Reader's Diary #1825- Paul Jenkins (writer), Jae Lee (artist): The Sentry

Marvel's The Sentry has only caught my periphery before and even then, not often. I mistakenly thought the character had been popular back in the day but faded out of popularity over time. Interestingly, this made the reading of Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee's The Sentry trade paperback even better.

The story involves a character named Bob Reynolds, an every man (slightly overweight, bit of a drinker) who just happens to have been a superhero named The Sentry. Unfortunately, no one remembers him. For some reason he's been wiped from everyone's memories and any physical evidence of his heroic exploits have mysteriously gone missing. However, his nemesis "The Void" is returning and in order for The Sentry to save the universe, he will need his past superhero friends to believe and remember him.

I thought this was all clever enough seeing as The Sentry is not a particularly well-known superhero today and that it was rather tongue-in-cheek to make us think he's been erased from our, the readers', memories as well. Interspersed throughout this story are scenes from old classic Sentry comics...

Except! It's even more clever than that because this was in fact The Sentry's first appearance and those "old" Sentry comics were fakes. Jenkins and Lee just shoehorned him into history! And, thanks to Lee's masterful illustrations, it's entirely believable.

I've see this done before (Archie Comics did a similar thing with Kevin Keller), but not as well.