The Creator of The Sentry Pitched Him to Marvel and DC Multiple Times

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At the Thunderbolts’ Hollywood premiere afterparty on April 29, Paul Jenkins heard someone calling him. When he looked around, it was Jake Schreier, the director. Despite it being Schreier’s big night, Jenkins felt both pleased and perplexed because he thought the director would be too busy with greetings to talk to a comic book writer.

However, Schreier was eager to hear Jenkins’ opinion regarding the film, specifically about Lewis Pullman’s portrayal of The Sentry, who is more famously known as Bob. As the co-creator of The Sentry in 2000 and a consultant on the movie, Jenkins has been involved with a project that garnered acclaim for its narrative about mental health struggles, presented through a comic book format.

Jenkins mentioned that he was worried about sticking to something significant, but he was genuinely satisfied with both the film and the representation of the character,” says Jenkins.

The journey to the screen for Sentry’s tale spanned over several decades. In the latter part of the 1990s, Jenkins aimed to narrate a story about addiction through the lens of a heroic figure. At DC’s Vertigo imprint, he proposed a narrative arc centered around Power Man, a character who uses a pill to transform into a superhero for an hour each day. This would be a tale exploring the concept of ultimate addiction. However, the company declined this idea, and instead, Vertigo editor Karen Berger advised him to create an original character instead.

Initially, I developed The Sentry. An editor at DC supported it, but they failed to act on it. I then submitted it to Marvel, but they declined as well. Later, I returned to DC, but they also didn’t take it up. Laughing, he recounts this experience and shares that he subsequently approached Marvel again.

‘Jenkins and Jae Lee’s project continued to spin, as they were already collaborating on Marvel’s The Inhumans. Jenkins successfully persuaded Lee to join him in working on The Sentry. They presented their proposal once more, which was accepted by editors Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti this time around.’

The narrative revolves around a superhero who had been overlooked by all. Known as both the Sentry and the malevolent figure, The Void, in an act of supreme selflessness, he orchestrated his own forgetting, thus preventing The Void from causing harm to the world once more.

In the course of their marketing strategy, Marvel cleverly fabricated the story that Jenkins found this superhero hidden in a storage cupboard at Marvel. Moreover, they claimed that the legendary Stan Lee collaborated with an imaginary artist named Artie Rosen to co-create the character. The ruse worked, and people were deceived. As Jenkins puts it, “It was one of Stan Lee’s secret creations.

The character gained popularity, and Jenkins was featured in a 2005 issue of New Avengers comic book as his own character, following writer Brian Michael Bendis’ suggestion. Later on, in another interesting twist, he engaged in a discussion with Pullman, the actor who portrayed him on screen.

Jenkins remembers saying to him, ‘Friend, I truly hope this benefits your professional journey. It may seem unusual, but I’m genuinely pleased with your actions,'” and he appeared quite enthusiastic about it.

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2025-05-30 01:24