain is so frightened he's curled up under a stairway crying. After a pep talk from his step-brother and Wolverine while he sniffled before the both of them Cain pulls it together and retakes control of his mind. I don't know what's worse,rewriting his powers so he can be beaten by a plot device,or reducing him into a cringing heap.
I pray Juggernaut never appears in anything with an "X" in the title again for as long as I live. Just look at what's happened to him there the past 6 or 7 outings. So if getting saved by the X-Men just 8 months ago wasn't bad enough,now Juggernaut is reduced to tears in front of toughguy Wolverine and the man he hates more than anyone else on the planet while they save him too. It's not that Cain being crippled with fear isn't understandable here,mind you. Wolverine,Hulk,Batman,etc. have all reacted similar to being bombarded by their worse fears and been left crying like scared babies because of it. That's why they're called "worse fears". It's the fact that every time Juggernaut appears in an X-book post-Onslaught the plot always revolves around him being impotent,debilitated,or overall pathetic.
Eighth Day:A tidy if not very interesting little crossover in which Cain discovers he was destined all along to become The Juggernaut as part of a wager between mystic deities. Cyttorak's avatar,the Juggernaut,was to war with 7 other people(known as the Exemplars) empowered by other deities in an every-man-for-himself battle royale to prove which deity was supreme. The Juggernaut shows some gumption not seen since pre-Onslaught times and bucks the subservience to his benefactor,then proceeds to mow through every Exemplar in his way rather swiftly. The part that makes no sense to me about this whole storyline is that there is no way any single Exemplar could defeat the Juggernaut in combat since aside from being the Exemplar of Physical Strength he's also immune to physical force and they all had physical powers except for one. So the only way the Juggernaut could be taken out is if the Exemplars ganged up on him first so the psychic Exemplar could eliminate him. But here's the kicker:if they do that,then it's not every man for himself then which defeats the entire point of the whole wager. Whoops. I don't think anyone involved really thought the whole "Nothing can stop the Juggernaut" thing through first when coming up with this so the Juggernaut just ends up kicking all their asses.
Which lead to...
Avengers #24 & 25
After the Avengers and Spider-Man combined prove unable to defeat the Exemplars,Captain America manages to get them to see how they're being manipulated and they leave. Now left alone with the assembled Avengers,Spider-Man,and the NYPD special forces,Juggernaut out of gratitude for the help says he'll go quietly with the police. Saying since even all of the heroes and police together probably couldn't take him as powerful as they may be. Heh.
Just as being sacrificed to Onslaught lead to belittling stories as a result,an accurate portrayal such as this should in theory lead to back to the original treat a Juggernaut appearence used to be.
X-Men Forever:Talk about being out of place. Juggernaut is in this solely to set up the J2 storyline. He has no other visible purpose in the story and he's so unrelated to it that it hurts. His parts are meaningless,insulting and he's painted as a total loser to lead up to a dumb ending revelation. A bad idea since Juggernaut of our time/reality/timeline is on no such path as J2's father so one had to be created hurriedly within the series. The lack of any in-continuity lead up to make the story even somewhat fluid sticks out like a sore thumb and causes all kinds of wierd and unnatural character portrayals. 4 mutants from Earth(Jean Grey,Mystique,Toad,and Iceman) each representing something different about mutant progression are chosen by the Celestial ship named Prosh to go on a mission through time to help save the universe. Juggernaut was for some reason thrown in to represent humans' jealousy of mutants despite having power putting any mutant's to shame. Um,sure. He then does nothing but get transported exclusively to various low points and defeats throughout his past for nearly the whole series. Curiously skipping over any and all of his triumpths or good times. After this painfully misleading and selective portrayal of his life being nothing but mistakes he decides to become a good guy and signs up to work for the government with a "Ms. Yama". Yama being the woman whom Juggernaut would father J2 with in the J2 timeline. Real smooth transition that one. Attempting to alter mainstream characters to fit relatively distant and unlikely futures alone is bad enough in and of itself,but on top of that the potrayal was so forced it was like getting hit with a J2 brand sledgehammer. Fortunately with the J2 timeline defunct Juggernaut's sorry behavior throughout this series was retconned away faster than you could say "Man that story sucked.". We would soon learn Cain's strange actions here were all a grand scheme by Cain to get inside the government system to expand and further his criminal purposes. Crafty SOB he is at times.
Another pathetic X appearence but on the bright side my hunch that the 8th Day/Avengers appearences were signs that life for Juggernaut were finally returning to normal get reinforced by the end of this series. With Juggernaut toppling the 50-foot Stranger with one punch.
Though it actually comes out before X-Men Forever in real time,this story takes place after it continuitywise so The Juggernaut has already pulled the curtain on the Forever appearence by this issue.
Cyclops #1-2:For the love of God. My dread of Juggernaut appearing in another X-book proves still well warranted. In this little tale The Juggernaut teams up with Black Tom and they are sent to Alaska to kill Cyclops. It's all down hill from there. In classic post-Onslaught fashion The Juggernaut being arguably the single most invincible person on the face of the planet man-to-man did very little to help him against this eery X-writer insistence that he act like a cupcake despite his immense power. During the fight Cyclops blasts Juggernaut to no effect,then switches strategies and blasts a truck. The explosion hurts Black Tom. Juggernaut then picks up Tom's body and I'll be a son of a bitch if Juggernaut isn't crying. Black Tom's not dead or even hurt all that bad and comes to. Juggernaut's just holding him with tears streaming down his cheeks.
Anyway,Juggernaut then chases Cyclops only for Cyclops to blast the shallow ice under him and Juggernaut falls into the water. Cyclops then grabs Tom for negotiative leverage against Juggernaut whom he knew wouldn't be gone long from a dunk in icewater. Juggernaut re-enters the scene holding a a woman as a hostage of his own. Cyclops bluffs Juggernaut into dropping the woman by saying if Juggernaut didn't Tom would get his head blasted off. He then tells Juggernaut he'll let Tom go if he tells him who hired them to kill him. Juggernaut agrees and says it was a guy named Ulysses for 2 million dollars. Cyclops asks if it was only for the cash then why didn't Juggernaut just beat the money out of Ulysses. Juggernaut then says it was because Ulysses...scared him. *sigh* Cyclops suggests they just lie to Ulysses and say they succeeded in killing him. Juggernaut practically sucking his thumb asks what if Ulysses didn't believe them. To which Cyclops responds:"You're an indestructible killing machine. You figure it out.". Obviously I'm not the only one who sees the stupidity of a yellow streak when nothing can hurt you. Go fig.
I waited before summarizing this appearence since I wanted to hold out my disgust until the last issue to see if this was as bad as it appeared. I didn't know if Juggernaut's fear was warranted or not since Ulysses was an unknown. Ulysses appears later on in the series and we see he is only a whacked out Green Beret who can turn invisible and has enhanced strength and speed on the call of 10 times a normal man. Yep. For some reason post-Onslaught Juggernaut fears this. A painful,and most importantly,inexplicable personality shift for a man who can trade punches with the Hulk without a care and has fearlessly challenged the likes of Cyttorak and Eternity to a fight. The only positive about this story was that Juggernaut explains that his offbeat appearence in X-Men Forever was actually a scam.
Alrighty then,I've had about enough. If this is supposed to be the fate of The Juggernaut then it's time to move on. I was hoping it was just an aftermath that would get better with time but this type of depiction apparently has become the standard of how Juggernaut will be done from now on. I can stomach no more. I may like alot of characters and have a virtual collection of title runs,but one or two more Juggernaut appearences like this and I'm washing my hands of Marvel comics. I've come to expect better than this. Marvel's been bad for awhile and The Juggernaut was really the only thing keeping with them.
Defenders #10:Nothing special. The Juggernaut is part of a pack of villains conjured by the Headmen via Orrgo's power to battle the Defenders. The villains are all under somekind of trance and mindlessly(and far too briefly to be interesting) battle the Defenders. The only good part of this quick fight is Juggernaut holding Hulk strongman style in a bicep curl while Abomination punches Hulk in the stomach. The lesser powered Defenders then seize the idol which controls Orrgo and they command him to make the air around the villains hault to freeze them in place before making them all disappear. Chock full of thrills.
