Marvel Comics General

Does anyone remember when the Human Torch cucked Doctor Doom by doing his fiancé, Victorious before the wedding happened?

Like, Doom was even going to patch things up with Reed IIRC. But the Human Torch couldn't keep it in his pants, dooming the world.

That cover just reminded me of that.

Making it worse, Johnny was space married at the time

Is it Johnny if he isn't dumb and horny?

Was Doom actually going to make peace with Reed in that storyline before Johnny started being a creep?

Because that would make the whole thing even more funny.

Edited by RedHunter543 on May 11th 2024 at 3:45:08 AM

For context on that image last page, Johnny and Thing are working a blue-collar job and a journalist from a magazine comes to interview Johnny on his fall from glory from his teen heartthrob days.

When the journalist tears down Johnny as a failure and insults his mustache, Thing (who's been arguing with Johnny all issue) defends Johnny and calls him one of the best guys he's had the pleasure of being friends with and his mustache looks great actually.

I'm reminded of the scene in Dark Wolverine where Daken makes a crack implying Ben and Johnny are secretly gay lovers. Ben goes fucking ballistic to put it mildly.

Isn’t it always skirted around that Johnny's Bi anyways? Maybe they should just make it official.

I think that same run implied Daken and Johnny were lovers.

Edited by GateStarX on May 10th 2024 at 3:09:05 AM

So I got a look at the New Juggernaut, Justin Jin (or rather, read an article about his appearance).

....Weird that both of Cain's successors are Asian (well, Zane is half-asian, but still).

His predecessor was apparently Asian so Cain is the odd man out

Someone really liked using "J" when creating the character.

Apparently he's something of a deep cut-by-proxy; his grandfather, the Avatar of Cyttorak before Cain, appeared in a single issue in 2007, or so Marvel Wiki says anyway.

Huh.

Guess he's got more claim to being the new Juggernaut than we thought.

I also noticed that he was directly chosen by Cytorrak, which doesn't bode well, considering Cytorrak chooses his avatars so they can wreck shit.

Cain had to circumvent that in order to keep his powers, and Justin is apparently an inherently good guy who immediately uses the power to help people, so you have to wonder why he'd be chosen.

Undoubtedly, he'll be put in a position where he's mind controlled, or Cytorrak will try and manipulate him.

I forget, is Cyttorak evil, or just a god of destruction? Cause if its the second then he can still be a hero while destroying a lot of stuff.

On a related note I wish the Exemplers would have had more focus, as that seemed like a cool thing to explore.

Edited by GateStarX on May 10th 2024 at 8:20:52 AM

Nope he is evil to the core.

I wish Juggernaut wasn't retconned to only be as strong as Cyttorak willed him to be.

I liked the narrative that the wrong guy got the gem, that Cyttorak has accidentally created a potential enemy, and it is not a problem he can fix on a mere whim...admittedly I do still like that Cyttorak had those crimson bands as a fail safe. He made a mistake. He's not a complete idiot, well prepared for a Juggernaut turning on him, but he made a mistake nonetheless and really lucked out that it was Cain who stumbled on his gem rather than Charles.

He's a God, it does makes sense that he can control how strong his avatar is, or even depower them if he so wishes.

Except Charles was the one Cyttorak wanted to be Juggernaut. He wanted to combine psychic might with the Juggernaut power.

Cyttorak however was initially fine with Cain since Cain was a violent jerk who loved to wreck shit as the Juggernaut.

Edited by M84 on May 11th 2024 at 12:34:12 AM

I believe there's a What If where Chuck did become the Juggernaut, isn't there?

They resorted to launching him into space to get rid of him. He was that much of a problem.

Surprising Earth didn't explode or something, given how Marvel's What Ifs? tend to be.

"Wait Puck is supposed to be a HOCKEY puck? I thought he was named after the mythological creature, because he’s small and nimble." The largely-forgotten Lobdell run of Alpha Flight actually referenced it. Puck's daughter thought he was named after the the Shakespeare character, and he explained that, nope, he's small, fast, and hard. His classic costume is also black, which leans into that.

"Mantlo's run had a few odd moments I loved, but definitely some awful cringe. And some that's really not aged well." He introduced an autistic character. Neat! And then had her pretty much get over it. Not great! But yeah, that was one of the worst runs of Mantlo's career, I think.

"From the latest Fantastic Four, he's a post without context" So Johnny's actually serious about the moustache, huh? Well, OK, sure. I forget, have any of the Alex Ross covers shown Johnny flamed-down? I'd love to see Ross draw that 'stache.

That's all retcons though. Juggernaut actually teamed up with Doctor Strange in an attempt to takedown Cyttorak. Yes, Cyttorak had the means to restrain Juggernaut, but he originally had to actually go through the work of undoing Juggernaut's power up, like Galactus initially did too good a job making his first(and possible second) herald and made sure after Silver Surfer he could just snap his fingers if they got out of line, but with Surfer(and Fallen One) Galactus actually has to go through the process of undoing it all, and can't be bothered to.

I think I relate to why others like things the other way, it certainly explains Juggernaut's uptick in pathetic showings after he became a good guy, though my argument is that he never should have been that weak to begin with. He had weaknesses to exploit already. If you can target his internal organs directly, bypassing his armor/skin/bones, he can experience pain, be rendered unconscious even. His eyes can still be cut out, even if they do grow back. Powerful magic can even damage his armor/skin/bones. He only has two eyes, two ears and can only be in one place in one time. He's huge and can't swim! Juggernaut being weaker because he's on a good guy team is kind of lazy thinking to me.

It's so funny that Marvel treats Juggernaut like an RPG boss who joined your party and gets nerfed when he's on your team.

I can kinda understand it.

If they allowed Juggy to join at full power, he'd either solve every problem with raw brute strength, or they'd need to keep coming up with ways to keep him from instantly solving the problem with pure brute strength.

Of course, a creative writer can deal with that, but not every writer can be that creative.

That's why when he joins your party, it should be against a threat that allows him to really cut loose and kick ass.