juggernaut

Cain Marko is Charles Xavier's stepbrother. He grew with envy for Charles, until, when at Korea in the War, entered a cave and read some words that were laying on a stone. Holding a red gem, he received the mystical powers of the wizard Cyttorack. Since then, Cain is one of the X-Men most fearsome enemies, and only mental attacks can stop him. He allied with Black Tom Cassidy, and both became best friends. Once, Juggernaut jumped into the raging sea just to save his pal. He fought the X-Men and other Marvel heroes (such as Spider Man) in the coming years.

When Onslaught came, Cain was his first victim, since that being was composed by Xavier's repressed hates. He put Marko inside his gem, where he had to fight demons and the ruler of Cyttorack. With the help of Gomur, the ancient, the Juggernaut managed to escape, and the gem forever imprisoned inside him. To relax, the behemoth took a small town and attacked by D'spayre and his sister. He was reduced to a being of pure hate in that fight, showing that really no force on Earth-except mental-could stop him. The next time he showed up, he told the X-Men that, without Xavier to take care of his properties, he would be the owner and administrator of all the Xavier Institute. The team expelled him from the mansion this time, but he appeared once again, with his friend Black Tom Cassidy, trying to retrieve his Gem of Cyttorack from a group of monks. Since then, the duo is missing and at large.

As Webster 1913 says below, "Juggernaut" is a version of "Jagannatha," a title of the Hindu god Krishna. Jagannatha is derived from the Sanskrit words "jagan" (world) and "nath" (lord). Each year at Puri in India, there's a procession where worshippers pull a cart carrying a giant representation of the deity, essentially a temple on wheels, and probably through accident, people have been crushed under the cart. Stories of large numbers of people throwing themselves under the cart on purpose were once widespread in Europe but are false.

Because of this ceremony, by the 19th century "juggernaut" in English came to mean either something requiring blind sacrifice, or a massive relentless force, person, institution, etc. that crushes everything in its path. (This latter "unstoppable" meaning is presumably the one the X-Men character in Mitchievious' writeup is named for.) Less metaphorically, "juggernaut" is also a somewhat pejorative British/Canadian/New Zealander name for a long articulated truck/lorry (US "tractor-trailer," 18-wheeler" or "semi"); that usage dates from the 1960s.

In 1974, Juggernaut was the name of an action movie directed by Richard Lester, and written by Richard DeKoker and Alan Plater, featuring a terrorist who'd planted bombs aboard a luxury cruise ship and threatened to set them off unless he received his monetary demands. ("Speed meets The Poseidon Adventure," as one IMDB user put it.) Richard Harris plays the bomb expert trying to find and nullify the bombs. It also features Omar Sharif, David Hemmings, Anthony Hopkins, Shirley Knight, Ian Holm, Clifton James and Roy Kinnear. The same title was used by a 1936 Boris Karloff mystery about an evil doctor and a rich woman who plan to poison her husband; a 1968 documentary short about a truck convoy carrying the seventy-ton heart of an atomic reactor; a 2003 documentary about the Hindu ritual; a 1990 adult film; as well as the alternate title of the 1982 video game Sinistar, the subtitle of 1998's Quake 2, and the name of a 1999 Playstation game.

Juggernaut has also become the name of: a New York theater company, a New York community action non-profit, a group organizing electronic dance music events in New York City and Miami Beach, Florida, a South Carolina band who describe themselves as "Southern beer metal revivial," an English record label, a session hijacking computer program, and a remote-control truck that can be made from a kit.

Sources:
http://wordsmith.org/awad/archives/1003
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/j/jagganath.html
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/juggernaut
http://4.1911encyclopedia.org/J/JU/JUGGERNAUT.htm
http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861623408/juggernaut.html
http://efl.htmlplanet.com/abc.htm
http://www.freesearch.co.uk/dictionary/juggernaut+(vehicle)
http://www.wordsmith.org/board/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=weeklythemes&Number=115919&page=12&view=collapsed&sb=5
http://www.super70s.com/Super70s/Movies/1974/Juggernaut.asp
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071706/combined
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027824/combined
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0237359/combined
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0366648/combined
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0141462/combined
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0316616/combined
http://psx.ign.com/articles/163/163203p1.html
http://www.juggernaut-theatre.org/
http://www.juggernaut.org/
http://www.juggernaut.to/
http://www.juggernautsc.com/
http://www.oxfordmusic.info/info/labels/juggernaut.shtml
http://www.securiteam.com/tools/2NUQBSAQ0C.html

Jug"ger*naut` (?), n. [Skr. jagannAtha lord of the world.]

One of the names under which Vishnu, in his incarnation as Krishna, is worshiped by the Hindoos. [Written also Juggernnath, Jaganath, Jaganatha, etc.]

⇒ The principal seat of the worship of Juggernaut is at Puri in Orissa. At certain times the idol is drawn from the temple by the multitude, on a high car with sixteen wheels. Formerly, fanatics sometimes threw themselves under the wheels to be crushed as a sacrifice to the god.

© Webster 1913

Jag"an*nath (?), Jag`an*na"tha (?), n. Also Jug"ger*naut. [Hind. Jagan- nAth lord of the world, Skr. jagannAtha.] (Hinduism)

A particular form of Vishnu, or of Krishna, whose chief idol and worship are at Puri, in Orissa. The idol is considered to contain the bones of Krishna and to possess a soul. The principal festivals are the Snanayatra, when the idol is bathed, and the Rathayatra, when the image is drawn upon a car adorned with obscene paintings. Formerly it was erroneously supposed that devotees allowed themselves to be crushed beneath the wheels of this car. It is now known that any death within the temple of Jagannath is considered to render the place unclean, and any spilling of blood in the presence of the idol is a pollution.

© Webster 1913