Sentinel (comics)

For the comic book, see Sentinel (comic book). For the DC Comics superhero, see Alan Scott. For the fictional imprint label, see Sentinel Comics.

The Sentinels are a group of mutant-hunting robots appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. They are typically depicted as antagonists to the X-Men.

Sentinels
The Sentinels. Art by Alex Ross.
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	The X-Men #14 (Nov. 1965)[1]
Created by	Stan Lee Jack Kirby
In-story information
Base(s)	Sentinel Headquarters, New York
Member(s)	Sentinel Squad Office of National Emergency Nimrod Master Mold Bastion Prime Sentinels Wild Sentinels

The Sentinels played a large role in several X-Men animated series, and have been featured in several X-Men video games. The Sentinels are featured prominently in the 2014 film X-Men: Days of Future Past, and made brief appearances in the 2006 film X-Men: The Last Stand and the 2016 film X-Men: Apocalypse. In 2009, The Sentinels were ranked in IGN as the 38th Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time.^[2]

Publication history

Sentinels' debut in The X-Men #14 (November 1965). Art by Jack Kirby.

Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, they first appeared in The X-Men #14 (Nov. 1965).^[3]

Sentinels are programmed to locate mutants and capture or kill them. Though several types of Sentinels have been introduced, the typical Sentinel is three stories tall, is capable of flight, projecting energy blasts, and detecting mutants.^[4] Pursuing genocide as the means of dealing with a threat has made the Sentinels an analogy for racial hatred and other negative types of fanaticism in Marvel stories,^[5] represent the horrific consequences of humanity's actions based on hate and ignorance, along with a caution of the risks of AI takeover.

Characteristics

Sentinels are designed to hunt mutants.^[6] While many are capable of tactical thought, only a handful are self-aware.

Sentinels are technologically advanced, and have exhibited a wide variety of abilities. They are armed (primarily with energy weapons and restraining devices), capable of flight, and can detect mutants at long range. They possess vast physical strength, and their bodies are highly resistant to damage.^[6] Some are able to alter their physical forms or re-assemble and reactivate themselves after they have been destroyed.

Some Sentinel variants have the ability to learn from their experiences, developing their defenses during an engagement. Several groups of Sentinels have been created or led by a single massive Sentinel called Master Mold. Some Sentinels are also equipped with an inconspicuous logic loop in case they should go rogue to convince them that they are mutants.

Because of their power, sophistication, and high mass production, Sentinels are sold on the black market.^[7] Entities obtain them—often in poor condition—for their own purposes (not necessarily mutant-related).^[6][8]

During the "Iron Man 2020" event, a Sentinel appears as a member of the A.I. Army.^[9]

Types of Sentinels

Evolution of the Sentinel. Art by Ardian Syaf.

• Mark I and Master Mold - Created by Bolivar Trask. First appeared in X-Men #14. Trask sacrificed himself to destroy the Master Mold.
• Mark II - Created by Larry Trask. This model was capable of adapting to and counteracting superpowers almost instantly. First appeared in X-Men #57.
  • No.2 - The robotic leader of Larry Trask's Sentinels, later "mutated" with the capability of creating space warps.^[10]
• Composite - Created by merging the remaining portions of five Sentinels destroyed by the X-Men and came under control of Ashley Martin. It rebelled against her and was subsequently destroyed.
• Mark III - Created by Steven Lang and Project: Armageddon, secretly funded by Edward Buckman and the Council of the Chosen. Based on incomplete notes of Trask and inferior to Mark II. First appeared in X-Men #98.
  • X-Sentinels - Android duplicates of the original X-Men who were created by Steven Lang. First appeared in X-Men #99.
• Mark IV - Created by Sebastian Shaw. First appeared in The Uncanny X-Men #151.
• Mark V - Created by Shaw for U.S. government's Project Wideawake. First appeared in The New Mutants #2.
• Mark VI - Created by Shaw Industries for Project Wideawake and used by Onslaught. Also incorporated parts of Project Nimrod.
• Mark VII - Created by Shaw Industries. They were experimental and remote controlled.
• Nimrod - A prototype Super Sentinel that arrived from the "Days of Future Past" timeline and was later reactivated by William Stryker.
  • Project Nimrod - Created by an offshoot of Project Wideawake and was in the experimental stage, Project Nimrod was actually a self-awareness program that Nimrod implanted before its demise into the base's military computer cybernet, the program served as a sleeper virus that awaited the opportunity to access a Sentinel development program so it could use it to re-create Nimrod itself. Cancelled after X-Force interfered.
• Prime Sentinels - Bastion's humanoid Sentinels. They were at first disabled humans infected with Nano-Sentinel technology at Prospero Clinic under the belief that they were being equipped with cybernetic nanotech implants to replace their lost limbs. Unbeknownst to many of them, they became sleeper agents for Operation: Zero Tolerance. Upon activation by a mutant attack or near the presence of one, they would be transformed into armored cyborg beings with powerful weapons systems.
  • Omega Prime Sentinels - The second generation of Prime Sentinels. Often simply called Omega Sentinels, their nanotechnology is more advanced than their brethren. Omega Sentinels have an eight-step cycle of transformation they undergo before becoming fully mechanical: Infection, Nesting, Replication, Dormancy, Activation, Union, Adaptation and finally Omega.^[11] Karima Shapandar is one of them.
• Wild Sentinels - Built in secret by Master Mold in Ecuador, activated and used by Cassandra Nova for the genocide of Genosha.
• Mark VIII / Sentinel Squad O*N*E - Sentinels designed by Stark Enterprises which, unlike other Sentinels, requires a human pilot.
  • T.O. Sentinels - An intended upgrade to the Squad O*N*E Sentinels conceived by director Robert Callahan, who sought to use a techno-organic substance to increase the effectiveness of the Sentinel program.^[12] Callahan later experimented with material from Warlock, a techno-organic alien, to augment the Sentinel Squad Armor unit.^[13][14]
• Bio-Sentinels - Human mutant corpse infected by a technological virus created by Kaga.^[15] They come with the innate capacity of weaponizing bio-technological apparati such as Brood designed missiles as a means of offense.^[16]
• Stark Sentinels MK I - The Stark Sentinels debuted during the AXIS storyline. Under the influence of the Red Skull (who also had erased from him any memory of their construction), Tony Stark created a model of adamantium-constructed Sentinels outfitted with Pym Particle technology with databases withholding knowledge of different super heroes he acquired after the events of Civil War.^[17]
• Mother Mold - A self-aware and capable of adaptation Master Mold variant head designed to create "Master Molds" which in turn create Sentinels. It was built in secrecy near the Sun by the group Orchis. Mother Mold will lead directly to the creation of Nimrod, the ultimate nanotechnological Sentinel form.^[18]
  • Nimrod - Created in the modern era solely from contemporary technology and independent of its time-travelling counterparts by Dr. Alia Gregor on Orchis's Mother Mold.
• X-Sentinels - Orchis' new era of Sentinel, which is a modern Sentinel created by Mister Sinister's clone Doctor Stasis. He pulled this off by building over his gene-spliced animal/human Chimeras and used the many corpses of Wolverine to perfect a process and converting them into Sentinel units, combining Wolverine's adamantium skeleton and claws with the latest Sentinel casing and systems prove to be a lethal combination.^[19]
  • Sentinel Zero - The first X-Sentinel to come online and built over the frame of Wolverine's adamantium skeleton. Firestar incinerated Sentinel Zero's Sentinel parts, leaving a smoking Wolverine skeleton.
• Stark Sentinel MK II - A new version of Stark Sentinel secretly created by anti-mutant industrialist Feilong and based on technology of Iron Man's armor.^[20]
• Fireteam - A group of cyborg Sentinels created by Larry Trask from the harvested nanites inside Juston Seyfert's body. This led to the creation of a new Sentinel Program which he uses to track down and capture the world's most dangerous mutants.^[21][22]
  • Lockstep (Bradley Hansen)
  • Voivod (Dragos Teodorescu)
  • Sawtooth (Camila Rivera)
  • Shellback (Michael Babineaux)
  • Drumfire (Patricia Pham)
• Bloodhounds - The Bloodhounds were captured wolves that were turned into Sentinels to hunt mutants for the Graymalkin Prison.^[23]

Related mutant-hunting creations

The X-Men battle Sentinels in X-Men: Schism #1 (July 2011). Art by Carlos Pacheco and Cam Smith.

• Tri-Sentinel - A giant-sized, six-armed, three-faced combination of three Sentinels created by Loki and acquired by the Life Foundation.
• Soviet Sentinels - Created by the Soviet Union and later purchased by Cuban government officials.^{[24][full citation needed]}
• Super-Sentinels - Using Nano-Sentinel technology, Weapon Plus created artificially evolved superhumans at The World. Three of the creations were chosen to form the mutant-hunting Super-Sentinels: Huntsman, Fantomex and Ultimaton, who were intended to be presented to the public as superheroes to make the extermination of mutantkind look "like a Saturday morning cartoon".
• Colcord's Sentinels - Several Boxbots were created by Madison Jeffries (aka Box) to serve the Weapon X Program, run by Malcolm Colcord. In one variation of the Days of Future Past timeline seen in the Weapon X: Days of Future Now limited series, one of the Boxbots evolves into a new Master Mold and a new form of Sentinels.
• Hardaway - A cyborg created at Camp Hayden, killed by the Mutant Liberation Front, who called himself a Bio-Sentinel.
• X-51 (Machine Man) - Captured by Bastion and "infected" with Prime Sentinel nano-bots which reconfigured and reconstructed his systems thereby giving him similar capabilities to Nimrod,^[25][26] such as adapting to almost any situation and programming that at times forced him to attack mutants.^[27]
• Juston Seyfert's Sentinel: A rebuilt Sentinel (likely a Mark V or Mark VI) that was reprogrammed to obey Juston Seyfert. Initially, Juston controlled the Sentinel by riding on its shoulder; he now has built a cockpit into it. Juston and his Sentinel are former members of Avengers Academy and featured in Avengers Arena, where the Sentinel is destroyed and Juston apparently killed.^[28]
• Sentinaughts - One of the types of sentient robots who live in the free robot city of The Core,^{[29][full citation needed]} Sentinaughts are apparently based on the Sentinel design. They vary in size from roughly human to the large stature of traditional Sentinels.
• Nano-Sentinel - Microscopic Sentinel type of tech created by Cassandra Nova and implemented in various ways by other users.^[30] They attach themselves to the brains of humans and mutants alike.^[31]
  • An unknown form of human-made Sentinels were created by Simon Trask using a nanite-based Sentinel Tech virus. At Trask's command, the victims are transformed into Sentinels loyal to him.^[32]
• Adamantium Cyborgs - Near-fully mechanical mutant hunter killers refitted by Weapon X with the titular metal as an endoskeleton using sentinel based nanotech. Coming in numerous alphabetical categorical batches, these bionic weapons can shed their skin revealing a murderous automaton with the abilities of various X-Men heroes and villains integrated into them.^[33]
• Core/Central Command - A biotech Master Mold variant behind the design parameters of the new Prime Sentinels.^[34]
• Box Sentinels - Smaller and faster Sentinels based on the Box technology created by a joint venture between Department H and Orchis to track down and capture mutants in Canada.^[35]

In other media

Film

Main article: X-Men (film series)

The Sentinels as they appear in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014); the Mark I model in 1973 (left) and the Mark X model in 2023 (right)

• The Sentinels were originally meant to appear in X-Men (2000). In an early draft written by Andrew Kevin Walker and turned in during June 1994, Henry Gyrich and Bolivar Trask use three 8 feet (2.4 m) tall Sentinels to attack the X-Men.^[36] Following several rewrites and new scripts, the Sentinels were eventually dropped from the film.^[37]
• A Sentinel appears in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) as a Danger Room simulation.
• Two variations of the Sentinels appear in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014).^[38][39][40] The prototype Mark I Sentinels were designed by Legacy Effects with Digital Domain building digital models based on a full-scale practical model while the future Mark X variants, based on Nimrod Sentinels,^[39][40] were computer graphics made by Moving Picture Company. In the film, the prototypes are said to be built using space-age polymers and are equipped with chest-mounted vent-like structures that grant flight capabilities as well as arm-mounted Gatling guns while the future Sentinels are smaller, sleeker, and built with adaptive mechanical scales, hands that can reform into blades, and emitters in their heads capable of firing energy beams. This version of the Sentinel program was originally created in the 1970s, with Bolivar Trask experimenting on mutants to accelerate his research, though he found little success in gaining support for his project. After Mystique assassinated Trask in 1973, the U.S. government approved the Sentinel program, captured Mystique, and experimented on the latter to give the Sentinels the ability to adapt to and utilize any mutant power. However, the Sentinels subsequently target humans due to their potential for having mutant descendants, culminating in a dystopian future where most of humanity and mutant-kind are nearly extinct by 2023. After Kitty Pryde uses her ability to project the minds of others into their past selves on Logan to rally Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr's younger selves and avert Trask's assassination, the pair eventually succeed, causing the U.S. government to realize that not all mutants are a threat to humanity and abandon the Sentinel program.
• The Sentinels make a cameo appearance in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) as Danger Room simulations.