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Post by rberman on Apr 4, 2018 0:43:56 GMT -5
 As mail order and newsstand sales shrank and direct market grew, Marvel and DC tried more intentionally limited run series. These stories, often tied only tenuously to the two companies' mainstream continuities, afforded the opportunity to experiment with creators, characters, and well-defined storylines that had discrete beginnings, middles, and endings. Many ran only 4-6 issues, but in 1983, DC greenlit a twelve issue run for an empowerment fairy tale that seems designed to draw middle school girls into the comic-reading habit. Unusual for mainstream comics, two creators (Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn, who also did the mystic comedy hero Blue Devil) collaborated on writing. Ernie Colon provided the art. Issue 1 (May 1983)
The basic set-up is the usual “lost royal orphan” familiar from King Arthur or, if you prefer, Harry Potter. On her thirteenth birthday, Amy Winston receives a mysterious amethyst pendant and then is kidnapped into a mystical realm where she instantly ages into a beautiful young woman. She’s the prisoner of evil Dark Opal and his chief henchman, the Ottoman-looking Sardonyx, “Lord of Serpents,” whose turban hides devilish horns. Her ogre jailers almost immediately try to rape her, an obvious threat to all captured heroines that comic books rarely suggest even crosses the minds of the super-villains of the multiverse. Mishkin and Cohn will dare to go there, more than once. More than twice, in fact. Amethyst is rescued by the monstrous Granch, whom we later learn is a son of Dark Opal working secretly for the good guys. He takes her to the good witch Citrina, who spirits her away to the good guy castle and gives the usual backplot exposition about her secret past and heroic destiny. Lord Opal is collecting shards of the magic gems of all twelve royal houses in order to become the ruler of all Gemworld. (Marvel’s Magik mini-series, in which Belasco is collecting Bloodstones, came out toward the end of this same year. The Infinity Stones, a.k.a. Soul Gems, had appeared as a collectible set for Thanos in 1977.) Sardonyx attacks Castle Amethyst, but Amethyst repels him with an energy wave and some semi-unsettling narration: “She experiences an ecstasy of wild abandon such as she has never imagined… an oceanic epiphany of power and rage…” Let's hope we don't see Dark Amethyst! Citrina shows Amethyst how to open a portal to return home, where she transforms back into a teenager. But less than two pages later, she gets the urge to return to Gemworld, where a sinister figure lurks around the corner… The story is boilerplate fantasy filled with standard tropes, but Colon’s art is great. The whole world seems alive, with weird faces staring out from the furniture, the walls, and the trees, and creative page layouts (see below) that often use characters rather than white space between panels. Dark Opal is a standard mustache-twirling villain, complete with actual mustache and widow’s peak hairline, but his heavily tattooed blue face gives him an instantly recognizable visage.  |
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Post by Cei-U! on Apr 4, 2018 8:21:03 GMT -5
I just bought this run at, fittingly enough, the Emerald City Comic Con. I'm only five issues in, but that's far enough to know I like it. Not love (I'm neither the right age or gender for its target audience), but it's a nice change of pace from the period's super-hero shenanigans. I do love Ernie Colon's art.
Cei-U!
It doesn't hurt that the amethyst is my birthstone!
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Post by dbutler69 on Apr 4, 2018 8:32:14 GMT -5
This is a series that has intrigued me. I'll have to check it out eventually. Her appearances in the Legion of Super-Heroes only furthers my intrigue.
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Post by rberman on Apr 4, 2018 9:39:26 GMT -5
This is a series that has intrigued me. I'll have to check it out eventually. Her appearances in the Legion of Super-Heroes only furthers my intrigue. It comes in a Showcase B&W omnibus, but that's unfortunately not a good way to read a story about color-coded heroes and villains based on gemstones. I guess most Marvel and DC 80s comics are not super hard to come by, though? |
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Post by rberman on Apr 4, 2018 9:45:03 GMT -5
Issue 2 (June 2013)No sooner has Amethyst set foot in her castle on Gemworld than she’s captured by the sneaky Carnelian “the Red Prince,” adopted son of Dark Opal. He’s from Earth and has no magic powers, but he’s handy with a knife. He snatches the amethyst medallion from which her power flows and drags her away on what seems like a giant riding cat but oddly turns out to be mechanical and gasoline-powered. (This whimsical use of technology goes unexplained; even now it's more advanced than what we have on Earth.) As soon as they’re away from the castle, he tries twice to rape her but is interrupted by various hazards of the wild.  Amethyst’s earth pet, the golden retriever Taffy, has been summoned by Citrina to help Amethyst. Taffy kills a wolf leader and is accepted as the leader of the pack, then leads them to chase down Carnelian. This gives Amethyst an opening. She gets a hold of her magic gem again and kicks Carnelian’s butt, shoving a handful of flame down the fuel door of his Battlecat. He in turn pulls out a revolver (!) from somewhere and opens fire on the soldiers swiftly approaching with Citrina. The two sides separate again, and Opal, having concluded a treaty with some spooky extradimensional beings, declares his intent to engage Amethyst directly. Carnelian is an interesting character due to his Muggle origins; as an Earthman raised in Gemworld, he is the yang to Amethyst’s yin, and next issue we’ll learn that his origin is intertwined even more with Amethyst's, as Citrina took baby Amethyst to Earth through a portal created by Dark Opal when he was snatching Carnelian from his parents in order to have a non-monstrous heir. Why does Opal want a non-magic-powered heir? Unclear why he cares about an heir at all. Most ubervillains don't care much about their legacy. In their minds, they will live forever.
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Post by MDG on Apr 4, 2018 10:22:38 GMT -5
I used to horribly underestimate Colon, but this stuff is just great.
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Post by brutalis on Apr 4, 2018 10:26:46 GMT -5
This is a series that has intrigued me. I'll have to check it out eventually. Her appearances in the Legion of Super-Heroes only furthers my intrigue. It comes in a Showcase B&W omnibus, but that's unfortunately not a good way to read a story about color-coded heroes and villains based on gemstones. I guess most Marvel and DC 80s comics are not super hard to come by, though? But what a great way to enjoy Colon's art in the Showcase edition. The Black and white shows much more of the details in the backgrounds and those little faces/etc are crisp and clear not muddied by the colors. I know when reading through the Showcase I was spending more time looking and appreciating the art than when I had collected the color series new off the rack. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Apr 4, 2018 11:29:45 GMT -5
This is a series that has intrigued me. I'll have to check it out eventually. Her appearances in the Legion of Super-Heroes only furthers my intrigue. It comes in a Showcase B&W omnibus, but that's unfortunately not a good way to read a story about color-coded heroes and villains based on gemstones. I guess most Marvel and DC 80s comics are not super hard to come by, though? Color it yourself. |
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Post by rberman on Apr 4, 2018 12:09:04 GMT -5
It comes in a Showcase B&W omnibus, but that's unfortunately not a good way to read a story about color-coded heroes and villains based on gemstones. I guess most Marvel and DC 80s comics are not super hard to come by, though? Color it yourself. They do sell B&W Marvel and DC coloring books now. But a more interesting exercise would be a wordless version where you have to make up the dialogue "Marvel style." I'd be interested in seeing ten different people do that to a given issue and compare the results. |
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Post by dbutler69 on Apr 4, 2018 12:49:06 GMT -5
This is a series that has intrigued me. I'll have to check it out eventually. Her appearances in the Legion of Super-Heroes only furthers my intrigue. It comes in a Showcase B&W omnibus, but that's unfortunately not a good way to read a story about color-coded heroes and villains based on gemstones. I guess most Marvel and DC 80s comics are not super hard to come by, though? Yeah, if I try, I could probably pick up the whole series at a reasonable price somewhere. |
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Post by Cei-U! on Apr 4, 2018 13:23:36 GMT -5
It comes in a Showcase B&W omnibus, but that's unfortunately not a good way to read a story about color-coded heroes and villains based on gemstones. I guess most Marvel and DC 80s comics are not super hard to come by, though? Yeah, if I try, I could probably pick up the whole series at a reasonable price somewhere. I paid $20 for my complete run (minus the Annual), all in VF-NM condition. Cei-U! I summon the fair price! |
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Post by rberman on Apr 4, 2018 13:24:24 GMT -5
It comes in a Showcase B&W omnibus, but that's unfortunately not a good way to read a story about color-coded heroes and villains based on gemstones. I guess most Marvel and DC 80s comics are not super hard to come by, though? Yeah, if I try, I could probably pick up the whole series at a reasonable price somewhere. I actually recently discovered that I was missing most of my run, so I picked up a whole set (12 issues plus the annual, bagged and boarded) for $40 on Amazon marketplace in order to re-read them and then write about them here. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2018 13:27:24 GMT -5
It comes in a Showcase B&W omnibus, but that's unfortunately not a good way to read a story about color-coded heroes and villains based on gemstones. I guess most Marvel and DC 80s comics are not super hard to come by, though? Yeah, if I try, I could probably pick up the whole series at a reasonable price somewhere. As long as you don't get the 35 cent test price editions for #1 and 2, those go for $50-$100 each depending on where you see them. I luckily plucked them out of a dollar bin when I was getting the series at a shop in CT more than 15 years ago. I am tempted to sell them get the regular price first 2 issues for a couple of bucks and pocket the difference, but I also like having oddities here and there among my books, so I haven't pulled the trigger yet. |
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Post by Duragizer on Apr 4, 2018 18:00:21 GMT -5
No sooner has Amethyst set foot in her castle on Gemworld than she’s captured by the sneaky Carnelian “the Red Prince,” adopted son of Dark Opal. He’s from Earth and has no magic powers, but he’s handy with a knife. He snatches the amethyst medallion from which her power flows and drags her away on what seems like a giant riding cat but oddly turns out to be mechanical and gasoline-powered. (This whimsical use of technology goes unexplained; even now it's more advanced than what we have on Earth.) As soon as they’re away from the castle, he tries twice to rape her but is interrupted by various hazards of the wild. I had an issue of Who's Who as a kid which featured a bio on Amethyst. Judging solely by her aesthetic design, I immediately concluded any story of hers would be "too girly" to bother reading.  I did finally read this max-series four or five years ago, and in spite of its "girly" veneer, I quite enjoyed the art and story. I briefly considered checking out later Amethyst stories, but heard they soon went the grimdark route, so never bothered. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 4, 2018 18:08:46 GMT -5
I used to horribly underestimate Colon, but this stuff is just great. Same here, but I blame inappropriate inkers for my initial dislike. Colon has a very cartoonish style that must be appreciated for what it is, and not modified to be more realistic looking. |
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