Gary Friedrich was an interesting 1960s comic book writer. Sometimes, he’d do really cool stuff, like creating Ghost Rider. Other times, he’d do really solid work with licensed-type properties like Frankenstein. And my favorite of his stories was the first version of “Hulk On Trial,” which would ultimately become a trope and lead to the incredible Planet Hulk story that’s soon to be part of a major Marvel movie (Thor 3).
His work on X-Men was short, but he did an interesting issue about the reading of Professor X’s will. Yeah, that’s Foggy Nelson as the attorney. All in all, these stories still don’t “matter”–but they’re better than most X-Men stories of late.
Foggy presides over the reading of Professor X’s will, and then Cyclops, being the douche that he often is, decides the team needs to break up. For some reason, and it’s not clear why, it’s at that exact moment that Juggernaut is pulled free from the crimson cyttorak dimension and appears in the mansion.
The first thing he does is beat up poor FBI liaison Fred Duncan. Then Jean takes him out.
They fight, but then just as suddenly Juggernaut is pulled back into the crimson cosmos–Professor X had a failsafe to put him back there if he got loose and wasn’t reformed yet.
Yeah, it’s just an excuse for a fight. But I like Juggy, so I don’t hate the story.
“All in all, these stories still don’t matter.” I beg your pardon-??? My good man, allow me to correct you, here- ALL stories featuring the awesome, Original X-Men “MATTER”, X-cept for the God-awful piece of shit that was issue#53!!! ( the “Blastaar”/Barry Windsor Smith disaster ) With the X-ception of aforementioned issue#53, the remaining sixty-five issues of the Original X-Men series reads like Shakespeare compared to the “X-Men” garbage Marvel has been producing the past three decades. Byrne’s awesome “X-Men: The Hidden Years” ( 1999-2001 ) was the last decent piece of “X-Men” material produced by the fatigued, woked-out “House of Ideas” in the last three decades. I have totally given up on all ‘X-Men’ and ‘Silver Surfer’ material from Marvel, since these two series have apparently hopelessly lost their respective ways. Which is why I rejoice when I can find a halfway decent back-issue copy of the ‘O. X-Men’ for a fair price at a comic-book show. I guess I need to reread this particular issue, since I certainly do not remember Cyclops beating up Fred Duncan. You think you’d remember a detail like that. Besides, isn’t beating up a Federal agent a legal felony-?? I need to learn how Mr. Cyclops beat that rap. It’s a good thing the ( mistakenly ) late Professor X knows magic, because without that mystic spell-MacGuffin to return the Juggernaut back into Limbo, this would have been the FINAL issue of ‘X-Men’! The Juggernaut is the one villain who is, simply, undefeatable by logical standards, barring some super-convenient deux ex machina to end his menace, as seen in this issue. The Hulk actually takes him down through sheer force of arm in ‘Incredible Hulk’#172, but I attribute that to the Hulk having an extraordinarily good day, and the Juggernaut having an exceptional rotten one. ( but, a win is a win ) Gary Friedrich was known primarily for his work on ‘Sergeant Fury and His Howling Commandoes’, ( which he did quite well ) but it’s nice to see he could write superhero material with equal facility. I agree- “B-“.