How Powerful Is the Sentry, Marvel's Golden God With a Million Suns

The Sentry is a golden god with the power of a million exploding suns, a man who can fight Galactus to a standstill by himself. Forget Hulk, forget Thor, forget Scarlet Witch: I think this guy might very well be the most powerful hero in Marvel Comics. So how powerful is the Sentry? That's what I'm setting out to answer here.

The case rests on several things: his raw power, his record against Thor and the Hulk, a healing factor that has survived death and erasure from the timeline, and a list of abilities that goes far beyond strength and flight.

Who Bob Reynolds is and how he became the Sentry

Years ago, there was a superhero whose name was hailed above all others. Known simply as the Sentry, he inspired Angel to greater heights, helped Spider-Man win a Pulitzer, was Reed Richards' best friend, and was the only man who could calm down the Hulk. Then one day the world forgot he existed, and he forgot too.

So who was the Sentry? Bob Reynolds was a man suffering from schizophrenia who used drugs to try to cope with his illness. At the same time, Bob happened to work for a professor who had been outsourced work on an amplified version of Captain America's Super Soldier serum. Reynolds drank the serum intending to get high. Instead, he gained immense power and became the Sentry.

But "for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction." Bob's darker impulses soon took shape as a malevolent being known as the Void. From there, an eternal conflict began, with the Sentry striving to be the world's most powerful hero while stopping the Void from destroying everything. Though he would try again and again, Sentry can never completely vanquish his demons.

The Sentry and the power of a million exploding suns

Sentry is a hero unlike any other in that he's immortal. He has absolutely no defects, and there isn't anything else like him in all of existence. He's said to contain "the power of a million exploding suns," and that's no small thing. In Marvel, it's been said several times over that one exploding sun has enough power to obliterate multiple solar systems. Sentry has a million of them.

He's been described as godlike and as one of the most powerful beings in the universe, a being capable of replicating the House of M event all by himself with his own raw power. He has almost moved past that now. Sentry now believes that he is everything. He can go anywhere and do anything. He's bigger than God, and he has the power of the universe itself.

Sentry is arguably the strongest hero in the Marvel universe, and I do mean the strongest. He has destroyed moons, shattered planets and torn holes in the fabric of space and reality. His strength has no known upper limit.

How the Sentry stacks up against Thor

Even scaling him against two of the biggest, strongest, toughest guys in Marvel, Thor and Hulk, Sentry can still dominate. He has fought and beaten up Thor plenty of times throughout the comics, and Thor is easily one of the most powerful heroes you've ever seen.

Thor was able to fight Zeus for a month straight. He's fought his father Odin and wrestled the very embodiment of the Odin Force. He's battled Mephisto several times inside Mephisto's own realm. All three of those characters have legitimately multiversal power showings. Then there are the times Thor has messed around with the World Tree, Yggdrasil. When he was a baby, he shook every branch in the tree and every realm in those branches with nothing but his cries. He's shattered its roots, shaken it from root to branch, and even directly overpowered the tree.

Yggdrasil is a hyper construct that supports all nine realms, which are confirmed to be distinct and separate universes of space and time. That's only the tip of the infinite iceberg. Yggdrasil is said to be everything, to have its roots and branches in all that is, and to contain infinite universes existing across infinite planes of reality.

And again, Sentry has overpowered and beaten up Thor. Thor has managed to kill Sentry before, which I'll come to below, but Sentry has also knocked Thor out in two punches while shaking the planet to its core.

Sentry versus World War Hulk

It's the same story with the Hulk. Hulk has been able to destroy Nightcrawler's dimension, match up against Celestials in a few different ways and even fight on par with Zeus. It might look like Hulk was getting stomped by the Skyfather in that fight, but Hulk was roughly on par until Zeus started absorbing Hulk's strength as they fought. Hulk couldn't grow in power fast enough to compensate. Before that, he was giving Zeus a good fight.

Sentry, meanwhile, was able to battle World War Hulk, where Hulk is at his angriest, angrier than he's ever been, and therefore stronger than he's ever been. This was the Hulk tearing through every hero on Earth, the one everyone was terrified to face. Sentry came in and matched him in a fight hand to hand while Hulk was going all out.

It's usually believed that Sentry was holding back there. What Hulk needed was a punching bag to let out his rage, and Sentry, being a good friend, was more than willing to provide it. He's that powerful. He's fought a team containing Gladiator, Captain Marvel, Beta Ray Bill and more, and could beat them. He then fought the Avengers with Thor, Captain Marvel and She-Hulk, and easily beat all of them.

With how dominant Sentry can be against Thor and Hulk, he's definitely up there in strength, and you should be able to comfortably scale him to all the incredible feats those two have pulled off.

The Sentry's durability, and the times he has died

Sentry is also extremely durable, to the point where he'll openly take punches to the face from World War Hulk to amp himself up for the fight ahead. When he decides to stop holding back, most of Marvel's heavy hitters can do absolutely nothing to him. Nukes don't faze him at all. He can survive entering the sun. Thor and his lightning don't put him down.

You would think the Sentry is almost the unbeatable man. Funnily enough, that's not true. He's been killed more than once. Knull has ripped him in half, and Thor managed to kill him in Siege.

When Donny Cates had Knull kill Sentry, though, he later admitted that he knew basically nothing about merged Sentry at the time, so maybe we can throw that one out. And during Siege, you could argue it wasn't so much Thor killing Sentry outright as Sentry fighting the Void and choosing to die. "Just suicide by Thor."

A healing factor that survives death and erasure from the timeline

Either way, the real point is Sentry's incredible healing factor. Thor splattered his head with Mjolnir, and Sentry instantly regrew it. He's flown into the sun and automatically healed from everything. He's had his head blown off and regrown it again. He's even torn his own head in half to show off. And when Sentry died at the end of Siege, it wasn't for good: his body rebuilt itself atom by atom and he came back to life.

What's even more impressive is that Sentry can heal from almost metaphorical wounds as well as physical ones. Morgan le Fay went back in time and killed Sentry, presumably before he ever took the serum that transformed him, effectively wiping him from existence and removing him from the timeline. Sentry came back a few moments later.

Then there's the Molecule Man, the one guy able to match up against the Beyonder, one of the most powerful beings in all of Marvel. He disintegrated Sentry on a molecular basis several times. Each time, Sentry came back, instantly regenerating himself on the molecular level and overcoming Molecule Man.

Why the Sentry is more than a Superman clone

Probably the most important thing to know about the Sentry is that he isn't another typical Superman clone with super strength, flight and the rest. He does have strength, durability and the basic powers, but he has almost every power in the book. He's got energy projection and eye blasts, plus the ability to manipulate and absorb energy, create energy shields, and trap people in shields of energy.

He's also one of the world's most powerful telepaths, more powerful in raw telepathy than even Emma Frost and Professor X. He was able to mindwipe the entire planet and force everyone to forget him, including Xavier and Frost, who at that point were the most powerful and second most powerful minds on the planet. Sentry was the true top dog and wiped their minds too.

One of the biggest things Sentry has going for him is matter and molecular manipulation, which he believes is one of the bases for all his powers. Once he learned he had it, he instantly defeated Molecule Man: the only match for the Beyonder, a man capable of a multiversal fight, who could destroy the universe and was the source of all of God Doom's powers. Sentry beat him with a power he had only just discovered he had.

Is the Sentry Marvel's most powerful hero?

Mr. Fantastic summed it up best when he called Sentry the god man and the most powerful human being in the universe. At his best, his powers are limitless. There's nothing he cannot do. He's immortal. He's omnipotent.

If it weren't for his own mental instability holding him back, everyone would know the Sentry is the most powerful man on the planet "a bajillion times over." He's truly one of the most powerful heroes Marvel has ever created, and that's saying something.