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!
