Sentinels #1: The Price of Becoming a Wolf

I tend not to pay attention to what other people think of any sort of comics that haven’t come out yet. I wait till I’ve read it then I get more interested in general opinion. However it was very noticeable that Sentinels is one of those books that, when first solicited, elicited a reaction from parts of the internet that could be described as akin to recoiling from a venomous snake and honestly I understand that being offered a Sentinels book in the face of having lost Krakoa could definitely be perceived as some sort of affront. However if you’re familiar with Alex Paknadel and any of his work, you would already know that Alex never writes about the obvious but likes to dig deeply into the emotional depths of the characters he writes about and get embroiled in questions of morality. Sentinels is no exception.

I think the thing I admire most about this book is the risk it takes. This is a book about monsters holding mirrors up to other monsters that are themselves broken people that have made a monstrous choice, so they can trade the small cage circumstance put them in for a slightly bigger cage as they kid themselves that they are better off than they were before choosing to become what they have become. The use of Omega Red by the creative team is one of my favorite things in the issue. This is a monster that understands what it’s like to be on someone else’s leash, used and abused by masters that don’t care for him. He is a mirror that reminds the sentinels that they may be wolves but they are still monsters on someone else’s leash who are expendable in the service of their masters agenda. The use of wolves as symbolic representation is used very cleverly by Paknadel even as Mason has wolves appear very early in the issue which ties back to Trask’s story later in the issue.

Bottom line, being a sentinel is no picnic, if a dangerous mutant doesn’t kill you, your own mods might as your internal balance is overwhelmed by your sentinel nanites and you “graft and become a mindless machine. Happy stuff…said no one ever. The book splits itself between uber violence of Sentinels facing dangerous mutants and examining motivations and placement of it’s characters in this very dark part of the From The Ashes reboot. There’s no one to like in this book, they are all monsters and that’s a hard sell but as soon as you realize that’s the point, it makes things very interesting as the creative team examines their very misguided motivations. Along the way there’s hardcore violence, body horror, and political machinations. Paknadel’s use of Trask is superb. Here’s a mutant, running a Sentinel program, who’s convinced himself that the program is necessary while still being held on a leash by humanity. Admittedly Trask’s got secrets and his leash is longer than his Sentinels but as Paknadel shows he is still on one. The team itself is fairly well fleshed out by Paknadel as he demonstrates those lies they’ve told themselves to justify what they are doing. A fantastic example is Sawtooth telling Drumfire how They are strictly a bring in the ” bad mutants” and not “true believers” while walking through a literal torture tunnel (Goddamn can we Leave Blob alone…that scene feels like a shout out to his scene in Age Of Apocalypse, but even more heartbreaking) It’s dark, subversive and works really well, with an absolutely KILLER cliffhanger ending.

Sentinels is not a happy or pretty book like say Exceptional or Uncanny. It’s dark, goes to ugly places and really “pretty” art would not sell the concept if they had gone that way. Fortunately they didn’t. Justin Mason’s art is the perfect choice for this script. It’s gritty, hard, with sharp edges you can cut yourself on yet still expressive and able to covey emotion from characters in quieter moments. Mason’s action scenes and moments of uber violence are suitably horrific and dynamic, balanced against conveying character emotion in more introspective moments. He’s the perfect artist for a book. It’s a good marriage with Paknadel’s script that won’t appeal to fans of the more traditionally “everyone’s beautiful, even the bad guys” kind of comics but I think it’s a great fit. Blee is solid on coloring and VC’s Travis Lanham has some fun with sound effects and a classic x-font right at the end.