Quietly slipping into the box marked "critically acclaimed but nobody actually buys it", Sentinel reaches the halfway point in the first storyline.

It goes without saying that this is one of those series being paced primarily for the trade paperback.  Three issues in, the Sentinel itself is still sitting semi-dismantled in a shed and only one character has actually seen it.  But since the real lead character is Juston, that's not a huge problem.  The focus this issue is on Juston turning his back on his friends and family as he becomes increasingly obsessed with the Sentinel.

McKeever neatly illustrates all this by having Juston trying to get out of any conversation with anyone else (aside from Jessie, naturally) while spending pages merrily recounting the minutiae of his day to the Sentinel.  It's his withdrawal from the world in favour of something exotic and something he's in control of.  Except, of course, he's not quite in control of the Sentinel, which may or may not have its own ideas about what it wants to do once it's persuaded Juston to rebuild it.  Is it genuinely just following its programming with little personality of its own, or is it scheming?

The ending is also a nice twist as well, with Juston reacting to the Sentinel's true origins in a slightly unexpected way.  To be honest, it's a bit of a stretch that Juston needs to go off on elaborate internet searches to find out what the Sentinel is - by this point, shouldn't the design look familiar from the news? - but I can let that slide.  It's good character-driven teen drama, and the characters are strong enough to allow the relaxed pacing.

Rating: A-

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