Sentry

Sentry 1-5

Lots of art today.  Jae Lee and friends kill it.  But just a little about the story, first.  I can’t remember if this is the first iteration of a forgotten hero (but that would be the point, wouldn’t it? :P), but it’s certainly not the last.  I think Marvel’s doing it again right now with Avengers: No Surrender. But regardless, Paul Jenkins does nice job with this version. He spends most of the series building up the feeling of dread as the heroes slowly remember what they’ve already chosen to forget.  (It’s a lot like the classic Clues episode of Star Trek: TNG.)

And Jae Lee is perfect for dread.  His shadows accentuate the proper dark mood as The Void draws closer.  Jose Villarrubia’s colors are brilliant and muted at the same time. He’s a wonderful match for Lee’s pencils.  

The art was so beautiful, I even stared at panels of faces.

What's Villarrubia using, watercolors?

I wish it was Superman and not Sentry, though.

Love Thor chilling under the lightning.

I don’t know what the deal is with Lee’s obsession with the Spidey/Gargoyle/Sentry composition, but he uses it four times.  Good thing it looks so cool.

All in the same issue!

There’s also a theme with Reed Richards that runs through this series and the later companion issues.  Something about the stark verticality stands out to me.

This one's by Phil Winslade.

Lee draws a mean Dr Strange.

He can actually do the thing that movie directors do!

I thought that his Sentry looks a lot like Watchmen’s Ozymandias with his imperious confidence:

And then I remembered that Jae Lee later draws Ozy in Before Watchmen, so maybe some editor thought the same thing.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Pretty good

Sentry/Spider-Man, Sentry/Fantastic Four

This series was set up funny.  The fifth issue of Sentry ended with Earth’s heroes congregated at the Statue of Liberty, about to confront The Void.  Then Jenkins wrote four issues where each of the heroes deal with their fears and flashback to their previous adventures with Sentry.  They’re mostly filler, and the better ones succeed on the strength of the art. Spider-Man and FF did not have strong art. Rick Leonardi and Phil Winslade are the respective pencillers.  Also, neither of them had the help of Villarrubia.

There was one bit from Jenkins that struck a major chord in me:

It’s so weird to think that Mr Fantastic would ask the same question that I do about my own job.  It’s one of the most humanizing things I’ve ever read about superheroes.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Didn’t suck

Sentry/X-Men, Sentry/Hulk, Sentry/Void

Mark Texeira (X-Men) and Bill Sienkiewicz (Hulk) acquit themselves far better with their issues. Their heavy use of blacks and Villarrubia’s palette unifies their work with Lee’s. And they are just better artists.  You can see the difference comparing Leonardi’s splash page of fears with Sienkiewicz’s:

Not really the stuff of nightmares.

Way scarier.

Sienkiewicz’s Hulk has the lower lip of Mignola’s Hellboy and the forehead of Karloff’s Frankenstein’s monster:

After getting in the heads of his heroes, Jenkins wraps it up with Sentry/Void, where he reveals that Sentry and Void are the same person.  After nine issues of build up, he deus ex machinas it away by doing the exact same thing, making everyone forget the truth.  Again. Such a let down. Jenkins painted himself into a corner, and couldn’t get himself out of it.  

The wink-wink meta of it all, that Sentry was an actual hero written by Stan Lee back in the Sixties, came across as far too cutesy.  Completely unnecessary, the story stood on its own merits (at least until the very end).

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Nice

One more piece of Jae Lee art.  It’s not from this series, but I found it during my Google research, and it’s amazing.