Bringing back the Sentry as a member of the Avengers is one of the stranger decisions Marvel have taken lately. 

The original Sentry miniseries was the sort of book which almost cried out not to have a sequel, since the point had surely been exhaustively made already.  Rather than introducing a major new superhero, Sentry was more of a metafictional story which used the defiantly retro and iconic superhero to represent something that had been lost from modern comics.  A perfectly good idea, but not one that lends itself to sequels.

Now, with the character being used in New Avengers, he needs a bit of refocussing to make him a viable lead.  This time round, the Sentry is still clearly an iconic character in the Superman mould, once again busily going about his heroic business.  But he's also downright nuts.  His obsessive efforts to save lives as efficiently as possible are a device to run away from his personal problems, and the Void is still hanging around as the evil side of his personality.  The Sentry apparently thinks he's got the Void locked up in a cell in his headquarters, but the story seems to be suggesting that he might just be hallucinating the whole thing.

Interestingly, rather than hit the ground running with his plot, Jenkins spends his first issue on establishing the Sentry's status quo as a hero.  This is fair enough, since that hasn't been touched on in New Avengers, and it's central to Jenkins' conception of the character as a dangerous obsessive with all manner of mental problems lurkign beneath the reassuring surface.  But it's also highly reminiscent of Astro City #1, which took a similar idea, and did it better.

It's not a bad idea for a character - what if Superman were decent, honourable, well-intentioned, and stark raving mad?  On the other hand, it's not as immediately compelling as the original series.  I'm also not sure about the choice of John Romita Jr as artist - much as I like his work, his style seems rather harsh for a character who's meant to look like the epitome of a traditional, old-school superhero.

Still, we're certainly not just retreading the first miniseries here.  The focus is on making the Sentry work as a contemporary character. I'm still not convinced that this is going to work, but I'm at least intrigued to see where Jenkins and Bendis (in New Avengers) are heading with him.

Rating: B

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