AVENGERS #360

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

The Plot: Vision awakens, a prisoner of Proctor and the Gatherers. Proctor reveals his most recent refugee from an alternate dimension, another version of Vision. Vision then thinks back on how he wound up here -- he was working with Swordsman on the other's memory issues when he was summoned by telegram to the home of Laura Lipton. When Laura kissed Vision, he was attacked from behind by the Gatherers, as Laura revealed herself to be Tabula in disguise. Now, in Proctor's lab, the villain prepares to swap the two Visions' minds.

Meanwhile, Black Knight finds Sersi in Wakanda and convinces her to come home. But as they approach New York, Sersi flips out. Their Quinjet crashes into the Avengers' hangar as Proctor and his false Vision, now in the real Vision's body, observe. Sersi throws Black Knight out of the jet and then attacks her teammates. Back at Proctor's base, Vision attempts to escape, but finds that Proctor has disabled his ability to phase. Swordsman dons his costume and joins the Avengers against Sersi, but it is the arrival of "Vision" which turns the tide. The synthezoid ruthlessly takes Sersi down -- and then, as the Avengers stand over her unconscious form, Captain America appears.

Continuity Notes: Not continuity, but -- somebody stretched the logo! I don't know why, but beginning with this issue -- and lasting until #380, when it's replaced with a brand new one -- the AVENGERS logo is vertically stretched to bizarre proportions. Stretching was all the rage around this time in the nineties -- X-MEN had a stretched logo, though I think it was at least redrawn from scratch to appear "taller", and WOLVERINE's logo was stretched really badly. Plus you'd see it now and then on Spider-Man comics (after they switched to the jagged "Sabretooth logo" style), and I think on other titles as well. I really don't understand it, and I think it's quite ugly, but this is nonetheless the logo I chiefly associate with the Harras/Epting/Palmer AVENGERS run (and is the logo I used for my main page of links to these review, accessible from the right-hand menu over there).