Page 45 Review by Stephen
"Reed... I've got to admit, the hairs are standing up on the back of my neck. I feel as though someone just told me a secret and I've forgotten it..."
Yes, Sue, along with key moments from your own wedding.
In which the creative team behind THE INHUMANS, one of the most eloquent graphic novels ever to grace the superhero shelves, play mischievous mind-games both with the lead character and with the Marvel Universe and even its readers to boot.
Is the man waking up in the middle of a thunderstorm an amnesiac? Was he really once, at the very beginning of the Marvel Age, the world's most powerful superhuman? Or is Bob Reynolds just a sorry excuse for a husband and hopeless drunk?
No one seems to remember The Sentry. Not his friends, his powered peers, nor the million readers who adored his tireless fights against an increasingly powerful Void. Not even Stan Lee, The Sentry's original writer back in 1961, could remember much about his creation until Marvel's then-editor-in-chief Joe Quesada unearthed a few rough sketches Artie Rosen had drawn way back in the early '60s. Why has everyone forgotten him, and how bad could it get if they all began to remember?
Answer: very bad indeed.
Jenkins and Lee craft a dark and often disturbing tale of mystery and suspense, full of raw, jagged gothic edges, chiaroscuro and penumbral washes juxtaposed against Rosen's more naïve four-colour pages of the original comicbook which we can no longer recall.
A second reading alerts you early on to Jenkins's carefully chosen metaphors, but the first read will surely keep you guessing.
This book collects the entire package on top the mini-series including Sienkiewicz's 'Hulk / Sentry' which fits in well, along with the other three extra one-shots which only served to hold up the dénouement for me.
Plus, last but most certainly not least, you can read the whole publicity machine as originally presented to the comicbook press (Joe Quesada supposedly interviewing a befuddled Stan Lee) which formed a very effective and ridiculously witty prank. Clue: Artie Rosen doesn't exist and definitely never did. If he does sound vaguely familiar, Sam Rosen and Artie Simek were calligraphers for Marvel during the so-called Silver Age.
The Sentry's story more recently continued in Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Deodato's DARK AVENGERS.
