Sentinel (comics)
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- For the comic book, see Sentinel (comic book). For the DC Comics character, see Alan Scott.
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The Sentinels are a type of robot in Marvel Comics’s X-Men-related series. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist/co-writer Jack Kirby, they first appeared in X-Men #14 (November 1965).
Invented by Dr. Bolivar Trask, the Sentinels are programmed to hunt and kill mutants. Several types of Sentinels have appeared through the years, manufactured by various private and paramilitary groups, but the typical Sentinel is three-stories tall, possesses the ability to fly, project energy blasts and detect mutants.
The Sentinels have been featured in several X-Men video games and played a large role in the 1990s X-Men animated series.
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[edit] Characteristics
The Sentinels are technologically advanced and are often gigantic in stature. Although many Sentinels are capable of devising tactics in combat, only a handful of unique Sentinels are self-aware. Sentinels are designed to hunt down mutants, especially the X-Men, and so typically function as supervillains or as the tools of other villains. They have evolved and improved in their capabilities with every new iteration.
Sentinels have a wide array of abilities: they can fly, shoot various weapons (primarily energy blasts and restraining devices) from different parts of their bodies, and detect mutants at long range; some of them can even change form and re-assemble after being destroyed. Sentinels' typical attacks involve either direct melee combat or firing concussive energy beams from the palms of their hands. Sentinels also possess vast physical strength and their bodies are highly resistant to damage.
Most dangerous of all, some variant Sentinels have the ability to learn from the attacks they face and create defenses against them, which hampers the opponents' chances of defeating them. The "X-Sentinels" created by Steven Lang mimicked the appearances and powers of specific members of the original team of X-Men, causing confusion among the new X-Men until Wolverine sensed their true nature and ripped the robot double of Jean Grey to shreds. Several groups of Sentinels have been created and/or led by a massive Sentinel named Master Mold.
[edit] Generations
- Mark I - by Bolivar Trask.
- Mark II - by Larry Trask, capable of adapting to different powers .
- Composite - created by merging of remaining portions of 5 sentinels destroyed by the X-Men, came under control of Ashley Martin, destroyed by her when rebelled against her.
- Mark III - by Stephen Lang and Project: Armageddon, secretly funded by Edward Buckman and the Council of the Chosen.
- X-Sentinels - by Stephen Lang, androids who were duplicates of the original X-Men.
- Mark IV - by Sebastian Shaw
- Mark V - by Sebastian Shaw for U.S. government's Project: Wideawake
- Mark VI - by Shaw Industries for Project: Wideawake, used by Onslaught. Also incorporated parts of Project Nimrod.
- Mark VII - by Shaw Industries, experimental, remotely controlled.
- Project Nimrod - by Project: Wideawake, experimental. Cancelled after X-Force interfered. Based on the Nimrod Sentinel that arrived from the Days of Future Past timeline.
- Prime Sentinels - by Bastion and Operation: Zero Tolerance, handicapped humans equipped with nanotechnology without their knowledge at Prospero Clinic, used as sleeper agents until activated by attack or presence of a mutant.
- Omega Prime Sentinels - the second generation of Prime Sentinels. Karima Shapandar is one of them.
- Wild Sentinels - Built in secret at a new Master Mold in Ecuador, activated by Donald Trask III and used by Cassandra Nova. New units are produced basing on the currently available resources - salvaged parts, weapons and sometimes even entire vehicles - which gives this particular type of Sentinels a very diverse, rag-tag appearance. Both due to this and their design flexibility, a wide variety of different shapes and forms has been observed. The mega-sentinels used to destroy Genosha and nanosentinels both belong to this kind of sentinels. The technology used in nanosentinels is also employed by Weapon Plus for their artificial evolution experiments and the creation of their Super-Sentinels.
- Mark VIII - Sentinel Squad O*N*E, designed by Stark Enterprises. Unlike other Sentinels, the Mark VIII requires a human pilot.
- Nimrod - reactivated by Reverend William Stryker.
[edit] Related Mutant-Hunting Creations
- Tri-Sentinel: A combination of three fairly standard sentinels bonded together by Loki, and defeated by Spider-Man at the peak of his cosmic powers.
- Soviet Sentinels: Created by the Soviet Union and later purchased by Cuban government officials. Resemble Eva's
- Super-Sentinels: Using nanosentinel technology, Weapon Plus created artificially evolved superhumans at The World. Of all the creations, at least three were chosen to form the mutant-hunting Super-Sentinels, Hunstman, Fantomex and Ultimaton, who were intended to be presented to the public as superheroes in order to make the extermination of mutantkind look "like a Saturday morning cartoon".
- Colcord's Sentinels: Some of the Boxbots created by Madison Jeffries (aka Box) to serve the Weapon X Program have evolved into Sentinels. In one variation of the Days of the Future Past timeline (Weapon X: Days of Future Now), one of these Boxbots actually evolves into a new Master Mold.
- Hardaway: A cyborg created at Camp Hayden, killed by the Mutant Liberation Front, who called him a Bio-Sentinel.
- X-51 (Machine Man): Captured by Bastion and "infected" with perhaps the Prime Sentinel nano-bots which reconfigures, reconstructs, his systems there by giving him similar capabilities, like adapting to almost any situation, that Nimrod has. As well as programming that at times forced him to attack mutants.
[edit] History
The Sentinels were first created by Dr. Bolivar Trask, who intended to use them to save humanity from what he saw as a threat to the species' existence in the form of mutants. In a televised debate between Trask and Professor Charles Xavier, Trask revealed and then activated the Sentinels, who promptly decided that the best way to protect humanity was to rule over it themselves. The Sentinels kidnapped Xavier and brought him and Trask to the primary Sentinel, Master Mold, only for Xavier's students, the X-Men, to find them. When Trask realized the error of his ways and that not all mutants were a threat to the world at large, he aided the X-Men by sabotaging the machinery in the Sentinel base, destroying Master Mold and the Sentinels in an explosion, but he died in the process. However, numerous Sentinels and several Master Molds were built after the destruction of the original models.
Trask had a son, Larry, who was also a mutant. Trask gave his son a control medallion which blocked the Sentinels' mutant-sensing equipment. Not aware that he was a mutant, Larry built the next batch of Sentinels, only to be slain by them when he removed the control medallion. Larry's "Mark II" Sentinels were later persuaded by Cyclops to fly into the sun, as he was able to convince them that they needed to destroy the sun in order to completely prevent mutation.
The most long-lived Sentinel project was that of Project: Wideawake, a government agency led by Henry Peter Gyrich and Valerie Cooper that purchased Sentinels from Sebastian Shaw, the mutant Black King of the Hellfire Club. Project: Wideawake also had its own research and development division, based at Camp Hayden, which included an attempt to recreate Nimrod and used this technology to adapt the purchased Sentinels. Sentinels created by this project fought the X-Men, the New Mutants, the Falcon, and X-Factor, among others.
During the "Acts of Vengeance", the Asgardian trickster god Loki manipulated various supervillains into attacking random superheroes with whom they had no previous enmity. For the climax of this chaos, he magically amplified the power of three Sentinels, merged them into the massive Tri-Sentinel, and sent the gestalt robot to destroy New York City by levelling a nearby nuclear power plant. Spider-Man was possessed by the disembodied spirit known as Captain Universe to prevent this from occurring, and lost the Captain Universe power once he destroyed the Tri-Sentinel. However, the Tri-Sentinel's remains were gathered by a survivalist group, and it rebuilt itself and again attempted to destroy the power plant. It was destroyed on a sub-molecular level when Spider-Man, with the assistance of Nova, released a deposit of "anti-metal" (Antarctic vibranium) at the center of its body.
During the Onslaught crossover, a number of government-owned Sentinels were reprogrammed by the Dark Beast in the service of the psychic entity called Onslaught. These Sentinels fought the X-Men, Avengers, and Spider-Man (Ben Reilly), ended the career of the heroic Green Goblin (Phil Urich), and killed the parents of Hallie Takahama, who would later join the Thunderbolts as Jolt.
During the "Operation: Zero Tolerance" crossover, a number of humans were transformed into cyborg human-Sentinel hybrids known as Prime Sentinels. These pseudo-Sentinels were led by the robotic humanoid Bastion. One of these Prime Sentinels, Karima Shapandar, had her mind restored by Magneto and Professor X, though her physical modifications remained.
During the war against Kang the Conqueror, a battalion of Sentinels was sent into space to attack his space station. Kang had, during a prolonged visit to the early 20th century, become an influential pioneer in robotics under the alias "Victor Timely", and was able to use his knowledge of modern robotics to instantly take control of these Sentinels and send them to attack the Earth. Despite his success in that battle, during which Washington DC was almost completely destroyed and hundreds of people were killed, Kang was ultimately defeated by the Avengers. The robotic hero X-51, better known as Machine Man, was temporarily reprogrammed with Sentinel programming.
In New X-Men #115, Professor X's evil twin Cassandra Nova used a distant relation of the Trasks to revive a Master Mold in Amazonia. She used this Master Mold to send a number of massive, highly adaptive "Wild-Sentinels" to destroy most of the population of Genosha. In Mekanix, a number of Wild Sentinels hijacked a ship from South America and attacked Chicago, where Kitty Pryde was attending university. On Genosha, a deactivated Wild-Sentinel was transformed into a statue of Magneto, with Professor Xavier's face later also added to the statue; another was temporarily animated by "Danger", the sentient manifestation of the X-Men's Danger Room.
Nova also programmed a number of microscopic, nanite-based "Nano-Sentinels" to attack the blood cells of the inhabitants of the Xavier Institute, making the X-Men and their students sick. The Nano-Sentinels were destroyed by Xorn, who may have been an alias of Magneto, although some of them were used to restore Professor Xavier's spine and legs for the duration of Xorn's stay with the X-Men.
A Sentinel series was published under the Tsunami imprint in 2002. This series followed a boy named Juston Seyfert who had discovered and reprogrammed a Sentinel of his own, using it for both good deeds and boosts to his own popularity. The series was cancelled after twelve issues, but was revived in 2005 for a five-issue limited series.
[edit] Sentinel Squad O*N*E
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In the aftermath of the House of M, resulting in the depowering of 90% of the world's mutant population, the Office of National Emergency (aka O*N*E), a splinter from the Department of Homeland Security, had Sentinels instituted at the X-Mansion to protect the mutants in case any enemies used this low point as an opportunity to attack them at their weakest, and also to stop the mutants in the event of a revolution.
This group of Sentinels is unique in that they are piloted armors as opposed to the traditional robotic Sentinel. The current group was trained by James Rhodes (War Machine), while Tony Stark gave input on the design models.
Though their intentions are good, many of the X-Men are uncomfortable with the new development, particularly Rachel Summers, who considers it a real-life reminder of the future she originates from. When talking to Luke Cage, Wolverine compared being a mutant protected by a Sentinel to being an African-American guarded by a burning cross.
The X-Men are supposed to contact O*N*E before going on a mission, having a Sentinel go along with them on said mission. In many cases the X-Men have just decided to sneak out rather than check with O*N*E, though Bishop has stated "You need to start looking at O*N*E as a resource instead of a roadblock".
The Sentinel Squad O*N*E starred in their own self-titled five-issue limited series, by John Layman and Aaron Lopresti.
The original lineup of the team was disbanded following the disastrous performance against Apocalypse and Vulcan. New Sentinel operators had taken over, employing new Sentinel Units which are visually similar to a combination of Evangelion Units, a Megadeus, and Onslaught in his mutated form. More recently, several Sentinels were disabled when X-Force attacked the X-Mansion to free the 198. A new group of Sentinels have now appeared, and they join Bishop in confronting the X-Men outside the hiding place of the 198.
[edit] In other timelines
- In the joke comic Fred Hembeck Destroys the Marvel Universe, the X-Men were killed by black, silent, man-sized "Ninja Sentinels".
- In the comic crossover X-Men/Star Trek: Second Contact, where the X-Men work with the crew of the Enterprise-E to battle Kang the Conqueror, an away team comprised of Captain Picard, Deanna Troi, Nightcrawler and Colossus encounter an approximation of the "Days of Future Past" timeline, in which the Sentinels have amalgamated with the Borg.
[edit] Days of Future Past
In the "Days of Future Past" future timeline first seen in Uncanny X-Men #141, the Sentinels have become the de facto rulers of the United States. The "Omega Sentinels" of this timeline are highly advanced in comparison to those of the present day, and the most powerful of these was Nimrod, who was accidentally transported back in time to the present. Nimrod and a present-day Master Mold became physically fused and were merged into the being called Bastion after passing through the Siege Perilous.
Time-traveller Trevor Fitzroy brought Sentinels from the future with him to the 20th century. Though the type is unnamed, they were smaller than regular Sentinels, but had the ability to quickly repair any damage by using materials from their surroundings. One of these gained sentience due to a leakage of electrolye-bath ingredients from Spiral's cyborg creation processes into its processors, renamed itself Unit 3.14159, and is currently running a program to understand and replicate human emotions. This Sentinel commandeered the massive computers of the Ant Hill, last used by Number 2, to run this program - it is predicted to take in excess of 2300 years.
[edit] The Age of Apocalypse
In the Age of Apocalypse, the Sentinels were created by Bolivar Trask and Moira MacTaggert. This type of Sentinel had several gun-turrets on its body and its primary directive was not to hunt mutants but to protect humans, for which they were capable of cooperating with mutants if it helped them fulfill their prime directive.
In an issue of the What If series, Cannonball's brother Josh (who would, in normal continuity, later become Icarus) found and "adopted" a Sentinel. Unlike nearly every other issue of What If, there was nothing in this story to indicate that it did not occur in the main Marvel Universe (Earth-616), aside from the fact that it was published in What If.
[edit] Ultimate Sentinels
In Ultimate X-Men, the Sentinels were already in action at the beginning of the first story arc. Later on, there were also the New Sentinels that were 60 of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top agents in a Sentinel battle armor that has enough hardware to take on a fleet of the old Sentinel models (though this may have been an exaggeration).
[edit] Here Comes Tomorrow
In the Here Comes Tomorrow future timeline, a Sentinel named Rover (either Mark III up to Mark VII model) is the companion and protector of Tom Skylark. After more than one hundred and fifty years of being active, Rover has become self-aware and perhaps capable of experiencing emotions.
[edit] In other media
Sentinels appeared in a number of episodes of the X-Men animated series, most notably the fairly faithful adaptation of the original Sentinel story arc featuring Bolivar Trask. His voice was that of David Fox.
Image:Sentinellaststand.jpg In the second animated series X-Men: Evolution, there is originally only one Sentinel, a prototype created by Bolivar Trask (here a former agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and to Trask's dismay, released in public by Magneto to force the X-Men to fight it and reveal the existence of mutants to the media. In X-Men: Evolution, Sentinels are much more heavily-armed than their comic book counterparts, and Trask's prototype alone was a match for the combined might of the X-Men and the Brotherhood. Upgraded Sentinels are later used by S.H.I.E.L.D. against Apocalypse, and the finale of the show hints at a merged Bastion and Nimrod appearing later in the show's timeline.
Sentinels were planned for inclusion in the second X-Men film, X2, but they did not appear onscreen (although Project Wideawake is mentioned on a computer readout screen). Sketches for the film versions of the Sentinels appear as extras on the film's DVD release. These Sentinels would have been man-sized and would have transformed into large spheres, enveloping their targets. Recently, Sentinels appeared in X-Men: The Official Game. The sentinels featured in the game appear to be similar to those from the game X-Men: Children of the Atom. There are two types of Sentinels: one is a smaller, aerial model; and the other is a giant walking behemoth.
In X-Men: The Official Movie Game, it is revealed that the late William Stryker, who presumably drowned in X2: X-Men United, had a back-up plan if his plan to eliminate all mutants with the Dark Cerebro failed, which it did. Stryker would have mutant-hunting robots called Sentinels to track down and kill all mutants they could find. But ever since Stryker's death, Hydra took over Stryker's plans and seized the Sentinels, trying to cover up what he was attempting to do. Apparently, the Sentinels became operational when Jason Stryker, who survived the falling debris, turned on the Master Mold to finish his father's work of hunting down every mutant on the planet. X-Men teamed up once again with the Brotherhood to stop the Master Mold and Sentinels in Hong Kong, and they destroyed Master Mold's core and fled its destruction. With the Master Mold destroyed, all of the Sentinels were deactivated. There are two types of Sentinels in the game. One type is a smaller aerial-based robot, and the other is a giant Sentinel reminiscent of the Sentinels' size in the comics.
In X-Men: The Last Stand, a training robot, which was heavily based on one of the Sentinels, was used in the Danger Room for Professor Xavier's mutant students to train and fight against. At the end of the session, Colossus threw Wolverine at the robot and he decapitated it.
Sentinels have appeared as major antagonists in almost every video game to feature the X-Men. In most games, the Sentinels are man-sized foes rather than the massive figures that are seen in most of their comic book appearances. Notable game appearances of Sentinels include X-Men Arcade Game, where they served as the bulk of enemies, X-Men Legends, in which they are the game's primary antagonists, X-Men Legends II, in which they appear as enemies, and X-Men: Children of the Atom and Marvel vs. Capcom 2, in which a non-standard 10' tall Sentinel is a playable character. In the latter game, it is considered by many fans to be the most powerful character in the game. In the recent X-Men fighting game, X-Men: Next Dimension Sentinels are playable characters in two forms: the standard giant-sized male and a smaller female that flies and resembles some of the female characters (Specifically melee attacks and Storm's lightning balls).
Several different toys of Sentinels have been made since their introduction. The most recent plastic incarnation is the "Build-A-Figure" character for wave ten of the Marvel Legends line.fr:Sentinelle (X-Men) pt:Sentinela (HQ)
