Unbagging Special Amethyst Preview
Release: Apr 1983
Cover: Apr 1983
Creators
| Writer | Dan Mishkin, Gary Cohn |
| Cover Artist | Ernie Colón |
| Penciller | Ernie Colón |
| Inker | Ernie Colón |
| Colorist | Tom Ziuko |
| Letterer | Ernie Colón |
| Editor | Karen Berger |
Whom may we trust, Sardonyx, and call it wise?
When I originally wrote my “Nostalgia Reviews’ of Amethyst, Princess of Gemworkd that have since gone on to become the most recent Reread, I had not yet owned or read the special preview insert that served as the introduction to the maxi-series.
If my access to comics had been more consistent, I would have, as it was included in Legion of Super-Heroes #298, a series that I tried to read as regularly as I could. Indeed, I did own the issue that preceded it.
But I didn’t have it in 1983, nor had I gotten around to picking it up 30 years later when I wrote about Amy’s adventures, but at some point between then and now I did pick it up, so with the recent Reread I think it’s time to bring Amethyst’s journey to an end by going back to the beginning.
Of course, the beginning actually begins somewhat after the beginning, and we find ourselves in the midst of things, at a point in time that I’m not sure I can pinpoint. It’s after Amy first journeyed to Gemworld, but before she went through her magical boot camp in issue six of the maxi-series.
We start out with the villains of the piece as Dark Opal is being measured for the breastplate into which he will seat his fragments of the twelve gemstones – of which he has ten, including his full piece of the Dark Opal – allowing him to unleash the power of Gemworld itself.
Sardonyx questions the wisdom of allowing Prince Carnelian to hold on to the gemstones, but in a bit of expository dialogue Dark Opal explains that Carnelian is his son and as such is as trustworthy as anyone else.
While they talk, one of Dark Opal’s servants shows up bearing news. It seems that the Princess Amethyst has left the safety of Castle Amethyst and is out and about without the protection of Citrina.
Opal decides that he needs to take advantage of this opportunity and leaves Carnelian to oversee the forging of the breastplate while he goes off in pursuit of Amethyst and her gem.
We get our first look at Amethyst, along with Granch as they enter the Bog of One Thousand Despairs.
Three bird-like witches espy Amethyst and Granch for Dark Opal via the Well of Vision, but are not able to ascertain their exact location.
Meanwhile, Carnelian is concerned about what it will mean for him if his father achieves ultimate power, and he begins to hatch a scheme to keep himself from having to find out.
Not knowing where she is doesn’t prevent Dark Opal from attacking Amethyst magically. He sends a small lizard into the bubble, which turns into a dragon that attacks Amethyst and Granch.
Though Granch puts up a good fight and attempts to get in a cr-rack, the dragon proves too much for him, and Amethyst is forced to use her magic to defeat it, even though there is danger in doing so, given how unskilled she is and how quickly it will drain her.
Dark Opal presses his advantage by sending a magical vortex that begins to pull Amethyst’s magic right out of her.
Thinking quickly, she has Granch throw the heaviest object he can find into the vortex, reasoning that it’s only meant to deal with magical energy, not material objects. Her guess proves correct, the vortex is destroyed, and we get our first hint – assuming we don’t know the premise of Amethyst’s story – that the princess isn’t a local.
As Dark Opal plots his next move, he’s informed that Amethyst and Granch are about to enter a cave, a cave which turns out to be the very cave in which the ruler of Gemworld happens to be!
Back at the forge, the blacksmith is about to fix the gemstones to the breastplate, but Sardonyx is annoyed because Carnelian has abandoned his post.
The Red Prince is below the forge, ready to engage in sabotage, cranking the heat way up as the blacksmith places the breastplate in the flames, causing a fiery, magical explosion.
Back in the cave, Amethyst and Dark Opal duke it out magically. Though she’s inexperienced, Amethyst has her gemstone with her, which puts her at something of an advantage over Opal, who left his gemstone behind for the ill-fated attempt at affixing it to the breastplate.
Still, he has the advantage of experience, so the odds aren’t necessarily in Amethyst’s favor, but an emergency call from Sardonyx brings the fight to an end, allowing Amethyst to steal some water from the Well of Vision, which is what she had been sent out to accomplish.
While Amethyst and Granch beat a hasty retreat and Dark Opal heads home to tend to the emergency, Dark Opal commands the three witches to pursue his enemies, which they do by joining together to become a mini-King Ghidorah.
Back at the forge, the smith is dead and the magic of the Opal is running wild, forcing Dark Opal to take drastic, painful action.
That problem is solved, but it leaves another problem in that the smith is dead and the forge has gone cold.
The three-headed bird creature catches up with Amethyst and Granch and grabs hold of them.
Amethyst tosses the captured liquid to Granch and tells him to get back to the castle after she blasts the bird’s talon, forcing it to drop Grach.
With Granch freed, she lets the bird take her a little higher before hitting it with another blast that breaks it apart into its component parts, and as she falls she opens a portal, and rather than slamming into the ground on Gemworld, she lands with a thump on the floor of Amy Winston’s bedroom.
I’ll be honest, I don’t know that reading this preview back then would have made me especially excited about the maxi-series.
Of course, it wouldn’t have needed to – I was already excited just from the house ad for it and by the fact that it was a maxi-series. That just seemed so exciting to me for some reason. I’d managed to successfully collect full runs of a couple of three and four-issue minis, but managing to collect a full twelve issues was going to be an exciting challenge.
It also helped that unlike another maxi-series DC was putting out, Camelot 3000, this was one that I would actually be able to buy, at least in theory, as it wasn’t a direct-sales only comic and was available wherever comics were sold.
It’s not a bad little story, it does present an intriguing premise, and there’s only so much you can do in sixteen pages, but while the basics are there it doesn’t quite match the tone – or even the look – of what follows, and that ending makes it seem a bit more like Little Nemo than the kind of sword and sorcery adventure we get once the regular book hits the stands.
Even so, I was glad to finally add it to my collection and fill in that decades-old gap, and I’m glad that I’m able to provide something of a coda to the nostalgic look back at Amy’s story, which has always had a special place in my heart.
Born and raised in the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Jon Maki developed an enduring love for comics at an early age.
