A kid living with one parent in a small town in a rural, heavily wooded area finds a damaged giant robot whose origin he doesn't know, and decides to keep it. So, yeah, the concept behind 2003's Sentinel series sounds a lot like Iron Giant. In a later issue, a random bystander even comments on the similarity.
Series writer Sean McKeever changes the focus and structure somewhat. Juston Seyfert's a bit of a mechanical whiz, so he cobbles together a few replacement parts his robot needs, as the Sentinel can't pull all its parts back together. And Juston does (eventually) research what it actually is, and tries to tease apart its programming and add new commands. Unfortunately, both of those actions are limited to him asking it questions (which it typically doesn't or can't answer) and trying to give it new directives about not ever abandoning him.
At school, Juston's an undersized freshman with a couple of equally nerdy friends. All of them are targeted by the senior jocks, and McKeever uses the fear of school shootings that had really kicked into national attention a few years prior. This was a few years after the shootings at Columbine High School, back when the idea of kids bringing guns to school to enact revenge or nihilistic fantasies was still almost novel. So here's a kid, picked on and humiliated by the bigger, more popular kids, and now he's got a walking weapon of mass destruction at his command. And one of his best friends has been talking about wanting to get back at those guys.
Nothing comes of Matt's comments. As far as Juston's friends go, McKeever focuses on Alex, who has a girl he likes that he actually works up the nerve to ask out, and get beaten up by the jocks to send a message to Juston. But, after a particularly cruel and humiliating prank, Juston has the Sentinel attack the school. Nobody is physically harmed, because Juston uses it to look like a big hero, "defeating" "Balazar" by ramming it with a jeep. (He also wants to terrify his bullies, but doesn't seem intent on killing or injuring them. He does remark later that Greg, one of said bullies, is in, 'the loony bin,' so he fucked them up more than a little regardless.)
Juston feels guilty about being called a hero for something he staged, but too little, too late. People notice things like a giant robot attacking a little town in Wisconsin. Government-type people. Add in that Juston is, in an attempt at penance, or at least to deserve to be called a hero, using the Sentinel to help rescue people from car crashes and plane crashes, it's hard to keep a low profile.
The Udon team draw one of the survivors of the crash, named John, to look like Bruce Willis. I assume because John McClane hates flying.
The art sometimes makes the Sentinel look less threatening. It spends most of the early issues flat on its back in a shed, missing limbs. Even once it's up and moving, the repairs give it a cobbled together feel. Huge, rounded, shoulder pauldrons and hands don't exactly make it cuddly, but it definitely looks more like a supersized toy than a genocide weapon.
Of course, at other
times, they use its bulk, height, and glowing eyes to good effect.
Especially as Juston begins to realize how little he actually
understands about how it works. When he orders it to help someone, and
it instead begins attacking a perceived threat, or describes his
commands as "supplemental protocols" and overrides them, the art tends
to show the Sentinel from an extreme upward angle. Juston, barely coming
up to the Sentinel's ankle, staring up at this thing he doesn't
control. Its face is often in shadow at those points, if it can even
really be seen. Sometimes we're looking up into two big palms with
glowing energy about to erupt. Which are the times Juston starts to
realize it may very well kill him if he's in the way.
2 comments:
I remember that at around the same time, Grant Morrison had a boy/sentinel team turn up in the alternate future in New X Men. No connection, I think, just a coincidence, which I always found a bit weird.
I also vaguely recall that Juston gets killed in Avengers Arena because of course he does.
I only ever saw a preview of that Morrison story, but that rings a bell. When we discussed Stars and STRIPE last year you noted a lot of comics got into the "kid and their giant robot pal" thing, so perhaps not even Morrison could resist the siren call.
I'm going to mention it in next week's entry, but yeah, Juston bites the dust in Avengers Arena, though comments at House to Astonish give me reason to think he's somehow alive again (something about none of the pre-existing characters still being dead, only the ones Hopeless created for the comic.)
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