The Sentry #1

History

Writer Paul Jenkins developed the core concept in the late 1990s as a grounded story about an addicted, housebound everyman before collaborating with artist Rick Veitch, whose contributions included the key idea of weaving the character retroactively into Marvel's full publication history and erasing all memory of his existence. Jenkins pitched the project to Marvel Knights co-editor Joe Quesada, who paired Jenkins with Jae Lee — the two had just won an Eisner Award for their Inhumans miniseries — and then engineered an elaborate real-world hoax to mirror the comic's amnesia premise: a fictitious Silver Age artist named 'Artie Rosen' (whose accompanying vintage artwork was actually drawn by John Romita Sr.) was planted in Wizard Magazine's letters columns and eventually given a fabricated obituary, with Stan Lee publicly playing along as the character's supposed original co-creator. Marvel and Wizard sustained the deception through the entire run of the miniseries before coming clean in Wizard #116 (May 2001), at which point Jenkins publicly credited Veitch's substantial creative contributions — though the precise scope of Veitch's co-creator status has remained contested between the two parties for over two decades.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearance of Robert Reynolds / Sentry (Bob Reynolds), written by Paul Jenkins with pencils, inks, and cover by Jae Lee, colored by José Villarrubia, lettered by Richard Starkings and Wes Abbott, and edited by Joe Quesada and Nanci Dakesian.
• First appearance of the Void, Sentry's destructive dark alternate persona, introduced in both flashback and present-day narrative within this same issue.
• First appearances of supporting characters Lindy Lee-Reynolds (Bob's wife) and Normie the Watchdog, as catalogued in the Marvel Database.
• Sentry's powers originate from a serum derived from the same super-soldier program that produced Captain America; the issue establishes in flashback that Reynolds stole and drank the professor's secret formula as a teenager.
• The issue is part of the Marvel Knights imprint and opens a five-issue miniseries that then fed directly into a series of flashback team-up one-shots (with the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Angel, and the Hulk) and a concluding one-shot, The Sentry vs. the Void.
• The real-world promotional hoax — a fictitious Stan Lee–era hero 'rediscovered' via Wizard Magazine, with fake vintage art by John Romita Sr. presented as the work of the invented 'Artie Rosen' — was designed to mirror the in-story amnesia premise and was sustained for the entire run of the miniseries.
• Jae Lee's interior artwork deliberately cycles through multiple distinct artistic styles (evoking Jack Kirby, Frank Miller, and other eras) within the flashback sequences to simulate the character having existed across the full history of Marvel Comics.
• The character was reactivated in Brian Michael Bendis's New Avengers (2004–2005) and later received a sequel miniseries in 2005 drawn by John Romita Jr., establishing the 2000 issue as the foundation of a sustained presence across Marvel's mid-2000s event era, including Siege (2010) and eventually Thunderbolts* (2025 MCU film, portrayed by Lewis Pullman).

Cast · 12 characters

Full credits

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