UNCANNY X-MEN #57: The Sentinels Live!

The Sentinels! Live! One night only! Tonight at the Sudbury Civic Auditorium! 

Originally Published June 1969

Before re-joining our X-Pals in Egypt, we check in with that sweet kid Lorna Dane, whom we have not seen since her trip to the "Friskotheque" with Iceman. She is finding her magnetic powers slightly on the wane, but she's got bigger problems...

That's right, the Sentinels are poised to make a big comeback tour., kidnapping Lorna for undoubtedly nefarious purposes.

As the X-Men debate what to do with the Living Pharaoh (who has been demoted from Living Monolith due to a lack of THE POWER) as well as Alex's burgeoning mutant uncontrollable zap-hands powers, they are approached by some local Bedouin types who demand to know why these costumed characters have assaulted Respected Archaeologist Professor Abdol. And if you didn't know Abdol had recently been a 40-foot-tall monster, you would really see their point.

A scuffle ensues that causes Alex to flee, and Cyclops to call these locals by a decidedly offensive epithet:

Yikes.

Unable to track Alex down, they decide to got contact Lorna back in New York to see if she can turn Cerebro on to help find him. Unfortunately, when they Skype her, they only find a wrecked apartment, which sends Iceman into a panicked rage.

He and Beast go back to New York to investigate, encountering local police (again) who react to the costumed heroes by calling them "mutie" and throwing a desk chair with such force that it knocks Beast out the window!

Iceman rescues him in the nick of time with an ice pole and they go to Cyclops' nearby apartment where they flip on one of those perfectly-timed news broadcasts that explains exactly what is going on.

I remember here was a period years ago where it was common to make jokes about "Wow, how lucky that just happened to be airing right now" but let's face it, in the era of 24-hour news this is not so hard to believe. Just like thanks to TV and movies I happen to believe that TV programs were contantly being pre-empted with special reports and breaking news back in the 1960's and 70's.

Bobby and Hank find out that an influential federal Judge Chalmers has gotten his hams all steamed on the mutant issue. He has climbed on the anti-mutant bandwagon, having conducted a five-year study on the matter. To this end, he has authorized the return of the Sentinel program - which collapsed several years ago under mysterious circumstances - under the auspices of one Larry Trask, son of Sentinel inventor Bolivar Trask.

Larry explans that mutants are the gravest danger we all face today, and that his father taught him all about Sentinels before his mysterious death at the hands of the X-Men. In a televised interview that does not sound at all completely insane, he declares his very reasonable intention to destroy all mutants with his newly minted giant killer robots.

Further Thoughts:

As Beast and Iceman point out during Larry's rant, he is unaware that his father was actually killed trying to stop the Sentinels, who had (predictably) run amok, forcing him to create more in the name of becoming the protectors/rulers of all mankind. It's pretty understandable how this story did not really get out, but it's a shame that it leads to history repeating, and you can see where this all is going.

Under the pencil of Neal Adams and the script of Roy Thomas, this Sentinel story definitely has an increased intensity. Even if this plays out exactly the same way the last Sentinel story did - and pretty much every story about a robot ever - being drawn by Neal Adams is a good justification to do it again.

I'll temper my praise for the art just for a second, though, to say sometimes the frenetic layouts get away a bit and become to hectic and hard to read.

I'm impressed that the book actually took so long to get back to the Sentinels. In the time since thier original three-part story, we got a rematch with Lucifer, the debut and return of the Mimic, the second and third meeting with the Juggernaut, two battles with Merlin/The Warlock, several appearances from Blob and Unus, and numerous returns, sometimes from apparent death, for Magneto. You could say that the Sentinels were defeated pretty soundly, but being that they are giant robots there's always a way to rebuild them. And you could say that there are only so many stories you can tell with them, but that never really stopped the writers before.

I also like how they weren't really done with the Living Pharaoh/Alex Summer affair before the Sentinels came crashing in as the new thing. There's a way to do overlapping subplots that, instead of seeming overcrowded and confusing, makes the action that much more exciting and breakneck, and that is the case here.

That said, if I may play Monday-morning Quarterback here (or Fifty-Years-Later Quarterback as it were,) maybe instead of showing the Sentinels on page one (and the cover) they could have obscured them so that the readers didn't know what was up - like Magneto in this story, or the Juggernaut in his first appearance. That way you could get to the end, with Beast and Iceman seeing Larry Trask on TV and realizing, along with the audience. "Trask...? But that means...!" and end with Sentinels lurking outside. Oh well.