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I’m not a big fan of Juggs being a good guy. The X-Men don’t have many great classic villains left. That being said, “embracing his bad side to take down the Hulk” sounds like a really lame way for him to change sides again…

Honestly, I’d rather keep Juggernaut ambiguous, rather than evil or good. I actually liked the status quo that Fabian Nicieza set up for him at the end of X-Men Forever: a bounty hunter working off his jail time. I think that works better for his character.

I agree with Cronin and Astrozombie. I think Juggernaut works alot better as a villian then as a watered down good guy. But, it does seem like taking down the Hulk is a pretty lame reason for him to change back.Plus,I always liked that it took almost all the X-Men to stop him from doing some evil sh*t. But, Spiderman just lured him into a construction site and poured wet cement on him and that was it.

Deathstroke not evil? Really?

Reread The Judas Contract and consider this question: how old is Terra?

Deathstroke is an evil manipulative bastard.

But then again, I think The Punisher works best as a Spidey villain.

Well… the X-MEN try to BEAT him.
Spider-man was just trying to figure a way to STOP him.

That’s easier, I’d imagine, since it’s not as definitive a need for POWER.

Plus, SPidey’s always been shown as more of a think on his feet, improvisational” fighter.
The X-MEN are always “WE MUST WIN” all the time.

Also, Juggernaut wasn’t actually FIGHTING Spider-Man.
He was just walking and letting Spidey take the brunt of the rubble and stuff.

When the X-men and Juggy go at it, it’s a melee.

ALL that said, Juggernaut really should be a villain.
His “I am jealous, and therefore hate my step-brother” reason is lame, but a “I am UNSTOPPABLE, so why should I do what I want?” line of thought is more appropriate.

~P~
P-TOR

that’s true P-TOR and I totally agree that I’m unstoppable is the best reason for him to be evil.I know some characters are improved by adding something more complex to them then “I like to smash stuff.So, stay outta my way.” But,not the Juggernaut.Leave that complexity for the Hulk

I really liked the Deathstroke that appeared in his solo comic, and this current EEEEEVVILLL!!!! version is a disappointment.

If not outright Snidely Whiplash evil, I always thought Juggernaut might not hurt little kids or eat puppies; but wouldn’t be above leveling a city block while knocking over a convenience store. Not a great guy, then.

Some villains, like the Wrecking Crew, or the U-Foes, or the Absorbing Man, should continue to have no redeeming qualities. Remember when Peter David made the Abomination a sympathetic character? That was a great story and all, but it kind of took him out of play as a villain. Then they had to retcon Bommy into Betty Banner’s killer, and it was a big mess to get him back as a bad, bad guy.

Conversely, the Rhino’s had tons of sympathetic touches added to him: his family in one of the Deadly Foes of Spider-Man series, being stuck in his Rhino costume, getting super-intelligence and realizing being smart means being unhappy; yet he’s still a good villain. Why he still works, when other baddies get broken that way, I’m not sure.

I’m pretty much in opposition to you on all of those.

While I think Emma’s developed pretty well as a good guy, she was one of the real big bads in the 80s in a very pervasive way. I’m not sure I can think of too many female villains that were used more wickedly than her.

I like Juggernaut best in the middle, as a very blue collar sort of villain (we agree on that). There’s an issue of Thunderstrike, of all things, that comes to mind, which I remember being very well done. The stuff Chuck Austen did with him was the best stuff in his run but that’s saying so very little.

Deathstroke’s nobility is probably my single favorite thing about the Wolfman/Perez New Teen Titans. My single favorite comic ever is probably the one where he and Gar sit down and have coffee. Insane Slade has been a big disappointment of the last few years, especially considering how well Johns handled both the Rogues and Black Adam.

The single worst way to make a bad guy turned good bad again is mind control. So I really didn’t like what they did with Sandman. I also think it’s an incredible cop out and a waste what Johns did with the Rogues. Some things, like James Jesse working hard to redeem himself in order to avoid hell and the eventual revenge of Neron are just too fun to write off with “The Top did it.” Honest character development is almost always better.

As for Magneto, the whole crux of the character is the fact that in some ways he’s right.

It’s the same with Doom. I’m so much more interested in a Doom cruelly but lovingly ruling a repressed but endlessly utopian Latveria than one that is utterly petty and inhuman when it comes to Reed Richards. There’s just so much more shades of grey there.

I never liked Juggs as a hero because it destroyed an iconic, classic villain.

However, I DO like the idea of Juggs getting over his hatred of Xavier.

But I don’t think he needs to be made a hero for that. Like others have said, he should have the, “I can do anything I want because I’m unstoppable” attitude, which while not making him evil, effectively keeps him a villain.

The current portrail of the “villians as heroes” thing is brilliantly shown in the current Thunderbolts run. We have actually reformed Songbird, “I was never really bad in the first place” Radioactive Man, “I’m only a villian because someone said I am” Speedball/Penance, “I’ll call myself a hery because it looks good in my bid for power” Moonstone, and a couple of “I’m only a hero because the media say I am” villians in Venom & Bullseye.

The whole villian/hero dynamic is hot right now, but it can’t be pulled off by just anyone. Venom & Bullseye are clearly NOT heroes in T-Bolts, but the team dynamic & writing work.

Ya know… I thought I had a point in relation to the Juggernaut thing when I started typing, but I kinda lost it along the way. I must be older than I feel.

The whole Deathstroke as super-badass thing in Identity Crisis is just one more reason why Identity Crisis was horrible.

I don’t care how fast he moves, how are we supposed to think that someone who cane move at something like the speed of light couldn’t see a sword coming at him?
I don’t care how much will he has, we are supposed to think he can use a Green Lantern’s ring against the GL when no one else — even former GLs have been shown as being able to do that?

Stupid stupid stupid.

Dr. Doom: Well, y’see, Reed, I was really just angry at my father. I was lashing out at you. It’s…taken me a lot of time to heal myself. THAT’s what this mask hides, it hides my feelings.

Darkseid: I just wanted a Red Ryder BB gun.

Doomsday: Play!

Ultron: You humans are just so adaptable! I really feel insignificant going up agianst you. I’m just a jealous guy, as Lennon said. Music — there’s something else I’m all thumbs at.

Red Skull: I was young, I made some mistakes.

Pengiun: I blame the sauce.

I think the jury’s still out on the status of the Trickster (something they’ve been playing with in Countdown). Captain Cold and Heatwave, while they’d apparently reformed for a while, had never really been that good at it, and Pied Piper had never been that much into villainy in the first place. However, while the Top story did seem to show Trickster un-reforming at the end, I can totally see that as a double-bluff to try to put the other Rogues off their guards. (Anyone who takes the actions of a guy named “The Trickster” at face value deserves what they get, anyway.)

“This is a dude who tried to nuke the entire WORLD!!!”

There was no logic to early Silver Age Magneto. One issue he wants to be King of the world and have his own country the next he wants to exterminate all life on Earth mutant and human and the next he is hearing voices in his head telling him to kill the X-Men.

Early Magneto left an “Omega Nega Hydrogen bomb” in NY City to nuke Thor. Early Magneto put the X-Men in a hot air balloon that was designed to go all the way around the world before falling down and killing them.

The notion that Magneto shouldn’t be an antagonist has little to do with if the character should be considered bad or good. I prefer what Claremont created. Two people with different philosophies on how to protect mutantkind dividing the two of them, but neither of them being labeled good or evil.

Re: Deathstroke stabbing the Flash: Why does everyone always forget the land mines that were exploding all around Wally in his run? Deathstroke set it up so he had the choice of getting stabbed or getting blown up… which was clever of the mercenary.

As for the Green Lantern Will bit, well, we’ve seen Hal control a ring someone else was wearing from a much farther distance than Deathstroke did. It wasn’t a terrible plan at all. It even accounted for Kyle’s ring not working unless it was on his finger, which was nice. He just underestimated Kyle Rayner, which, honestly, has been done so often it should be an Olympic event.

Juggernaut’s motivation has never really been at all solid since at least the middle of Claremont’s run. I remember in Uncanny #183, Claremont had maybe the best Jugernaut battle ever and it was really just ’cause Colossus was being pissing over his Secret Wars affair/Kitty drama and Juggs wasn’t being gentlemanly. In the end, Wolverine gave him a pass and Juggs paid for the damages to the bar. It was awesome, but I could never see Juggernaut as an iconic, classic villain. He may have been an iconic, classic villain in the sixties, but I suspect that eroded in the ’70s and was obliterated by the ’80s.

I like Juggernaut as the guy who does what he wants and goes where he wants, because he can.

He IS the 800-pound gorilla.

Screw “hero” or “villain”.

Given how curvy Juggernaut’s costume is, I agree with Brian that he should not be “on the side of the angles.”

Heh.

I’m of the opinion that a complex character is always more interesting than a one-note villain. For that reason alone, I much prefer the Deathstroke that Marv Wolfman wrote from 1980 through the mid-1990s to the Deathstroke that we’ve seen since the beginning of the current Teen Titans series.

Evil? Yes, when he feels it’s necessary or efficient. And he’s a killer — it’s hard to get around that. But he wasn’t evil for its own sake, and there were lines he wouldn’t cross.

That all changed when he showed up in “A Kids Game” having killed Wintergreen, stuffed his head, and put it up on his wall as a trophy. Okay, that was technically Jericho, but it still marked the end of the old, interesting Deathstroke, and the beginning of the new, kill-an-entire-city Deathstroke.

And that’s why I was so gratified to see the conclusion to “Titans East,” where we learn that the entire purpose of the team of villains he put together was to force Rose and Joseph to bond with the Titans, giving them a family, because family was the one thing he couldn’t give them himself. Here, for just a few pages, was the old Deathstroke.

One of the odd things about post-Claremont X-Men is how the one villain he devoted himself to redeeming to some degree, Magneto, became a one-note ranting maniac, while the ones he really tried to detail their villainy became heroes. Really, who in 1985 was reading the emergence of Sabretooth and saying to themselves, “This guy should join an X-team?” Yet he’s done it twice now. How many times has Mystique played on the side of angels (and Angel)? Juggernaut, the archetypical brutish jerk, has been an X-Man for years now. And of course there’s Emma. Aside from Poccy and Sinister, are there any A-listers who haven’t been X-Men in the past three years or so? No wonder writers are dredging the well for the Neo, Maximus Lobo, and Vulcan.

But like ’80s Magneto, Emma’s change works for me. For one thing, it made sense: the only thing she had any real joy for — teaching — was killed with the Hellions, so she played nice to teach Xavier’s GenX after waking from her coma. Eventually, Xavier’s way got to her and she actually became nice (well, for Emma). Then she gets the hots (or “frosts”) for Scott and actually kinda commits to heroism. Also, the process took TIME. The turning point (death of Hellions) was in Oct 91; waking from coma in May 94; GenX in Nov 94; “joins” X-Men in Aug 01; begins relationship with Scott in Aug 02; and assumes headmistresship of Xavier’s in June 04. It took Emma almost 13 years to really become an accepted “good guy.” It took Juggernaut about half a panel. Still, I do miss the White Queen, easily the evilest X-villain of the ’80s.

Juggernaut: I think that he works best when he is what he is: an average joe who really is genuinely unstoppable. Nice guy if you catch him in a good mood, but piss him off, and BAM!

Emma Frost: Hated every second of her reformation, find it unconvincing and uninteresting, and think that nothing good has been done with her since the 1990s. (Writer’s Tip: If Scott Lobdell comes up with a character-developing arc, RUN, do not walk away from it.) That said, it’s done now, and I don’t see any point in unreforming her.

Deathstroke: Works best as a morally ambiguous mercenary, and I put Geoff Johns’ version of him down as an object lesson to the effect of, “This is what happens to your brain when you team up with a guy who’s got the Psycho-Pirate as his right-hand man.”

Liked Juggernaut’s time as a hero, but not enough to follow him to the Excalibur title. If they want him to be a villain again, fine, as long as he’s the working class villain, not the Mwah Ha Ha, Xavier-hating villain of the sixties.

Prefer Magneto as a villain, but the flip side of Xavier’s coin villain, not tipping the world on its axis and killing everyone villain. The one who saved (and romanced, sort of…) Rogue in the Savage Land but then killed his enemies. The Malcolm X to Xavier’s King Jr., as everyone was fond of pointing out in the early 90s.

Have thoroughly enjoyed Emma’s turn as a hero, esp.the long term development of it, as pointed out above.

Doomm works best in shades of gray, too, like Magneto, as long as they are bombastic, over the top shades. I like the portrayal of him as a benevolent guy, who just happens to want to rule the world and has some rage issues when it comes to that accursed Richards.

Juggernaut is, hands down, my favorite villain. And yet, the way Fabin Niecieza wrote him working his head out in X-Men Forever was really great, and set him on a definite path toward good. So yeah, I like him as a hero… sort of.

He doesn’t need to be a bank robber, or knocking down city blocks just because he can. He’s more mature than that now. But don’t put him on a superteam, either. Just have him be a wandering guy, doing his thing, who the heroes call when they’re in deep trouble and need a big gun.

F’r instance. No matter how mad he is, Hulk should never have been able to job Juggernaut. If he wasn’t actively on a team, his recruitment could have made a nice finale for WWH…

Well for what it is worth I found Juggernaut to be laughable and in the end so eaily defeated. When he met his demise I am sorry but I just cracked up laughing. Long live our anti hero Wolverine this character has so many sides to offer us and yet we do not know that much about him. Excellentally performed by the multi talented Hugh JackmaN.

No matter how mad he is, Hulk should never have been able to job Juggernaut.

Typical X-Fan nonsense. Hulk NEEDS to be stronger than Juggernaut, or it puts Juggernaut on Thor-levels of power. And that’s silly.

Besides, the Hulk is supposed to be this insanely powerful monster, who you get a little scared of, just hearing about on the news. If he can’t beat a guy who gets his powers from a jewel, he loses that. The Hulk needs to be FUCKING FRIGHTENING.

“Looking back, Marv Wolfman didn’t even really HAVE Slade Wilson be ALL that bad,”

Statutory rape’s a misdemeanor now?

“Statutory rape’s a misdemeanor now?”

Ah, someone else gets it.

Thank you Mr. Joseph.

Committing a felony doesn’t necessarily make you a terrible person. Sometimes you just like to smoke a lot of pot, for example.

Dude, statutory rape and smoking pot are not the same thing.

Typical X-Fan nonsense. Hulk NEEDS to be stronger than Juggernaut, or it puts Juggernaut on Thor-levels of power. And that’s silly.

Does explain all the times Juggernaut fought Thor, though, huh?

Yeah, he gets his powers from jewelry. So does Green Lantern. And? It’s a magical source. Magic trumps physical power. Juggernaut’s sole job description is “unstoppable,” not “punked out because the Hulk writers were feeling insecure.” You want to give Hulk credit? Juggernaut doesn’t just walk right over him like he does every other hero. It’s a tough fight. But if it just comes down to punching*, the win goes to the red corner.

*I haven’t read the issue, so I don’t know if it did just come down to punching, or if they went the more logical route of having Hulk fight smarter

Taking into account that recent discussion on author intent, wasn’t it established that all Terra did was attempt (unsuccessfully) to seduce Deathstroke?

Dude, statutory rape and smoking pot are not the same thing.

Uh, yeah, I know. That was exactly my point.

It doesn’t matter if Juggernaut’s unstoppable. Hulk’s gets stronger exponentially in a fight, without any limit. He can send Juggernaut into a vegetative state that never stops.

Also, radioactive nuclear bombs trump magic. They actually exist, for one thing.

Plus, they are science.
Science beats magic, as we all learned from the classic Bruce Campbell documentary “Army of Darkness”.

Which is why Richards beats Doom.
Doom uses pansy magic.