The Sentry is a superhero rooted in the human spirit’s potential for extraordinary good and devastating evil, a Superman-like golden god with a flipside that’s defined by darkness. The character was off the grid for a few years, but he’s back in the Marvel Universe after returning in Donny Cates and Gabriel Hernandez Walta’s Doctor Strange, and now has his own ongoing series that delves deep into the pressure Bob Reynolds feels to keep his fantastic alter egos contained. Writer Jeff Lemire has developed a reputation for crafting chilling psychological thrillers with superhero concepts, and his best Marvel Comics work, Moon Knight, leaned into this strength as it explored the mentally ill antihero’s past, present, and future. He’s back in that mode with The Sentry, splitting the narrative between Bob’s time in reality and an imaginary dreamscape where The Sentry and his sidekicks engage in brightly colored battles against The Void and other Sentry villains.
This exclusive preview of next week’s The Sentry #3 highlights the tonal contrast at the core of Lemire’s story, with artists Kim Jacinto, Joshua Cassara, and colorist Rain Beredo depicting the two planes of the narrative with dramatically different styles. Cassara and Beredo present the regular world with restrained compositions and textured linework and coloring, but when the panels shift to the dreamscape, Jacinto and Beredo make everything bolder and more dynamic. Whereas Cassara keeps all of the action contained within panel borders, Jacinto’s superhero snapshots break through the borders to accentuate the explosive force of these costumed adventures. Beredo’s coloring similarly undergoes a drastic shift, moving from dull greys and browns to embrace the full rainbow spectrum when the superheroics begin. Like Moon Knight, The Sentry makes exceptional use of multiple artists to establish different perspectives, accentuating how Bob Reynolds is stuck between two worlds that are doing a number on his mental stability.