Sentry (Robert Reynolds)

• 1. Introduction

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  Robert Reynolds, a middle-aged man better known to Marvel Comics readers as the Sentry, carries the power of one million exploding suns, and almost nobody on Earth remembers him. Reynolds knows his enemy, the Void, is coming back. He also knows that the world has forgotten the hero who once stood against it. The Sentry first appeared in the year 2000, created by writer Paul Jenkins and artist Jae Lee. His story raises a strange set of questions. Where does a hero this strong come from? How can a hero and his deadliest enemy live inside one man? And what happens to a character who was designed to be forgotten, yet keeps returning?

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• 2. An Invented History

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  In the late 1990s, Paul Jenkins pitched a character he described as "an over-the-hill guy, struggling with an addiction, who had a tight relationship with his dog." Together with writer Rick Veitch, he shaped that idea into a proposal for the Marvel Knights line at Marvel Comics. Jenkins pictured a guardian with a watchtower, and he chose the name Sentry after first considering Centurion.

  Veitch added the trick that defines the character. The Sentry would be woven into decades of Marvel history, with versions from the 1940s onward drawn in the styles of each period's comics. Inside the story, a government effort called Project: Sentry began in 1947. It soon broke into many sub-projects with almost no government control. Professor Cornelius Worth finished the formula ten years later in New York.

  Veitch also proposed a cataclysm that wiped every memory of the Sentry from the world, including the hero's own. Jenkins and Veitch went a step further and invented a fake publication history in the real world. They credited imaginary creators named Juan Pinkles and Chick Rivet, which are anagrams of the two writers' own names.

  Jenkins took the concept to Marvel Knights editor Joe Quesada. Quesada commissioned a miniseries and paired Jenkins with Jae Lee, who had already drawn an Inhumans miniseries with him.

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• 3. Serum and Shadow

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  The Sentry's strength comes from a variant of the super-soldier serum that made Captain America, one said to move "his molecules an instant ahead of the current timeline." The limits of his abilities remain unknown. He has immense strength, durability, speed and senses. He can absorb and project vast amounts of energy, enough to hurt even the Hulk. He can also teleport in a blinding flash of light and fly at vast supersonic speeds.

  The Void is the dark side effect of those powers. It has been claimed that every good act by the Sentry is matched by an attempted act of malevolence from the Void. The Void commands abilities the Sentry lacks. It can create destructive storms, and it can send tendrils into other minds to force visions of the past and future.

  Reynolds later explains how he got the serum. As a teenager he stole it, intending to use it as a drug. It had been developed in a failed attempt to recreate the formula behind Captain America. The Void claims the dose was several times stronger than the original, and that his blood could be used to make enough serum for the entire world. The government saw him as dangerous, and several attempts to kill him failed.

  A 2026 series adds a quieter origin for the Void. At the age of 7, Reynolds learned the story of Laika, the dog sent into space, and he mourned her death for the next year. It is alleged that this grief led the Void to manifest within him.

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• 4. A World Forgets

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  Peter Parker's photograph of the Sentry once won him a Pulitzer Prize and fame, yet he has no memory of taking it. That is the puzzle Reynolds sets out to solve when he visits prominent Marvel heroes to warn them about the Void. As he talks, each of them begins to remember.

  The Sentry had taught Angel how to overcome his fear of falling. Mister Fantastic recalls that the Sentry was his best friend and that the Fantastic Four had shared many adventures with him. The Hulk never forgot the hero he called Golden Man, and under that influence the Hulk had been a force for good and had won public adoration. Reynolds' old sidekick Billy Turner, once known as the Scout, also remembers. He is now scarred and missing a forearm after an attack by the Void.

  Reynolds and Mister Fantastic then uncover the central secret. The Sentry and the Void are two halves of one person. To save the world, Reynolds had wiped the Sentry from the minds of nearly everyone on Earth, himself included. When the Void threatens the East Coast of the United States, he joins Mister Fantastic and Doctor Strange to erase the public's memory a second time.

  The erasure leaves him hidden, but not for good. His next appearance is behind the bars of a prison built for supervillains.

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• 5. Avengers Years

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  On the Raft, the supervillain prison, Reynolds has locked himself up voluntarily, believing he murdered his wife, Lindy Lee. When Electro triggers a massive jail break, Reynolds defends other characters from Carnage. He flies Carnage into space and rips him in half.

  The Avengers then learn that Mastermind, acting for an enemy of the Sentry known only as the General, planted a psychic virus in Reynolds' mind. As a cry for help, Reynolds had subconsciously placed his memories in the mind of the comic book writer Paul Jenkins, who passed them on through comics. The Avengers show Reynolds that Lindy is alive. Emma Frost frees him from the virus and restores his memories. The Sentry joins the team, and his Watchtower appears atop Stark Tower, where it had been hidden from view.

  Still struggling to accept that he and the Void are one being, Reynolds confronts his psychiatrist, Cornelius Worth. He begins switching rapidly between personalities, and he explains that the two sides share no memories. Later the Sentry hurls the Void into the Sun, telling it he no longer needs it to balance his good deeds. The Void promises to return.

  Iron Man recruits him for the Mighty Avengers, where Ultron kills Lindy and Reynolds returns to the Watchtower to find her alive, apparently resurrected by him. Then he joins Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers. The Void resurfaces, and Osborn has Bullseye murder Lindy.

  During the 2010 storyline Siege, Osborn asks the Sentry to destroy Asgard, and he does. The Void takes full control and kills Ares. When the Sentry reverts to human form, he asks to be killed. Thor grants the wish and cremates Reynolds' body in the sun.

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• 6. Death and Return

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  The Apocalypse Twins brought Reynolds back by using a Celestial Death Seed to make him one of their new Horsemen of Death. He says he was trapped in the sun after he died, dying and regenerating over and over until the Void grew bored and left.

  Doctor Strange then built a pocket dimension where Reynolds could fight the Void alongside Scout and a Corgi named Watchdog. Billy, however, had allied with Cranio, one of the Sentry's oldest enemies. They meant to duplicate the Sentry formula, trap Reynolds in the pocket dimension and make Billy the new Sentry. Billy fought Reynolds and lost. Reynolds chose to stop fighting the Void and merge with it, and the merged Sentry removed Cranio from the pocket dimension. When the Avengers confronted him, he left for space.

  In the 2020 storyline King in Black, the Avengers summon the Sentry to fight Knull. He tries to fly Knull into space as he did with Carnage, but Knull breaks free, tears him in half and absorbs the Void.

  Director None and the Blasphemy Cartel reassemble the corpse to hold 100 million ghosts bent on destroying Stephen and Clea Strange. The couple break the spell, and the corpse explodes. Mallory Gibbs and five other civilians pick up the powers, and Mallory eventually absorbs them all. She agrees to be arrested by Misty Knight until she can control them, then takes the name Solarus.

  A 2024 miniseries introduced Mallory. In 2026, Paul Jenkins returned to write a new Sentry series that brings back Reynolds himself.

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• 7. Page and Print

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  The Sentry debuted in a five-issue Marvel Knights miniseries in 2000. It flowed straight into flashback one-shots that teamed him with the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Angel and the Hulk, followed by a closing one-shot titled The Sentry vs. the Void. Diamond Comic Distributors ranked the first issue as the 31st best-selling comic of July 2000.

  Critics later singled it out. David Harth of CBR.com placed it 10th among the best things about Marvel's comics of the 2000s. Rosie Knight of Nerdist included it among Marvel Knights must-reads and called it a seminal Sentry story told in just five issues.

  In 2005 writer Brian Michael Bendis made the Sentry a member of New Avengers. He played a small part in the first arc, Breakout, and was the focus of the second arc, in which Jenkins himself appears as a character. That same year Jenkins and artist John Romita Jr. produced an eight-issue Sentry miniseries. Its first issue ranked 17th among September 2005 sales. The character later joined Mighty Avengers and Dark Avengers, and starred in the miniseries The Age of the Sentry.

  On the 6th of March 2018, Marvel announced an ongoing series by Jeff Lemire, with art by Joshua Cassara and Kim Jacinto. It ran five issues. The first issue ranked 63rd in June 2018 sales. Joshua Davison of Bleeding Cool recommended it, and Adam Barnhardt of ComicBook.com gave it 5 out of 5.

  List makers keep returning to his power. In 2021, CBR ranked the Sentry first among the strongest male Avengers, and in 2022 it ranked him first among the fastest Avengers.

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• 8. Beyond the Comics

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  Lewis Pullman plays Bob Reynolds in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Thunderbolts, released in 2025, with Clayton Cooper playing him as a child. In this version he volunteers for experiments by Valentina Allegra de Fontaine and the O.X.E. Group because of a drug addiction. They hoped he would replace the Avengers. Instead his fragile mental health turns him into the Void, which swallows New York in darkness. The Thunderbolts talk him down, and after De Fontaine rebrands the team as the New Avengers, he joins them. Pullman is set to return in Avengers: Doomsday in 2026.

  Comic alternate universes have bent the character in other directions. In Age of Apocalypse he belongs to the Black Legion. In Marvel Zombies he is patient zero of the zombie virus, infected by his own future self through a predestination paradox.

  Video games have used him often. Nolan North voiced the Sentry and the Void in the Nintendo DS version of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, and Charlie Adler voiced them in Marvel Super Hero Squad Online. The pair also appear in Marvel: Contest of Champions, Marvel Puzzle Quest, Lego Marvel's Avengers, Marvel Future Fight and Marvel Snap. Dustin Rubin voices the Sentry in the upcoming Marvel Mystic Mayhem.

  Toy makers have followed. A Marvel Legends figure came with a Wal-Mart exclusive Giant-Man series, with a bearded variant, and Hasbro and the Avengers Infinite Series each produced further figures.

  The band Horse the Band even named a song "A Million Exploding Suns," after the Sentry's famous power.

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