Rachel B.

I'll start with the thing that left me more... unsatisfied, that's the word I'd use. The crystal threat has been probably the weakest plot point of the whole series, and with all the theories I weaved on them, I'm quite sad it didn't really go anywhere. At first I thought they were coming/hunting for Sentry from the alien civilization Void wiped in space, then I really started to believe they were a phenomenon somewhat linked to Bob's suppressed emotions, like a collateral side of his powers finding a relief valve, that would've been the coolest thing imo. After all, Sentry was studying them as a solution to his problems, so they seemed to be linked to him. I want to believe that the crystals being still a mystery is because Marvel already greenlit the next series and they're eventually going to be important there, there is some sort of open thread there and the crystals were never the focus of this story anyway.

Then Void sits a bit in the middle. The dynamic this time is very unique, there's never a direct confrontation between Void, Bob and Sentry and I think that was fascinating, especially the way the three of them have been alternating and doing different things with a degree of control. And in the end yeah, this was jut Void being vicious and lashing out all of his wicked evil against evil people and their empire, stepping into the grey area of "if I do bad things to bad people, am I good or bad?" yet he still made innocent employees lose their jobs and money, caused physical and economic damage so he is still evil at the end of the day.

The shift in the balance between good and bad is actually very interesting and I look forward to see where this can go, it can be very delicate to handle Void by giving him somewhat of a "good reason" to cause damage, hurt people and be evil so Sentry can do good more freely (?). Guess it'll all depend on for how long Void is willing to play this game.

For the good things, I loved the emotional payoff of this book. It actually felt good to have Sentry jumping up from the bottom pit Bob fell into and be the hero Robert needed to be, for his friends and the city but also for himself, instead of giving into the Void. Sentry and Reed's dynamic on the battlefield as the nerds they are was great and I found the way Sentry shattered all the crystals together to be entertaining both visually and conceptually. (Even if, as I said, this felt more like a "we won the battle, but war is not over" thing.)

The final conversation with Reed is probably the highlight of this issue, it was truly heartwarming and it did make lots of things clear. God, Bob really needs to talk more to people. Another reason for having another Jenkins series is to see Bob's journey to feel better to continue instead of being an empty promise immediately forgotten by a different writer (every reference to things that already happened is absolutely intended). There was a lot of Bob and Reed's friendship here, next time I hope to see more wholesome Bob and Lindy or I'll seriously get crazy. The last page was SO sweet I almost got diabetes. More of that, please.