Spider-Tracer: Terrorized by the Titanic Tri-Sentinel

 

Welcome back, Spidey fans! I hope you’re all doing well. Some of you may recall that a few years ago I did an article detailing some mechanized menaces to battle Spider-Man over the years. For this month’s Spider-Tracer article, I wanted to go back and look at one of those menaces in a little more detail. When most Marvel fans hear “Sentinels”, we almost instantly think of the mutants they do battle with, particularly the X-Men. However, there is a particular model that seems to only do battle with Spider-Man: The Tri-Sentinel!

 

 

The Tri-Sentinel, much like Spider-Man’s alien costume, was born out of a comic book crossover. The “Acts of Vengeance” crossover had been orchestrated by the Asgardian god, Loki. Resenting the fact that the Avengers originally formed due to his villainous actions, Loki put together a group of villains in hopes of taking down not only the Avengers, but others heroes like the Fantastic Four and, of course, Spider-Man, too! A massive jailbreak was then orchestrated to give the main group of villains, or the Prime Movers (which consisted of Magneto, the Red Skull, Kingpin, the Wizard, Doctor Doom, and the Mandarin) an army to direct against their heroic opposition.

 

 

The idea was that these villains would fight heroes not normally accustomed to fighting them, which would, in theory, lead to victory. For example, Tigershark fought Wolverine, Hobgoblin fought Dr. Strange, and Juggernaut fought Thor. Unfortunately for the God of Mischief, fighting amongst the Prime Movers, losses for the minor villains, and a cosmically-powered Spider-Man led to Loki’s defeat.

 

However, Loki is a sore loser, and, in one final… act of vengeance (ha!), merged three Sentinel models from Shaw Industries into his agent of destruction in “The Amazing Spider-Man” #329. Loki programmed the metal monstrosity with the objective to destroy a nearby nuclear power plant in hopes of killing as many people as possible in the resulting fallout.

 

 

Let’s rewind for a moment. Remember that bit about a cosmically-powered Spider-Man? It turns out that Spider-Man had been given the powers of Captain Universe by something called the Enigma Force in order to combat the Tri-Sentinel itself! It’s also worth noting that this is how Spider-Man was able to defeat the likes of Titania, Goliath, and the Incredible Hulk! By focusing all of his power into one devastating blast, Spider-Man completely destroyed the Tri-Sentinel!

 

 

With humanity no longer in jeopardy thanks to the menace of the Tri-Sentinel, Spider-Man also lost his cosmic powers.

 

If you’re a long time Spider-Man reader, or perhaps a Venom fan, the Life Foundation should sound familiar to you. For those of you not aware, the Life Foundation is a corporation founded to preserve the lives of its members, as well as anyone rich enough to pay for their services, should doomsday ever occur. With plans like those, the Life Foundation realized that they needed the best in security and set about reconstructing the Tri-Sentinel in “The Amazing Spider-Man” #s 351-352.

 

 

Not trusting something as powerful as the Tri-Sentinel without a little insurance policy, the Life Foundation acquired some Antarctic Vibranium. This special form of Vibranium has the ability to melt any metal it comes into contact with. It didn’t take long for the Tri-Sentinel to turn on its Life Foundation masters and find a way to block the Antarctic Vibranium from being used against it. With Loki’s magic-induced programming back online, the Tri-Sentinel resumed its original directive to destroy a nuclear facility. Fortunately for Spider-Man, he had a little help from Nova of the New Warriors, and he was able to activate the fail safe the Tri-Sentinel had blocked. The Tri-Sentinel tried to destroy the Antarctic Vibranium that was melting it from the inside, and effectively wiped itself out in the process.

 

Years would pass before the Tri-Sentinel was seen again in “The Amazing Spider-Man” Volume 5, #s 3-5. It turns out that at some point, the Life Foundation went bankrupt, and Mendel Stromm discovered a Tri-Sentinel at one of their hidden bases. Stromm sent it out to destroy New York City and Spider-Man. Spider-Man, who had been separated from Peter Parker at the time (it’s as weird as it sounds, trust me), was able to reprogram the Tri-Sentinel to follow his commands, even going so far as to repaint the center face of the robot to match his own mask.

 

 

 

While Spider-Man continued to use the Tri-Sentinel to help him fight crime, the mysterious entity Kindred presented Stromm with a Tri-Sentinel Mastermold, effectively allowing Stromm to build an army of the robotic terrors.

 

 

 

Back to being a single being, Spider-Man was able to hack and send the Tri-Sentinel army on a kamikaze mission directed at their point of origin. Spider-Man soon discovered Stromm’s body had been destroyed by Kindred (although he didn’t find out who did it at the time), leaving the former Robot Master’s head only able to utter “Guess my name…” in unison with the returning Tri-Sentinel army. Spider-Man escaped while Stromm and the Tri-Sentinels were obliterated.

 

And thus ended the threat of the Tri-Sentinel for the third time. Could it return? I’d say that it’s only a matter of time before someone brings it/them back online. As a Spider-Man villain, what do you think of the Tri-Sentinel? Let me know in the comments section below!