Wednesday, September 17, 2008

False Advertising Department

So bland we must concoct non-existent scenes on the cover to make it look interesting
That cover there, for Age of the Sentry#1, provides the most egregious case of false advertising since the movie The Neverending Story. Specifically:

No monkey for snell...At no point in this issue does the Sentry fight a monkey. No monkey even appears!! I want my money back, Marvel.

Of course, it's my own damn fault for spending yet more money on the lastest attempt to salvage the colossal wank-off excuse of a character, the Sentry.

No disrespect to the efforts of Jeff Parker or Paul Tobin here, but forcing a brand new character into already-existing past continuity via the "everyone forgot" retcon just doesn't work. It didn't work in 1994 when DC tried to pull it off with Triumph, "founder" of the Justice League who supposedly got eaten by limbo on their first mission and everybody forgot him. Hell, even Grant Morrison couldn't make him work. And it didn't work in 2000 when Marvel tried the same stunt (albeit more creatively) with the Sentry.

Despite the hammered repetition of "the power of a million exploding suns" and "a golden guardian of good," the Silver Age pastiche doesn't work. First, he's a terrifically lame character in present day, which negates our desire to see his "past" adventures. And nothing anyone has done, either earlier on or in this issue, provides him one lick of character, one interesting personality trait, one reason to care. He's a couple of I-wish-I-were-as-good-as-Stan-Lee slogans with nothing to back them up. He's an idea searching for a character and a story, and they still haven't found it. You could replace Sentry with Captain Everything from normalman in this issue and not have to change one line of dialogue.

Secondly, since we know his adventures aren't "real," we lose the suspension of disbelief necessary to make us enjoy these stories. Instead, they keep calling attention to the artiface, constantly referring to other Marvel characters, encouraging us to look for seams and continuity. They're afraid to tell an all-original Sentry Silver Age story without constantly name-checking actual Marvel characters, reinforcing the idea that Sentry is not a strong enough idea to stand on his own.

Finally, this type of Silver Age pastiche has been done much better before, from Alan Moore's 1963 and his run on Supreme to normalman to All-Star Superman to Mark Waid's Silver Age...when treading this ground, Marvel needs to bring something new to the game to justify $2.99...and they fail. Aside from the Mad Thinker dressed as a beatnik, this comic is a pretty bland affair. Go big or go home guys.

Admit it, Marvel...The Sentry was fine as a one-off who was forgotten again at the end of the mini-series. As an ongoing character, or as a basis for 1960's nostalgia, he just doesn't work. Ship him off to the Ultimate Universe, or the Squadron Supreme, or have him hang with the Exiles. Just get him out of my Marvel Universe, please.

And if you promise me a monkey on the cover, you'd damn well better give me a monkey on the inside!!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's not just a monkey -- it's a monkey in a necktie!

I didn't mind it as much. Reminded me a bit of the retro "Mighty Man" comics they used to put into some issues of "Savage Dragon" back in the day.

Probably shoulda been a one-shot, though. I sure wouldn't want to read an ongoing series of this stuff...

Anonymous said...

Well, then you won't like the new attempt at the same shtick with Marvel's soon to be released:

BLUE MARVEL.

Supposedly, he was a VERY IMPORTANT Silver Age character, who vanished or something, and is now returning to the MU proper and EVERYONE will be clamoring that "we missed you B.M. How did we ever defeat Galactus WITHOUT you".

The kicker?
THIS character is BLACK.
Ooooh... edgy.

The deal is that he was a huge, big-time crimefighter in 1961, but he was black, so as long as he wore a full body costume with full mask, no one knew he was black and he was fine.

One day, the mask tears and President JF Kennedy asks him to step down as a superhero for the betterment of the civil rights movement.

Now he has returned to fight his old foe who has laid waste to the Avengers.

Don't believe me?
Here:

http://tinyurl.com/3lar5f

GAH!

Anonymous said...

It might be fine as an homage to the past like Big Bang or Radioactive Man (I wish he'd get his own comic again instead of sharing it with Simpsons pretending to be superheroes--not that I don't enjoy those stories), but I don't see the point otherwise. Not that I'm going to have to play games with my timeline-sorted collection, since the only Marvel I read nowadays is MA: Super Heroes and the occasional MA:Avengers. (Got in too late for MA: Spidey.)