Man, I leave for a week and the whole place gets redone!
Welcome to the sexier looking Fifth Color within the even sexier looking Blog@Newsarama! It’s change, everybody! And just in time to talk about a book… from last week.
The last issue of Mighty Avengers gave us a personal story of the Sentry from years ago in his ‘heyday’ as a Marvel Universe staple to his incredibly shattered self today; consider it a primer if you missed out on the real history of the guy and are using the Avengers titles as sort of crib notes on Secret Invasion, which they are in a nutshell. To keep a long story short, we get clues and hints as to how really broken the mind of Bob Reynolds is and what happened after he screamed and ran from the Savage Land in Secret Invasion #2, leading us to believe that no, you can’t just throw your problems into the sun as they will enevitably land in the rings of Saturn and switch places with you at one of your weakest moments.
Happened to me last week.
Love him or hate him, you have to admit that there’s just something about this rather off-beat character that catches the attention of the reader. Or at least, the attention of Brian Bendis enough to put him in a team with the Big Dogs of the Marvel Universe. He’s a true Marvel hero which is kind of funny because he’s been somewhat bandied about as ‘Marvel’s Superman’ (okay, more like Captain Marvel, most certainly Miracleman, but you get the point). Well, you wanna be Superman? You want to be the greatest force for Good? Well, there’s an equal and opposite reaction to everything and the Sentry creates just as much Evil in the world as he does good just by being there. As a familiar friend might say, “With great power comes great responsibility”. He’s his own worst enemy and, in a way, aren’t we all? I think Paul Jenkins did a fantastic job covering this in the two mini-series he wrote, going from a catchy April Fool’s joke to something more personal. Within his own story, you can really get into the idea of someone who might just be the biggest hero the world has ever seen or just the world’s most misguided man.
The end of his first miniseries had him realize the core of the problem, the fact that he might be insane, the fact he could never get a chance to be that hero he used to be without bringing about just as much destruction. The greatest power and the greatest amount of responsibility, Robert Reynolds has to forsake his heroic rights and be that middle aged loser in order to save the world. Paul Jenkins came back to sort of explain the Sentry in a second mini with John Romita Jr., and for the most part, it was even more of a character study than the first.
I just have to mention this moment of genius from the Jenkins/Romita mini: In the gut-wrenching origin explanation, it was all hammered home when the Void tells him flat out ‘You could have been anyone’. Peter Parker, all Spider Totem BS aside, could have been anyone. Anyone can be a mutant. Any soldier could have been super, he just had to be at the test at the right time and really want it. There is nothing particularly special about a Marvel character outside of the strength of their character and the direction of their moral compass; they are written with everyone in mind and that’s why I will always be a Marvel fan. While I will never be a girl made of clay, or a billionaire playboy or a lost alien, I could be a kid on a field trip. Again, just my two cents.
Back to our story: This is a great story that serves its purpose in limited release. A mini-series can home in on these little moments and carry them out with a much greater ease than a larger scoped team book like the Avengers. Sadly, the Sentry hasn’t been used all that much in his time with the New and/or Mighty Avengers, normally hampered by his mental illnesses in no uncertain terms because, let’s face it, how does the most powerful man on Earth work in a team? (All Superman in the JLA references aside) Now, it makes sense to have him hesitant to really go wild with the power of a million exploding suns when you don’t want to play God. His World War Hulk arc proved that sometimes, just going outside can put too much responsibility on one man’s shoulders to protect everyone and everything but his ill-fit into Bendis’s Avengers I think has more to do with story style than any character defect.
Much like Doctor Strange, the more broadly powered characters require a lot more ‘personal’ time so to speak to give a certain balance within the story. Thanos may be incredibly powerful and wielded some of Marvel’s most powerful weaponry in his time, but it’s his love affair with Death that gave him the impetus for his best stories. It’s a less interesting story when Doctor Strange is used as a deus ex machina without challenging the man behind the powers. The Sentry is incredible and unheard of within the Marvel Universe without being a cosmic-level character or a living god, so a little more time should be taken to learn more about the man in the super-suit than just that he’s agoraphobic or that he has a wife. There’s so much story to the guy now that he can be a hero with the rest of them that it’s almost a waste to do something so dramatic as switch him for his alter-ego because you know Secret Invasion’s going to have enough going on as it is.
A similar problem with a different vein is X-Men: Emperor Vulcan. The Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire arc left a lot of room for interesting stories and Emperor Vulcan was a nice way to continue the Good Fight while the rest of the X-Men could go home and get a CompleX. Unfortunately, it ended on a huge cliffhanger and, while we’re promised some resolution soon, it’s going to get lost amongst all the other major plotlines for Marvel’s Entirely Un-Merry Mutants these days. It’s less of an issue with a need for a particular character focus than a venue focus, which is funny considering it’s in another galaxy.
What do you think? Will there be enough time within the X-Men’s Manifest Destiny, the Return of Magneto and another helpin’ helping of change to give Polaris, Havok and Marvel Girl some due? Is Bendis going to come back to the absolute terror of evil will gone wrong within the Sentry with an entire Empire of Skrulls on the move? How do you fit an epic arc within another epic arc?
