The Classics - Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld #1

(The holiday has pushed New Comics Day back to Thursday, so here's another Classic review to tide you over.)

This is a series that's not what it seems. Just from the title, you would expect Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld to be a comic for girls.

The title alone pegs it as a fantasy tale, and the art was by Ernie Colon, who was most famous for drawing comics like Richie Rich. So when I bought the first issue (it's cover dated May 1983), I thought it looked interesting, but figured it probably wasn't a comic for me.

But it was actually a surprisingly dark fantasy. The comic centered on a young girl named Amy Winston who is transported through a mystic door into the Gemworld, where she is a grown woman, a princess, and the last hope to stop the evil Dark Opal.

It could have been a simple, run-of-the-mill fantasy tale, but writers Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn crafted a surprisingly dark story. Amethyst faces capture and is nearly raped. Several characters are killed, and (for an '80s comic) the blood flows freely.

Colon's art is a revelation - much darker, more detailed and stylized than his usual work, he crafts an amazing, bizarre world and populates it with all kinds of strange creatures - it may be the best work of his career.

This was the first issue of a 12-issue series, and I remember enjoying it a lot. It wasn't a big hit with the fans (probably for the same reasons I listed above), but it's quite good and well worth tracking down - and I imagine those back issues could be had pretty cheaply.

This series definitely falls into the category of an unfairly overlooked classic.

Grade: A-

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