Continuing my "Catch-up" of Marvel's BIG stories, I am in the process of reading Civil War and following the MarvelGuides.com reading order, not just the TP collections. Meaning, I will be reading a lot more than required.
As such, I have just finished Sentry: Reborn. This Sentry story is not a specific Civil War storyline, though, in #7, there is a section where The Good Doctor is trying to get his patient to reveal the true identities of his superhero drawings.
That aside, what Sentry has got going for it is the superior storyline from Jenkins. He gives the reader one hell of a thought - What If the worlds strongest superhero is a paranoid schizophrenic? Scary huh? Yes, it is. Sadly, Jenkins plays the psychobabble card for too long. We are provided with a profuse amount of time where Sentry's alter-ego Robert Reynolds is in therapy with his psychiatrist. Do not get me wrong, these interactions are not a terrible thing. In the beginning, they work well to show the issues Sentry is having. However, by #7, it was wearing thin.
I loved how the team and Jenkins used old comic-book styles and storylines to add a disjointed feeling to the tale. But once again, by #8, both the backstory and origin tale was becoming convoluted: Making them irrelevant to the main story. In fact, the last issue is where Jenkins falls flat. After doing a superb job giving the readers a strong adult story, he tries to dumb it down and goes too far. The ending left me with a feeling of "what was the bloody point?" Worse yet was Sentry's excessively simple solution to the matter: Rendering the finale benign.
Another plus, for me, was Marvel's take on Superman; because Sentry is Superman. There are many similarities between the two. In one scene, The Void asks Sentry if he is faster than a speeding bullet - yeah, that one was not too subtle, guys.
I have to say, even though the issue covers artwork was below par for Marvel, the interior panels by John Romita Jr, Mark Morales, and Dean White were excellent. I especially liked the way old-style comic-book art was interspersed, and a couple of times, extra artists depicted different eras.
All-in-all a good story with decent art. Well worth a read, though you may feel deflated by the ending.