The Amazing Spider-Man #229: Nothing Can Stop the Juggernaut. Read it for Free!

Do you remember the first time you were introduced to your favorite villain? Usually I don’t. But in the case of the Juggernaut, it wasn’t in the pages of The X-Men where the character first appeared. It was in The Amazing Spider-Man #229, the first of a two-part arc in which Black Tom Cassidy sends Juggernaut to retrieve psychic Madame Web. What was so unique about this villain was that there was sneakery to him. He just shows up in Manahattan in the middle of the day and walks in a straight line until he gets to his prey. “Who is this guy?” I thought. He walks through a police barricade, through a wall of Spidey’s webs, and straight through buildings, all as though they were never there. This guy put the bad in badass.

“Nothing Can Stop the Juggernaut” (June 1982) was written by Roger Stern and drawn by John Romita, Jr. who begins to show glimmers of what he can do as an artist in this issue. At the end of the first issue, Juggernaut proves that he doesn’t have an ounce of compassion and Spider-Man becomes totally enraged. The following issue has Juggernaut walking back the way he came and Spider-Man determined to take the villain down. Until then, I was used to villains who kept their plotting and planning hidden. Juggernaut was so different because everything is done in plain sight and he doesn’t care… at all.

For the next week, you can read these two classic issues at no cost on Marvel’s digital site. They currently have a subscription service to read thousands of digital titles for about $60.00 a year. I’m not sold on this service just yet, but I am curious to see what happens when all comic books go digital. Consider this your induction into digital comics reading:
http://marvel.com/digitalcomics/free