SENTINELS

The strangest Sentinels ever fielded did not tower over anybody. In X-Men #99–#100 (1976), the new X-Men board Stephen Lang's orbital station and are confronted by the original five — Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Angel, Beast and Iceman, plus Havok, Polaris and even Professor X himself — who denounce them as impostors and attack. The accusers were the fakes: Lang's Project Armageddon had built android duplicates of the first X-Men, complete with simulated powers and memories, and set them hunting their own templates.

Lang, a government researcher who had taken up Larry Trask's leftover Sentinel technology, ran the programme from a decommissioned SHIELD orbital platform with secret backing from the Hellfire Club's Council of the Chosen. Ordinary Mark III Sentinels guarded the station, but the X-Sentinels were the centrepiece — a propaganda weapon as much as a fighting force, designed so the world would watch the beloved original team execute the frightening newcomers.

The disguise failed at the one sense no blueprint covered. Wolverine caught the wrong scent — or rather, no scent at all — and slashed the Marvel Girl duplicate open, exposing circuitry where Jean Grey should have been. The new team wrecked the doubles, the real Xavier, Jean and Peter Corbeau were freed from Lang's cells, and Lang died when Jean telekinetically jammed his gunship into his own viewscreen. The Sentinel programme had finally learned camouflage; it lasted exactly one fight.