The digest market has become increasingly important to Marvel over the last couple of years, which is one reason why some title are being kept around despite low sales in the direct market.  It also seems to be the reason why some of the more obscure miniseries exist at all.

Sentinel, however, seems to be the first book to actually return from cancellation thanks to support from the digest market.  The original series was part of the disastrous Tsunami promotion from 2003, which consisted of launching a bunch of wholly unrelated comics at the same time and seeing what worked.  It lasted twelve issues before getting axed, but the digest did rather well, so here comes the sequel.  There was talk at one point of doing this story in a straight-to-digest format, which would have been a commendable move, but instead it's coming out as a miniseries first.

In fact, one wonders if Marvel have left it a little late to follow up on whatever momentum Sentinel had.  The original series was cancelled at the start of 2004, and the digest collection of this series won't be on the shelves before spring 2006.  On top of that, the original series ended (rather optimistically, as it seemed at the time) on a cliffhanger, with lead character Juston running away from home in search of his mother. 

This series picks up a couple of days afterwards.  Rather than the first issue of a miniseries, it feels more like the story that would have appeared in issue #13 a year and a half ago.  There's adequate explanation for new readers, but nonetheless, we've very much joining a story in progress.

The theme of this arc seems to be the past of Juston and the Sentinel.  So while Juston's story is already underway, the series finally gets around to the question of where the Sentinel came from - something that the original series never really explained, other than to suggest it had been wrecked in battle.  It seems that this is going to be a government conspiracy storyline, with the idea being that a couple of corrupt officials had stolen the Sentinel and used it for their own personal schemes.  It's certainly a more interesting idea than just having it as a wreck left behind from a generic fight with the X-Men.

On the other hand, the nature of this story does mean that there's not much scope for the supporting cast to get involved.  Which is a shame, since they were one of the book's more appealing features.  Juston's father gets a bit of space, but the schoolmates are rather marginalised.

Juston is still an interesting character.  The first series spent much of its time emphasising that he wasn't particularly heroic.  He was just trying to make amends after initially screwing up rather badly.  Much the same applies here - Juston's happily running away from his problems and racing off on a wild goose chase as if this meant everything was going to be okay, without seeming to have the slightest recognition of how his supporting cast must feel about it.  He's still a badly flawed character, which only serves to make him more interesting.

The art is rather darker in tone this time around, although it still maintains its cartoonish qualities.  Sometimes this doesn't quite work - the exaggerated character designs for some of the school kids, particularly Juston's younger brother, seem very out of place now that the art has generally become more realistic.

A decent first issue, though, and it largely succeeds in drawing me back into the story after a very lengthy interruption.

Rating: B+

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