Posted by AC-WEB on September 19, 2006, 3:17 pm
Board Administrator

SENTRY (Iron Man file entry) Over a decade ago, four amateur astronauts were mutated by cosmic rays and became the Fantastic Four, beginning, it is thought, what is called “the Age of Heroes” that continues, for better or worse, to this day. It’s a misnomer, of course. Every era has its heroes, costumed or not, superhumans or otherwise; it’s always been that way and it always will. Yet even if we accept such nomenclature, apparently the FF were preceded by another super hero, perhaps the most powerful and famed of us all…when we can remember him, that is. The Sentry’s story started earlier still, back in 1947, when Canada’s Weapon X and remnants of the U.S.’s Operation: Rebirth pooled their resourced to become Project: Sentry, an attempt to not only recreate the super-soldier serum but, in post-war hubris, magnify its effect thousands of times. Unfortunately, within a few years it had divided nearly a thousand fold itself into isolated sub-projects, with lab work farmed out to private contractors and overall administrative virtually nil. Precisely where all of its resources ended up over the decades, what they might have begun, and where they ultimately led has been almost impossible to learn but, unfortunately, only too easy to imagine. Perhaps twenty years ago, Robert Reynolds, a gifted but erratic student, stole a chemical compound from one of his science instructors as part of humanity’s age-old quest for the ultimate high. That compound was the end-result of decades of work by Project: Sentry, carelessly kept in a public school, for God’s sake. Rob consumed the serum and gained powered compared to “exploding suns” (whatever that means in this context). Project: Sentry, appalled at what their irresponsibility had wrought, persuaded Rob to let them test his powers at their facility, but they couldn’t contain him long, nor his desire to put his powers to good use, and the Sentry debuted before a world that had almost forgotten superhuman Samaritans. When the Fantastic Four appeared a few years later, followed by Spider-Man, Thor, and others (including myself), the Sentry became a valued friend and ally to most of us. Or so I hear. More years passed before the Void, part of Rob’s personality as villainous as the Sentry is heroic, manifested and killed thousands, proving that while Stamford had proven pivotal, it was, tragically, not unprecedented. The Sentry, apparently planning to forcibly repress the Void at great personal cost, entrusted Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards), Dr. Strange (Stephen Strange), and S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Nick Fury with information that might keep him in check; I could easily resent that I was left out of the loop, if only I had any idea whether or not that’s what I asked to be. But Sentry’s career ended without his input at, ironically, about the same time Captain America briefly lay down his shield to become Nomad (not a good week for super-soldiers). One of Sentry’s enemies, the mysterious General, a military genius and Francophobe extraordinaire, hired the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants’ Mastermind (Jason Wyngarde) to mentally force Sentry to erase all knowledge of both Sentry and Void from the memories of everyone in the world, including Mastermind, the General, and himself. More years passed before Rob regained his memories-we’re still not sure why and we’ve had no time to out-but most people, including myself, have not regained theirs, and virtually everything I’ve recorded here came from the Sentry’s own testimony, which may not be as reliable as we’d like. As an Avenger, he’s been instrumental in several early missions, and when circumstances forced him to fight me on the government’s behalf, I was forced to break him down mentally using reports of worldwide disasters awaiting his actions. In retrospect it was an incredibly stupid move, since such an overload could have easily triggered a psionic outburst to remake the work more openly and give us another House of M to deal with. For various reasons, we’ve made a conscientious decision to keep the Sentry away from the bulk of the fighting during this conflict. That’s not to say that he isn’t contributing to our cause in his own way, however. We are currently incarcerating the vast majority of unregistered combatants within the Negative Zone Prison Alpha-and the Sentry has donated several of his Confluctor devices (originally created by the inhabitants of the Temporalon homeworld) to serve as transport gateways into the Negative Zone. The Confluctor gateways are manned almost exclusively by Sentry’s near-sentient CLOC (Centrally Located Organic Computer) drones, which process incoming inmates and maintain order on the massive transport craft that shuttle inmates to Prison Alpha. Sentry has little reason to trust the government, but perhaps even less to fear it, and for now he’s supporting the Registration Act. While most of the world still thinks he’s among the newest, not the oldest, of our era’s super heroes, the worldwide scope of his activities has won him popularity, so his support is a major asset. But if humanity’s full memories of the Sentry are ever restored, the discovery of how they were stolen may be inevitable, and faced with the knowledge that the most powerful super hero on Earth could alter their memories on a whim-or worse, by accident-I’m not sure that any government guarantees would reassure the populace. I’m not sure anything short of his total destruction would, which may be the same as saying nothing at all would. My disaster report overload trick will be useless if the greatest threat to the world is the Sentry himself. The current crisis takes precedence, but once we’ve pulled away all the masks, we may still be left standing in the light of a million exploding suns…