Appearing in "The Sinister Secret of the Sentry!"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
- ⏴ Sentry 9168 (Destruction)
- ⏴ Doctor Doom (Victor von Doom) ⏵
Other Characters:
- "Buster" (grocery store owner)
- "Thrall" (one of Doom's technicians)
- "Skipper" (captain of the Ocean Queen) (Unnamed)
- Mr. Henry (helmsman of the Ocean Queen)
- Mad Thinker (Mentioned)
- Super-Android (Mentioned)
- Puppet Master (Phillip Masters) (Mentioned)
Races and Species:
Locations:
- United States of America
- New York State
- New Jersey
- Pine Barrens
- Mad Thinker's lair (Destroyed)
- Pine Barrens
- Atlantic Ocean
- Hidden Land (Mentioned)
Items:
- Fantasti-Flare (Mentioned)
- Radioactive Clay (Mentioned)
- Doctor Doom's Armor
- Atlantean trumpet (Mentioned)
Vehicles:
- Airjet-Cycle
- Ocean Queen (cruise ship) (First appearance)
Synopsis for "The Sinister Secret of the Sentry!"
Johnny, Crystal and Ben are out grocery shopping for the team when suddenly they are advised by the store owner that the Fantasti-Flare has been fired into the sky. The trio rush back to their Baxter Building headquarters where Mister Fantastic has been tracking the location of the Mad Thinker, whom he believes has been responsible for two previous attacks on the group. [1][2] Having pinpointed his location by keying into the Puppet Master's radioactive clay, the Fantastic Four quickly fly to that location.
Meanwhile, in Castle Doom in upstate New York, Doctor Doom's technicians continue working on installing the various devices that were stolen from the Baxter Building.[2] After putting some of his technicians in line, Doom then checks on his latest acquisition: a Kree Sentry. He learns from one of his technos that the alien technology is incredibly advanced and that only a few minor adjustments had been needed to enable the robot to begin repairing itself.
After arriving at the location in the New Jersey Pine Barrens where they had tracked the Mad Thinker's lair, the Fantastic Four find nothing but ruins, convincing Reed that the attack on the Baxter Building was the work of someone else. The FF are at a dead end in their search to uncover the identity of their mystery attacker.
Elsewhere, Doctor Doom has unleashed the Sentry robot on the kingdom of Atlantis, leading the Sub-Mariner to believe that it is an attack from the surface world. When Namor attempts to engage this robotic attacker, it lures him to the surface where their battle on the shores of Bermuda is witnessed by the passengers and crew of the cruise ship Ocean Queen. When reports get out, Crystal contacts the rest of the Fantastic Four about Namor's battle and they fly to the site. Arriving just after Namor has been buried under tons of rock by the Sentry, the FF immediately engage the Kree robot. During the battle, Reed spots Namor partially buried under the rockslide and sends Sue to free him. Once he's free, Namor resumes his attack, and he and the Thing strike it with a coordinated knockout blow that disables the robot. However, Reed discovers that the combined blow was enough to ruin the robot's circuitry and fuse its memory cells, making it impossible for him to learn the identity of whoever sent the robot.
Just then, a number of Atlantean soldiers emerge from the waters to give their ruler some bad news: While he was distracted in battle, someone broke into the kingdom and stole the Horn of Proteus. Reed suspects that whoever sacked the Baxter Building and made off with his inventions may have also stolen the Atlantean trumpet.
Notes
- In this issue's story, the Fantastic Four, while flying on what appears to be their Airjet-Cycle, are able to travel from New Jersey to the island of Bermuda, a distance of almost 800 miles, in what seems to be only a few minutes, something that would require them to travel at a speed of several thousand miles per hour. The story makes no mention of how an aircraft designed for fast, short-range travel could travel such a distance so quickly, nor does it explain how the Human Torch was seemingly able to fly that distance under his own power. Of course, it's possible that Johnny actually rode on the Airjet-Cycle for most of the trip and the story just omitted showing him doing so.
Continuity Notes[]
- Chronologically, Sentry Vol 1 9168 was last seen flying away after the Fantastic Four had thwarted its mission to use the Nameless Mass to destroy a human manned mission to the Moon in Fantastic Four #98. How it ended up in the inoperative state it was in when Doom acquired it has never been revealed.
- The lair from which the Puppet Master and the Mad Thinker had remotely monitored the attacks made by their army of android replicas on the Fantastic Four in Fantastic Four #100 was seen in that issue, but nothing was revealed about its location except that it was "half-way around the world" from where the FF were being attacked. The Puppet Master accidentally blew up that lair when, while trying to destroy their out-of-control Hulk android, he recklessly opened fire on it with a weapon while ignoring the Mad Thinker's warnings about the explosives that were behind the android.
- Namor and Lord Vashti's last chronological appearance is in Sub-Mariner (Vol. 2) #25 where they discovered barrels of chemical waste were being dumped near Atlantis, stirring up tensions between Atlantis and the surface world. Namor is seen later in this series in Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Comics Magazine #7 while Vashti is seen next in issue 11.
- The Horn of Proteus was last seen in Sub-Mariner (Vol. 2) #21 when it was used during an attack on New York City by Namor and his army.