In these two issues, we meet Juggernaut, Cain Marko, for the first time, and we see Charles Xavier’s childhood.
Issue #12 is a great issue—we don’t see Juggy until the very end, in the panel above.
Instead, we get a something-wicked-this-way-comes story with a horror vibe. The team are in the mansion, fortified, and they watch as a dark figure keeps looming forward, breaking through each area of security…
Stan Lee didn’t usually borrow much from the horror genre–but Jack Kirby had done quite a few horror and sci fi books by this point in his career, so I suspect Kirby had a lot to do with the storyline and pacing on this issue.
We also get some classic Lee/Kirby teen angst: As a boy, Professor X’s father died and he went to live with the Markos, where the future Juggernut was a bully.
That’s classic Kirby, drawing the face-slap trick. Incidentally, Jack Kirby hung with this book for eleven issues, but by this one he is just doing layouts. For this issue, Alex Toth did the finished pencils, but it would be different bullpen artists here on out. I’m still considering this part of the Stan-and-Jack run, but Jack’s artistic influence is less present.
Cain Marko is in fact a mutant, but his powers came from the gem of Cyttorak–often invoked by Doctor Strange–which he found in Vietnam.
Then, in issue #13, the team takes on Juggernaut.
And he creams them.
Until the team finally gets smart. His helmet stops Professor X from simply mindblasting him, so the team rips it off…
Then Professor X zaps the enemy.
It seems clear at this time that Juggernaut is not a mutant. That was a retcon which came in the near future.
Guest starring was Johnny Storm, and Professor X mind-erases him so he won’t know about The X-Men.
Seems like X is messing with peoples’ brains nearly every issue.
In the end, all but Jean are wounded, so we get a little sexist closing panel:
Also: The news is out. Mutants are a menace!
I believe that this is the only Marvel Comic that the legendary Alex Toth ever drew. That’s a shame. Between his legendary work on both Hanna-Barbara’s legendary 1967-1970 “Fantastic Four” cartoon, and his subsequent work on that same company’s 1970’s “The Super Friends”, this man was a GOD to me. I can only assume that he only had time to draw one Marvel Comic in his entire career because he was on his way in the field of animation. I honestly cannot imagine what either Hanna-Barbara’s “Fantastic Four” or “Super Friends” would have looked like without the talents of the one-and-only Alex Toth! RIP, amigo!
Came across this while I was looking up talk of Cain Marko’s X-gene… but I’ve only found evidence so far of him being an X-gene “carrier” rather than an actual mutant – he has no mutation himself, but could conceivably father a mutant child. The powers he has are all Cytorrak, baby.
Mister Sinister also messed with his genetics as a kid during Project: Black Womb along with Xavier and Carter Ryking, so that he could turn them into copies of himself upon his death… Ryking died when this was activated because he didn’t have an X-gene at all, but the reason Cain wasn’t activated was that Cytorrak protected him from being changed (which means that if The Crimson One hadn’t intervened, Marko would have been changed because of his inactive-but-still-there X-gene).
I think the most interesting question is what Cain Marko’s mutant ability would be if his X-factor ever actually activated instead of him finding the Gem, and would he still be a villain with less-desttuctive powers or try to atone for his bullying childhood…?
Also, in his initial origin story shown here, Cain and Charles were both drafted for the Korean War, not the Vietnam War – Marko found the gem and became Juggernaut years before this story took place but the US had only committed ground troops in ‘Nam about 10 months before this issue hit the shelves (for reference, it was the M*A*S*H War rather than the Full Metal Jacket War). I can’t blame you since I used to make the same mistake, but there’s enough confusing information on the Internet already so I felt it needed to be pointed out! lol
Thanks for all the details. I guess I need to read more carefully but…There’s only so much time in the day!