I Shouldn't Think About The Sentry, He Makes Me Stupidly Contemplative

I had a little fun at The Sentry's expense last week, because that's one of things I do here. Like griping about Batman and raving about Marvel's cosmic books. To be sure, it was a bit much for Bob to immediately assume that if someone is searching for that generation's greatest hero, they mean him, but that kind of self-confidence seems necessary for The Sentry. He has to believe he's really that good, because if he starts doubting then he becomes less useful, and eventually he's crying bed while Captain America yells at him to get up and come help. It's kind of self-sustaining; if he believes in himself, then he's more effective, which in turn feeds his confidence. If he stops believing in himself, then he falters, which in turn makes him less confident in himself, and so on.

Or maybe it works another way entirely. The rules that govern the Sentry's powers seem to hold steady for roughly the same length of time as Deadpool's attention span. Right now, it may be that confidence is bad because it means he's more active, which encourages the Void, or it makes him less careful, which gives the Void a stronger grip, or who knows what. It wasn't really what I meant to discuss.

That sort of presumption isn't limited to the Sentry, though. Most heroes manifest it to some degree, just by what they do. They throw on a costume and fight crime, evil, injustice, based on their definition of what those terms mean. Even if they enter a situation unsure of who's in the right, they're confident they can sort it out in the midst of dealing with the problem, and that they'll make the right choice. Super-heroes tend to be run up against problems where both sides are right, or both wrong, or both right and wrong, or there are multiple sides and each has arguments legitimate and otherwise. Sometimes the hero can help, sometimes they conclude they can't divine a solution, but they start out believing they can fix things, and past failures don't stop them from involvement in later problems. The hero's beliefs might shift with experience (which is only natural), but they'll still trust in their judgment.

Maybe that's necessary. If the hero isn't sure they know what's right, they can wind up as Hamlet, endlessly waffling over what would be the right thing to do, and by the time they decide, it's too late. The Sentry's maybe just a more obvious example, where his confidence in himself directly relates to whether he'll be able to get the job done*.

* He's not the first or the last, since Cornell went that route with Captain Britain, making his powers tie directly into Braddock's self-confidence, and I think Hal Jordan's been through some stretches where his ring didn't work terribly well in the pre-Parallax days because he didn't trust his judgment.