After all these years, here’s a first for the blog: I don’t think Spider-Man will appear in this post. Every post is tagged “Spider-Man,” but this one won’t be. I remembered that PPSM was wrapped up in this weird crossover event, and planned to cover it, but I forgot he is completely uninvolved until PPSM 11, which is part 3 of 4. It seemed like it would be weird to only cover parts 3 and (Presumably?) 4, so I decided to do this quick summary post for parts one and two in Iron Man, Vol. 3 #22 and Thor, Vol. 2 #17, respectively. And that’s how we’ve arrived at covering Part One of The Eighth Day! Whatever that is, right? It’s all about the Juggernaut. Perhaps fitting, as we follow the X-Men’s immovable foe with their unstoppable one. We’re back with Dan Jurgens, John Romita, Jr., Klaus Janson and Gregory Wright in Thor’s corner of the Marvel U, with Wright helped out by Mark Hicks this month. This weird crossover came at a really awkward time for Spider-Man, and he’s not alone, as this issue opens with Thor being thrown to the ground in NYC in a blast of green energy that leaves him in a crater, already in battle with Enrakt, one of a trio of old Thor villains called the Enchanters, who seems to be doing pretty well. Enrakt tells us his bros are about to kill Odin while Enrakt kills Thor, but that seems unlikely.
The power! The energy! The GOAT! John Romita, Jr. Fan Blog 230055. Enrakt inexplicably tosses the hammer back to Thor and teleports out, a process that takes a surprising 2 pages to complete and gives Thor a lot of time to say thee nay and such, but right as he’s preparing to follow through the portal, he notices a swath of devastation moving through the city below him, and it turns out, that’s…
It’s amusing how many of Juggernaut’s appearances on this blog are just him passing through. Here the action is interrupted by one of the all-time worst marketing things in comics, the first installment of Fast Lane. Fast Lane is a 4-part comic inserted into every Marvel Comic for 4 months wherein Spider-Man helps kids learn they shouldn’t smoke weed in the most lame and awkward way possible, all-but encouraging them to try it. Oh no. This is All The Spider-Mans I have. I have to cover Fast Lane, don’t I? If I did that Marvel Mart insert… oh no. Well, that should probably be its own post. Well, anyway, Thor and Juggernaut proceed to have the kind of earthshaking battle only John Romita, Jr. could render in a post-Kirby world for several pages, and it’s glorious. Both combatants note that Juggs is even more powerful than usual, and Juggy helpfully mentions some power is drawing him somewhere, and nothing can stop the Juggernaut, and that’s just the law even on a normal day, so…
Oof! But lo, the exposition hath arrived!
The Eight Day Why, that’s what it says on the cover!
Loki is yet again impersonating Odin. He’s into it. While he’s interrupted, we check back in with Thor catching up with Juggernaut and attacking again. And it once again goes badly for him, but as Juggernaut is beginning to crush him unconscious and maybe even dead, his new siblings show up.
You’d kinda hope the new people would have some visual consistency with Juggernaut, but I guess not.
So that brings us to IM 22, by Kurt Busiek (Aided here by Roger Stern!), Sean Chen, a buncha inkers, and Steve Olliff.
When Heroes Return started, I bought into Avengers, Captain America and Iron Man (And then Thor, but he came back later). Iron Man was the only book I dropped. I hung in there for 13 issues, but while Busiek and Perez were working magic every month in Avengers, Iron Man just didn’t grab me. I’d never been a huge fan, had only owned or read a handful of issues due to Romita, Jr. drawing them (That guy’s like a bad penny in my comics history!). I didn’t dislike Iron Man, and have always enjoyed him as an Avenger, but the adventures of the billionaire playboy superhero didn’t speak to me. This was probably not helped by the perfectly serviceable but pretty bland art of Sean Chen. I mean no offense. He’s a better comic artist than I ever coulda been. But his stuff just isn’t too exciting to my eye. We join this book, too, already in progress, and it seems Tony has unearthed yet another sibling.
Like I said, I quit buying this book almost a year prior, so I don’t know what’s going on. Is that Princess Zanda and Mr. Little from Jack Kirby’s Black Panther down there?
Uh, ok. The other people on page one never come back, so I guess I’ll never know. Unless I look it up. Ok, I looked it up. It looks like Stern began co-writing the very month after I dropped the book. Also issue 21 was a prelude to this event, but I didn’t know that til now, and yes, that was Princess Zanda and Mr. Little, famous hunters of treasure. That’s pretty fun. Well, Tony’s been narrating all this to Jarvis, who lets him know about Thor’s run-in with Juggernaut & Co., and now we got a stew goin’. Meanwhile, a guy at a Stark-Fujikawa ocean platform setup to study “geothermal forces” is called to dive into the ocean and find a sunken temple. How many of these guys are there? I don’t remember this at all, of course. There’s a page of Iron Man subplot action, and then whaddaya know, the rest of the people on page one do come back. That makes more sense.
Well, I guess there’s gonna be 8 of them. That’s… a lot! How are 3 superheroes gonna deal with 8 Juggernauts?
Man, there’s a lot going on in this book. The gang shows up and accosts this “Pigman” guy, and then Count Zorba becomes the next Juggernaut, Carnivore, who looks kinda like Blastaar. He starts attacking the various people as Tony slips away to become Iron Man again.
As IM and Carny slug it out, that guy Mann starts compiling runes from some of the temples and putting together more exposition.
I wonder how many of these existed before this event. Cyttorak, Ikonn, Raggadorr, Watoomb and Valtorr, I have at least heard of, I think all in Dr. Strange stuff (Him having the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak has always seemed odd to me, in light of Juggernaut’s whole deal).
Carny says he won’t leave without killing Iron Man, but then Thor shows up to even the odds a little, and the lady one, Tempest, who controls “all of nature,” opens a hole in the Earth and just chucks the heroes in it, sealing it behind them so the Exemplars can leave.
Well, that sounds bad. One assumes contestant #8 will be found in the pages of PPSM 11, next post.