The@#%!ing Sentry
I get why Bob Reynolds AKA The Sentry has his defenders. His (to put it lightly) mental instability combined with a near limitless power set made for a dangerous and unpredictable ally, whilst ensuring the character himself was both pitiable and all-powerful. What's more his introduction into Marvel continuity - as a celebrated Golden Age hero long forgotten, having been wiped from the world's collective memory by a nefarious evildoer (in a rare win for the bad guys) - was gutsy even if it was also a blatant attempt to retcon an association with the likes of Reed Richards and Tony Stark, in the hope of lending a new character instant gravitas. But The Sentry was an awful creation - and someone at Marvel must agree because he was killed off less than a decade after his introduction. The main problem with this abomination of a character is that he's overpowered and his abilities are thinly defined, if at all: in one story he is seemingly killed only to re-materialise unharmed later on; in another he brings his wife back from the dead with his mind; several stories find him ripping other powerful characters in two (Carnage and Ares - the supposedly immortal God of War) or hurtling enemies into the sun. Is there anything he can't do?! As you can imagine, this unlimited skill set made him very difficult to write for. As a result the Sentry was either a) used as a last gasp deus ex machina to get the writer's out of a hole (World War Hulk) or b) written out of the story in order to balance the fight. For instance, he flies away and sulks in space during Secret Invasion saga, lest he - you know - save the world, and I seem to recall he also spent a great deal of the super human Civil War arc weeping on the moon. Oh Bob! Another pointless and annoying fact about The Sentry: he has a magical watchtower that just so happens to materialise on top of Stark's newly constructed Avengers Tower, though it was never seemingly of any significance. It was really just an extremely elaborate, rent-free accommodation in the middle of New York. It seems
even his funeral issue was a deeply irritating middle-finger in the direction of continuity, especially loathed by fans of X-men member Rogue*. Before I wrote this I honestly didn't realise how much I hate The Sentry... *Where, apropos of nothing, Anna Marie blurts out that she was sleeping with Bob Reynolds at some unspecified point in time and that he was the only person she could be close to.