Why I hate The Sentry

As a character, The Sentry just doesn’t work.

First, he’s anchored down by being an obvious knock-off a certain other super-powered ubermensch. That’d be fine on the face of it (it’s not as if it hasn’t been done to death already), but here’s the problem — he's in the Marvel Universe.

Without getting into the whole discussion of the differences between the Marvel and DC universes, lets just stick to the fact that DC is filled with heroes with nearly god-like powers, while Marvel is filled with heroes that are more (for lack of a better word) human.

Which works for DC because it’s all leavened with a healthy helping of silly – the edge is taken off the “real-world” implications of having a bunch of super-powered yahoos tearing ass around the city fighting bad guys when there’s also, y’know, a secret society of talking gorillas or something.

But that’s never been what Marvel’s about. Marvel’s about heroes the reader can relate to, usually through characters who aren’t so powerful they don’t get the crap kicked out of them on a regular basis (seriously, it’s amazing there aren’t a bunch of punch-drunk heroes wandering around Manhattan), and who have some sort of angsty back-story that gives them a reliable Achilles’ Heel to tap into. If DC is a hyper, piñata-smacking kid at a birthday party, Marvel is the two or three emo teens slouching around in the corner.

Don’t get me wrong – I love both universes, despite their flaws. But I think this is part of what is essentially wrong with The Sentry; he’s been shoe-horned into his Universe. He was OK in the original stand-alone story, a kind of What If? that was interesting in its bloated, heavy-handed, self-satisfied kind of way. But then Marvel tried to force the character down the throats of its readers, and not only that, it was seasoned with the idea that The Sentry is in some way essential to the MU.

And he’s not.

Add to that the fact Marvel probably went too far in giving Sentry its patented Feet of Clay brand cement shoes (the better to weigh your character down!), and you’ve got an almost all-powerful schizophrenic agoraphobic, a collection of neuroses with the power of a million exploding suns. A superhero who never. Does. Anything.

And readers, on whatever level, recognize that.

Nobody is invested in The Sentry, no matter how much Marvel wants to pretend otherwise. Nobody cares about his place in the Marvel Universe, because he really doesn’t have one at all. And due to how forced the character is on nearly every level, almost nobody likes The Sentry.

Including me.

So, what do you think of The Sentry?

Panel from World War Hulk #5