While the Juggernaut has often been called unstoppable, he has always had one huge flaw in his invulnerability – a flaw that was fixed in Marvel’s Ultimate Universe. The suit of the original Juggernaut is as much a part of him as his incredibly powerful strength, since he was gifted the armor along with his powers by the demon god Cyttorak. However, it seems even eternal beings of darkness can make some design flaws, as Juggernaut’s suit contains a vulnerability that was fixed by mortal hands in the Ultimate Universe.
Earth-1610’s Cain Marko, aka the Juggernaut, made his debut in Ultimate X-Men #8 by Mark Miller and Adam Kubert. In the Ultimate Universe, Juggernaut was a member of Weapon X and was integral in capturing the X-Men for Weapon X to grow its mutant weapons program. Unlike his Earth-616 counterpart’s first attempt at invading the X-Mansion, this Juggernaut was successful in taking down the X-Men. While Ultimate Juggernaut had the advantage of attacking the X-Men with a team, he also didn’t have the one weakness that the original had upon his first bout with the X-Men.
Despite his incredibly physical power, Earth-616’s Juggernaut is vulnerable to psychic attacks, with only his helmet offering any protection against telepathic defeat. When the Juggernaut invaded the X-Mansion for the first time in Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Alex Toth, and Vince Colletta’s X-Men #12 with the intent of causing serious harm to his stepbrother Professor X, he was defeated in the very next issue. The reason was the X-Men ganged up on Juggernaut until they were finally able to remove his helmet, at which point Professor X incapacitated him with little effort. In the Ultimate Universe, the Juggernaut’s helmet is not detachable from the rest of his suit. Instead, his helmet is a part of the suit, connected to the rest of his body armor as one full piece of armor. The X-Men wouldn’t be able to take off the Ultimate Juggernaut’s helmet if they tried because technically speaking, there’s no helmet to take off.
While the original Juggernaut’s armor has its clear weaknesses, he isn’t ignorant to them and has taken extra measures to protect his mind from psychic attacks. In Chris Claremont, Marc Silvestri, Dan Green, and Glynis Oliver’s Uncanny X-Men #218, fans see that the Juggernaut learned from his failure in X-Men #13 and started wearing a skull cap underneath his main helmet. While the issue proved that was enough to slow the X-Men down, they just took that helmet off too and once again left Juggernaut open to a telepathic takedown.
Sadly for Cain, the Ultimate Universe’s Weapon X was particularly brutal, and his helmet is as much a prison as an advantage. Throughout the comics, Juggernaut has answered to darker forces, and that’s true whether he’s wearing the detachable helmet provided by Cyttorak or Weapon X’s more impervious metal harness. Ultimately – at least as a villain – Cain Marko is a man granted unstoppable power but too selfish and uncreative to ever actually win the day. His Ultimate Universe armor showed how genuinely unstoppable he could be with some brains behind his powers, but also darkly emphasized Juggernaut‘s near-constant condition of existing as someone else’s weapon.
