Praising and burying the Sentry
May. 22nd, 2010 07:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
womzillaI just wrote this as a comment to "Overcompensating: Why Everyone Hates the Sentry", a post by John Seavey on MightyGodKing blog which is totally not a group blog even though several people regularly post there.
[Quick recap: The Sentry, the man with the power of a million exploding suns, was a character created by Paul Jenkins for a miniseries in 2000. The concept was that he was, at one time, the most powerful and prominent superhero in the Marvel Universe and the star of Marvel's best-selling comic, but for some reason he was literally completely forgotten--erased from history. The first mini involved him "coming back" and then going away again. The Sentry was brought into modern Marvel continuity by Brian Michael Bendis as part of Bendis's terrible years-long epic story that has threaded through every major Marvel "event" for the last seven years. At the end of the latest "event", Siege, the Sentry was killed.]
I'm another vote for "The Sentry worked well in his original miniseries", where he was forced *back* down the memory hole at the end. Despite the contrivance of the idea, it was a genuinely tragic story. Taking him out of the memory hole and making him an active part of the modern Marvel U lead not only to bad modern stories but retroactively undermined the power of the original story. I did love the Parker/Tobin-scripted Age of the Sentry miniseries, but that existed in the same memory hole bubble as the original mini.
That said, I wrote the first few entries of a DC--> Marvel translation guide back in 2000:
Another comment that occurred to me after I hit "post" there: The Sentry definitely was a story-warping continuity insert, but I would disagree about whether the "modern era" Sentry was a Mary Sue. He wasn't much of a wish-fulfillment character--he was tormented and borderline insane when he wasn't being a total patsy. On the other hand, Bendis *has* perpetrated a number of terrible Mary Sues within the Marvel universe. The worst of them is probably Jessica Jones/Alias/Jewel, who went from being a "minor heroine you never heard of" to "the woman who, in a better universe, totally saved the Avengers and married Captain America" in only three years.
[Back from a few minutes with a scanned comic.] I just read Seige #4. Dear god, was that terrible. That's the worst kind of fight scene, at length, with utterly wretched dialog to boot. People wonder why superheroes don't get respect; well, the fact that Marvel thought that this was a story worthy of publication was bad enough, but that it was the endpoint of seven years of buildup is just pathetic.
And a response to another comment on the thread: "We understand that he's meant as your Superman/Marvelman analogue. But you know why a Superman analogue wasn't in Marvel before? Because no one really wanted a character who was such an obvious pale imitation."
Well, actually, the early Silver Age Thor was a really *shameless* Superman knock-off, for the first two or three years. No, seriously, go and read those issues in the first Essential Thor and just translate Thor-->Superman, Jane-->Lois, Loki-->Luthor and marvel at how few other details have to change.
[Quick recap: The Sentry, the man with the power of a million exploding suns, was a character created by Paul Jenkins for a miniseries in 2000. The concept was that he was, at one time, the most powerful and prominent superhero in the Marvel Universe and the star of Marvel's best-selling comic, but for some reason he was literally completely forgotten--erased from history. The first mini involved him "coming back" and then going away again. The Sentry was brought into modern Marvel continuity by Brian Michael Bendis as part of Bendis's terrible years-long epic story that has threaded through every major Marvel "event" for the last seven years. At the end of the latest "event", Siege, the Sentry was killed.]
I'm another vote for "The Sentry worked well in his original miniseries", where he was forced *back* down the memory hole at the end. Despite the contrivance of the idea, it was a genuinely tragic story. Taking him out of the memory hole and making him an active part of the modern Marvel U lead not only to bad modern stories but retroactively undermined the power of the original story. I did love the Parker/Tobin-scripted Age of the Sentry miniseries, but that existed in the same memory hole bubble as the original mini.
That said, I wrote the first few entries of a DC--> Marvel translation guide back in 2000:
Marvel DC "What if" "Imaginary Story" "Multiverse" "Hypertime" "Earth-616" "Earth-0" "Sentry" "Triumph"
Another comment that occurred to me after I hit "post" there: The Sentry definitely was a story-warping continuity insert, but I would disagree about whether the "modern era" Sentry was a Mary Sue. He wasn't much of a wish-fulfillment character--he was tormented and borderline insane when he wasn't being a total patsy. On the other hand, Bendis *has* perpetrated a number of terrible Mary Sues within the Marvel universe. The worst of them is probably Jessica Jones/Alias/Jewel, who went from being a "minor heroine you never heard of" to "the woman who, in a better universe, totally saved the Avengers and married Captain America" in only three years.
[Back from a few minutes with a scanned comic.] I just read Seige #4. Dear god, was that terrible. That's the worst kind of fight scene, at length, with utterly wretched dialog to boot. People wonder why superheroes don't get respect; well, the fact that Marvel thought that this was a story worthy of publication was bad enough, but that it was the endpoint of seven years of buildup is just pathetic.
And a response to another comment on the thread: "We understand that he's meant as your Superman/Marvelman analogue. But you know why a Superman analogue wasn't in Marvel before? Because no one really wanted a character who was such an obvious pale imitation."
Well, actually, the early Silver Age Thor was a really *shameless* Superman knock-off, for the first two or three years. No, seriously, go and read those issues in the first Essential Thor and just translate Thor-->Superman, Jane-->Lois, Loki-->Luthor and marvel at how few other details have to change.
