After Sentry #5, they published a slate of one-shots focused on different Marvel properties wherein the title character awaited the Void and ruminated on his/their history with the Sentry. These were Sentry/Fantastic Four, Sentry/Hulk, Sentry/X-Men, and wouldn’t you know it, Sentry/Spider-Man. Jenkins wrote all of them, and each one had different artists. And with the exception of Phil Winslade on FF, they were all great! Look, sorry, but it’s true. The FF one features Reed Richards thinking about how being a hero used to be fun, but now it seems so grim, and thinking about how he knows only the Sentry can defeat the Void, and thinking about how he betrayed his best friend. This is intercut with scenes from a “classic” adventure where the Sentry and the FF had to battle through Sentry’s Watchtower after it had been taken over by a Cosmic Cube and turned into a crazy labyrinth of obstacles.
The X-Men one, with line art by Mark Texeira, is from Angel’s perspective. It’s not an accident he was the only X-Man shown in issue 5. Warren has similar thoughts, about how only Sentry can save him, about how Sentry represents everything he lost when Apocalypse remade him into his Horseman of Death. Then he flashes back to a training session with Professor X and the original team when he was a kid where he made a mistake and got in trouble. Then Xavier sent him to meet with the Sentry, who taught him some lessons about controlling fear and such before an old Sentry enemy, the General, started his new scheme, and the X-Men and Sentry went to defeat him. In the end, Warren saved the day thanks to what Sentry taught him, but they believed Sentry had been killed. When he turns up alive, he reminds them to have fun being superheroes. And in the present, as Warren waited for the end, he smiled.
The Hulk one featured Bill Sienkiewicz, and that’s certainly enough to pay the price of admission. Hulk’s focuses on the curious notion that the Sentry was trying to fix Hulk. That he was the only man Hulk ever trusted, and after their first encounter, they learned the Sentry’s aura had a calming effect on him. Sentry theorized that Hulk was evolving, and would eventually become docile and lose his rage. As long as they stuck together. So they became a team. Hulk even lived in the Watchtower. The book recounts some of their adventures, fighting the Leader and the General, saving a race of mutated lobster people (Hey, why not?). But as Hulk’s time with Sentry was leading to him being seen as a hero instead of a monster, the Void returned, in that battle, the Void got in Hulk’s head, terrified him with his own memories, and made a promise to hunt and destroy him because Sentry loved him. Then the Sentry disappeared, and Hulk went back to being the raging monster. And now he’s faced with the one thing he’s ever been afraid of.
That brings us to the Spider-Man one, and look who’s here for that! Rick Leonardi! It’s funny how, to me, he’s one of the all-time great Spider-Man artists, but I bet I’m pretty lonely in that. Not because he’s not great, but because he barely drew any Spider-Man. It just so happens that I saw ASM 253 & 254 and SM 17 pretty close together and pretty young and thought “Wow, this guy’s amazing!” Plus, he designed the black suit, a fact that has long been overlooked as all credit for it has gone to Mike Zeck. To me, at least, he’s an all-timer. And here, he’s inked by the great Terry Austin, with colors by Jeromy Cox. Curiously, this is the only Sentry-related book to this point not colored by Jose Villarubia.
Our man thinks back to how he met the Sentry. How he was swinging around on a regular day when his Spider Sense barely prevented him from being smashed in mid-air by a flying Doc Ock.
It’s hard not to just post every page when it’s one of the GOATs making a rare appearance. Ock recovers quickly, getting the better of Spider-Man and fleeing, which upsets the guy who sent him flying to begin with.
The Sentry is obviously meant to be a Superman analog, this whole business something of a commentary on the pretty strange fact that Marvel doesn’t have a Superman. They have guys like him. Captain America has a similar personality and stature among his fellows. Thor is similar in some ways. But there’s no one-to-one match, no obvious knock off like a Moon Knight to Batman or an Aquaman to Namor. But I feel like this page is the first one where that REALLY comes into focus during this series. That’s Superman colored wrong right there, in appearance and in persona. Spidey thinks about how he was pretty freaked out by Sentry somehow knowing who he was. We see how this is high school era and girls at school thought Sentry was dreamy and Flash thought he was corny, and we’re told Aunt May loved the guy. But from then on, the thought of him made Peter nervous, for months, until one day, Spider-Man swung home to Aunt May’s house to find Sentry in his room.
Pretty creepy! The heroes leap into action, Sentry to fight Void and Spidey to try to save Kingpin. But one of Void’s tendrils hits him, and just like with Hulk, it makes him relive all the tragedies in his life, which Spider-Man is particularly good at. But, also like Hulk, it made him see tragedies to come. The loss of MJ. Himself in a wheelchair. Despair overwhelms him. JM DeMatteis would love it. But since he’s not here, the despair lasts one page instead of 6 issues.
“Anything’s possible, you big idiot” just makes me laugh. In the present, Spidey thinks that the Void just kept coming back, and this time, he’s here to finish the job. Then we flash back to the past again, Sentry and Spidey conferring about their battle with the Void. Sentry says he’s felt what Spidey felt so often it almost never goes away. That he’s come to feel like he & the Void are entwined somehow, but since he’s the only one immune to Void’s powers, he has no choice but to fight him.
The story of the famous photo that’s been haunting the series revealed. Everyone who forgot the Sentry lost something special in the process, and we learn that, for Peter, it was this photo. He sold it to JJJ, but retained the merchandising rights, and it wound up on all these magazines, inspired shirts, mugs and toys, all with royalties going to Peter. He got accolades from Time Magazine, he won a Pulitzer. And then he remembers the day the Void and the Sentry disappeared, seeing Hulk flying into a rage, and can’t remember much after that.
And that leaves just one more issue. And even though Spider-Man’s barely in it, I guess I might as well see it through. Now I feel weird about not covering so many of the issues, but not weird enough to go back and do it.