AVENGERS #357

"THE NIGHT VISITORS"
Writer: Bob Harras | Penciler: Steve Epting
Inker/Colorist: Tom Palmer | Letterer: Bill Oakley
Editor: Ralph Macchio | Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

The Plot: To Jarvis's horror, Marilla has summoned the royal kitchen staff of Attilan to Avengers Mansion to prepare a feast for Black Widow's dinner party. Elsewhere in the mansion, the Avengers speak with Swordsman and discern that he is from a parallel reality. Meanwhile, Sersi has a dalliance with a gentleman in SoHo. Back at the mansion, Taylor Madison arrives for the party.

The Avengers and Taylor enjoy cocktails until Sersi arrives, and soon after, Jarvis announces dinner is served. But as the group sits down to eat, the Watcher appears and stares the Avenges down in silence, then vanishes. Meanwhile, on a pier elsewhere in manhattan, two detectives stand over the corpse of the man with whom Sersi had her fling.

Continuity Notes: Avengers-branded apparel continues to be all the rage among our heroes. Black Widow now sports the bomber jacket, and Crystal is seen in the opening pages wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the Avengers logo. (I will reiterate that I like the idea that Avengers have this sort of "company swag" available to them. It makes sense, especially given they're run like a corporation!)

Swordsman says that the white, ghostly Vision is the only version of the android he knows. When shown a hologram of the Vision's original look -- which is the only version the real Swordsman should be familiar with -- he doesn't recognize him. Likewise, he fails to recognize a holgram of his beloved Mantis, but when shown the visage of Moondragon, he calls her Mantis.

Hercules' budding romance with Taylor Madison continues, as Hera watches from Olympus. Zeus confronts Hera, stating that he's heard someone recently broke his edict that no Olympians are to travel to Earth. Hera plays dumb and says she will help Zeus investigate. (Though she also tips her hand by explicitly talking about how everyone knows Hercules is off-limits, when Zeus said nothing about Hercules!)

Hercules also notes that Thor was summoned away on urgent business. I'm honestly not sure if this is the last time we'll see him in this run, but I can say that I don't see him on any covers in the immediate future -- and if he doesn't return, that's probably for the best. Like I mentioned a couple issues back, Harras really doesn't seem to have any idea of what to do with him in the Avengers; a point really driven home last issue when, with all his near-unlimited Thunder God power, all he did was vanish for half the issue as he flew to central Wakanda to rustle up some mortal reinforcements against the Gatherers.

The triangle between Black Knight, Crystal, and Hercules also continues. The Knight is smitten with Crystal when she arrives for cocktails, but as soon as Sersi shows up, she yanks the Knight away, leaving Crystal despondent and the Knight irriated and confused.

Black Widow raises a toast at dinner, stating that this Avengers lineup has been together for six months now. These characters were all together as of January 1992's AVENGERS 343 (though Captain America was still around and Sersi was away for that installment), so six months to the Avengers has been basically one year -- and fourteen issues due to the biweekly summer schedule -- in real time.

Marilla enters Luna's room to find one of the Acolytes of Magneto looking in on the girl. The Acolyte wipes Marilla's memory of the event and then teleports away. The Acolyte identifies herself as Screener, but I'm pretty sure she's supposed to be the character who is eventually know as Scanner. She also contacts Fabian Cortez and requests transport back to a place called "Haven". Unless I'm mistaken, this is the first appearance of Scanner/Screener, and the first mention of Cortez following the events of X-MEN #3. As for Haven -- I'm not sure where that's meant to be, other than perhaps the abandoned French church the Acolytes would be shown using as a headquarters in UNCANNY X-MEN #300.

Anyway, all of this is setup for A) the Acolytes' return a couple months later in UNCANNY #298 and 300, and B) the Avengers/X-Men "Bloodties" crossover, still nearly a year away at this point!

When the Watcher visits, narration suggests that his gaze lingers on Sersi, though the other Avengers don't notice.

Assemble: It's a "quiet" issue, so the lack of the battelcry can be excused in this one for a change. Though Hercules does refer to the Avengers as a "noble assemblage," so that's something, at least! ("Avengers Assemble!" count: 4 in 24 issues to date.)

My Thoughts: I'm a firm believer that every team comic series needs at least one "quiet issue" per year. A story with no fights (but still with conflict in some form), and simply dedicated to furthering plots and sub-plots. When done well, these are often some of my favorite issues, as I think they are for many fans of the genre. (Though for whatever reason, I've never been as big on these sorts of things for solo character series. I tend to feel they work best with teams.)

Anyway -- that's what we have here. First and foremost is confirmation of the Swordsman being from another universe, something that was pretty well implied last issue, but now is made explicit. We still don't know why Proctor is "gathering" all these survivors from other universes and bringing them here, but at this point I trust all will be revealed in time. Here in the year 2023, I know the whole "Gathering" storyline is going to reach its conclusive end in issue 375 -- so though I've not read it, I'm confident in getting all the answers I will need to understand what's going on.

Which again brings up that odd dichotemy between Bob Harras the writer and Bob Harras the editor. It's hard to imagine any of Harras's X-Comics bringing plot threads to a well-planned, conclusive ending, without at least setting up some loose ends to be addressed later! And heck, given, as I said, that I've never read this stuff in its entirety before, it's possible that will happen here as well. But simply based on what I've seen so far, I'm thinking it won't.

And then we have the other stuff. Setup for a crossover still a year away (love stuff like that; the X-Books did it regularly around this time), furthering of our various romantic entanglements, and now the idea that Sersi might be a serial killer (the cops specifically refer to the dead man as "another one" and suggest the same person has been offing men like this regularly) -- which is a funny thing; I've mentioned before that I saw random issues of this run at my best friend's house when I was a teen -- and for whatever reason, the "Is Sersi a serial killer" plotline is pretty much the only thing I remember from those days!

So as a quiet issue, this is a success. As an issue of AVENGERS, it's a success. As an installment in the Harras/Epting run, it's yet another success. I can't wait to see what happens next!