Spoiler Warning for Juggernaut #3
Juggernaut has always been one of Marvel's coolest characters. His unyielding strength makes his fights a spectacle to read and his moral ambiguity always keeps readers guessing about whether he's a hero or villain. Despite his popularity with longtime fans of Marvel comics, the one person who thinks he could be cooler is none other than Juggernaut's new sidekick, D-Cell. In Juggernaut #3 D-Cell admits that Spider-Man is much cooler than her mentor.
To fully understand the latest Juggernaut story by writer Fabian Nicieza and artist Ron Garney, readers first need to look all the way back to the '80s when Spider-Man cruelly defeated Juggernaut. That story saw Juggernaut trying to capture longtime Spider-Man ally Madame Web for his employer Black Tom. Though Spider-Man tries his best, nothing can stop Juggernaut's relentless march to his target. After Juggernaut realizes that capturing Madame Web would kill her, making her useless to Black Tom, he tries to escape only for Spider-Man to fight him. The two brawl in a construction site, and though Juggernaut is far stronger, Spider-Man's cunning allows him to trick Juggernaut into a pit of wet cement. He would be imprisoned there for an entire year.
In the present, this battle earned Cain Marko a 25 million dollar lawsuit from the construction company who ran the site he wrecked. As the company's lawyers present photo-evidence of the fight, D-Cell can't help but comment to her social media followers that Spider-Man is definitely the cooler of the two. She may end up taking that back though after Juggernaut summons his extra-dimensional armor to saves her and the entire courtroom from a sand villain trying to capture D-Cell for unknown reasons.
While D-Cell might think Spider-Man is the cooler character, what his fight with Juggernaut illustrates is how awesome both characters can be. Their fight back in the '80s has both heroes using their strengths and weaknesses to excellent effect. Juggernaut is stronger and tougher than Spider-Man, but Marvel's webhead is much smarter and uses that to trick Juggernaut. Still, this defeat doesn't make the former villain come across like a buffoon. Instead, Juggernaut is terrifying in those two issues. He is an unstoppable force of nature only brought down because of dumb luck on Spider-Man's part.
All of it illustrates what makes Juggernaut so compelling as a character. Once he was an unambiguous bad guy who had no problem kidnapping an old lady if it earned him a paycheck. Once he was an unstoppable monster. Now he's trying to clean his act and atone for his past. There's a reason Juggernaut gave up his old armor as it symbolized his old life of villainy. Juggernaut #3 shows that the unstoppable man is on his way to becoming a genuine hero.