Well, there’s a weird visual. This one opens much the same as all the one-shots, everyone waiting for the Void to arrive, this time in the Sentry’s head. And then, it finally happens.
Doc Ock showing up really worked for me, and still does. It sells the severity of the situation. Some unnamed hero dying is less effective. “Uh, someone died, but I don’t want to get in trouble by saying anyone in particular.”
And there’s the big twist, although it was not too hard to guess by the time we got to it. The Sentry is the only one who can stop the Void because they’re the same, and one coming back means the other will, too. In the present, Sentry himself is thinking about how he has always seemed to show up in the nick of time, always been the last line of defense. How even if the world ends today, he and the Void will go on fighting forever. He begins to feel like he’s known how all this will end since before it started. In Dr. Strange’s time bubble, Reed finally remembers it was Sentry himself who decided he had to “die.” After finding out he is the Void, he knew the only way to stop the Void forever was to stop himself. And he told Reed he couldn’t just be forgotten, people had to turn on him first, no longer want his help, for the hypnotic whatever to work. So Reed assassinated his best friend’s character and then made the world forget him. And now, Reed realizes they’re going to have to go through all that all over again to get out of this.
Everyone flashes back to the last moments before Sentry was forgotten, setting up the machine, Reed making Strange promise, Reed giving Cloc his final order, which was to take care of himself, tying up all the clues.
We get a page of arty stuff about how the heroes will never really forget this day, even if they don’t remember, how it will haunt their dreams. Then Sentry, Reed & Strange get to the Watchtower and try to get the transmitter going again. Reed says he’s already sent himself false information to explain what happened today.
As much as anything, I think this series really embodies what the Marvel Universe is becoming and will be in the 2000s. It’s all here: complex storytelling that isn’t so much about throwing punches as investigating the characters. Realistic line art with gorgeous colors. And a layer of pure, shameless, over-the-top showmanship to sell the whole thing in the fake backstory and the probably fake interviews in the back. This formula will see Marvel really take over the market all over again, push all sorts of boundaries and tell a lot of stories no one ever would’ve allowed in the decades before. For awhile there, things are really exciting. And this book is sort of the pilot program, in my eyes. Have we seen the last of the Sentry? Seems somewhat unlikely, doesn’t it?