<SPOILER ALERT! Read Siege #4 before you read this.>
Well, it’s finally all over, and the status quo has returned to what it should be. Norman Osborn has been picked up from crawling about in the wreckage of the Golden City, revealed to be as mad as a dancing troupe of Mad Hatters, even the President has ordered his capture, and reinstated the Avengers.
At the same time, Bob Reynolds lies dead in the ruins of Asgard.
I for one am not sorry to see him go. Although a number of stories featuring him have been of a high quality, as a (dis)functioning part of the Avengers, I rather think he has been nothing but a hindrance.
Nothing has reinforced my annoyance at the Sentry than this weeks issue of The Sentry – Fallen Sun, one of the few Siege epilogues. We now hear more of the various heroes memories that somehow they have recovered even though nobody was supposed to remember anything of the Sentry’s first (and second) incarnations. To say the issue was saccharin would be to give the story high praise. There is one thread that shows promise, as the Sentry’s pet robot Cloc flies off to recreate Bobs headquarters somewhere in anticipation of his return.
That in and of itself is enough to send a chill through my spine.
Meanwhile, we learn how Daredevil idolised him (that so doesn’t feel right), and that Magneto is not the only man Rogue has been able to touch. So the Sentry was not only a schizophrenic addict, he was a cheat as well. An addict who still was able to help Tony Stark overcome his drinking? There is no reason this should not have been contained in a few pages of one of the Avengers titles. I had to pay money for this?
The only eulogy that felt real for me was that of Doctor Strange’s. He is one who could relate to Bob’s struggle, having had god-like power and lost it through his own errors and unworthiness.
On the matter of Doctor Strange however, that got me thinking. We all know we have not seen the last of him, but I rather like the idea of exploring Sentry’s true nature. To me, he seems to be not a forgotten part of reality, but a lie, a myth, an insertion into the mainstream reality. What was he really? Where was he from?
A creation of Nightmare’s to emotional wound the heroes and give them fake memories of previous losses? Of course, D’Spayre or Mephisto could both fill that role.
Or maybe Bob was some stray thought created by a wielder of the Cosmic Cube (or one of the other numerous reality altering devices). He is an Aryan ideal, could he have been unleashed from the mind of the Red Skull? Or maybe the Void was his true form, and the next time we see him, he will not be hampered by his human avatar.
Let’s hope it’s not for some time however.
> I had to pay money for this?
Nope. No, you definitely did not.
Knowing Marvel I am sure Sentry will return sooner or later but I hope to God that Bendis never writes him again.
Absolutely seconded!
I’m probably Sentry’s biggest fan there is :-) I think I can answer your question.
Sentry was more then normal readers could ever imagine.
He was better then Moses, better then Jesus – in fact, he was the next person who wielded their power.
When he took the Super-Soldier-Serum nothing extraordinary happened because of it. Colonel America took it too, but he wasn’t as powerful as the Sentry.
When the Sentry took it, something got unleased and he got boosted by it.
Do you remember the feats of Jesus?
He walked through a desert – he survived 40 days without food and water. Sentry also didn’t need to drink or eat.
Jesus healed a blind man and other people, while the Sentry healed a little girl who was in a traumatic state.
Jesus freed a man with 1000 demons in his bodies named Legion. The Sentry freed a man with 50 mutant abilities named the Collective.
Jesus came back from the dead … so did the Sentry, more then once.
Jesus knew that Judas was going to betray him. The Sentry also know many things, since he was a telepath.
Before Jesus there was Moses who was splitting the sea and summoning creatures from the skies. Feats Sentry would have been able to duplicate aswell.
But the Sentry was not a sane man. He had his mental problems and in the end he decided to die – to sacrifice himself and to save the mankind.
Jesus also sacrificed himself – left and never returned.
That power they wielded – it came from a different reality where one million planets were exploding and reforming, all made by a bored entity named Destroyer Darkmass.
That power escaped that reality and merged with Robert Reynolds who became the Sentry. Sentry was powerful – too powerful for the universe. He was living one step ahead in the current timestream, creating a separate universe to co-exist.
He was strong at the beginning. But there were still his mental problems which created the Void. The Void didn’t stand a chance against the Sentry, so he had to form himself as a separate entity.
Later on when Sentry’s mental instability started to rise, his defenses against the Void got weaker and the Void was able to take over Sentry’s body. He didn’t appear as a separate entity anymore, no. Sentry’s eyes became black and he became the Void.
During the Dark Reign the Void took more and more control over the Sentry until it climaxed during the Siege, where the Void one-shotted simply everyone, until the heroes managed to weaken him somehow, Robert Reynolds took over again and decided to die.
The Sentry – Fallen Sun …
It was a great read for me. Of course it was cheesy and only there to hype the Sentry up even more, but … I liked it for a different reason.
I liked it because it displayed how Paul Jenkins was pissed at Bendis, who destroyed the character during the years.
Bendis tried to retcon the character, to make him weaker and more pathetic, just to profit from the Void when he wanted.
He managed to destroy the Sentry, but Jenkins managed to save the Sentry with Fallen Sun, since he basically retconned him again.
Sentry’s last apperance made things right again, since he let all the heroes remember the Sentry regularly, like they always did.
Paul Jenkins ignored nearly everything what was written about the Sentry after Sentry’s second Volume and then gave us Fallen Sun.
Of course it’s a bad read for people who didn’t like the Sentry, or simply didn’t have the luck to read his first Volumes, which were superb and brilliant – so that they only got the unstable, weak, pathetic version of him, where Sentry’s competence, skill and determination were ignored completely. I understand that.
And I also understand that they hate him because Jenkins ignored continuinity and hyped Sentry up even more in the Marvel universe.
But still … it’s just the way the character was written.
It’s not a correct thing to hate the character because of that. You should only hate the decisions which were made.
I for example hate the decisions Bendis made about the Sentry.
Bendis is a good writer. He explained everything very well during the years about the Sentry. Most of the things made sense, it’s just that they were decisions which destroyed the character I (we?) used to love and turned him into something he was not and the decision to finally kill him in the end.
Thanks for reading.
Very thoughtful reply, I’m impressed. I can certainly see where you are coming from. I stll hope we have seen the last of him, but I like your interpretation. Not so hot on the religious references, but then thinking about it, I can’t think of anyone else who would illustrate your point more.