When Amy Winston turned thirteen, she discovered she was a princess of the Gemworld. Now that she’s sixteen, what can top that? Find out in Amethyst #1 from DC Comics!
AMETHYST #1
Writer: Amy Reeder
Artist: Amy Reeder
Letterer: Gabriela Downie
Editor: Andy Khouri
Publisher: DC Comics
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: February 26, 2020
Previously in Amethyst: Amy Winston was just a normal girl, or so she thought until her thirteenth birthday when a gem-powered portal opened and sent her to the Gemworld, where she found out that she was Princess Amethyst. The Dark Lord Opal had murdered her parents, and she had to defeat him to restore peace to the Gemworld. More recently, she’s just had an adventure there with Young Justice.
HER WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
As Amethyst #1 opens, Amy Winston is turning sixteen. She lives with her adoptive parents on Earth, and they’re trying hard to understand her whole “Princess of Gemworld” thing and be part of her life. For presents, they give her an amethyst tiara and a book about crystal healing. Well, they tried. (It’s awkwardly sweet.) Amy smiles, thanks them, and gives them a hug, but she’s about to head through the portal for her celebration on Gemworld.
When she arrives, an unexpected sight meets her eyes – fractured chunks of amethyst crystals floating about, apparently remnants of her castle. She runs around, finding things in ruins with absolutely no one else around. Everything is gone, and she wasn’t here to protect it. Distracted, she falls, and finds she has one trusty companion. Her flying horse, Ypsilos, is still around.
The neighboring kingdom is that of her friend, Lady Turquoise, and Amethyst heads over to find out from her what happened. Oddly enough, when she gets there, Lady Turquoise doesn’t know anything. She didn’t hear anything. She hasn’t seen any of Amy’s subjects. In fact, she acts entirely differently from the Lady Turquoise Amy thought she knew. She has no sense of adventure and has no time or desire to get involved in another war of Amethyst’s.
Amy storms out of the throne room and out of the castle and appeals to the people of Turquoise directly. She delivers an impassioned speech to an audience that flatly doesn’t respond. Or if they do, it is to turn away from her. Suddenly deflated, she misses her old friends and even starts missing Earth. She turns back toward her own kingdom when she has an adorable run-in with a warrior who agrees to join her cause.
GLORIOUSLY PURPLE
The Gemworld is a colorful place, and there is a lot of purple in Amethyst #1. It’s fun – this is not a color you typically see quite so much of. Amy even has purple hair, instead of the blonde she used to have, but in this day and age, it fits in. She is dressed in the floofiest party dress you’ve ever seen – her new tiara goes with it very well. When she heads through the portal, she is not expecting anything out of the ordinary. The broken amethyst clusters of her shattered kingdom are beautifully drawn. For a tragic destruction, it all looks very pretty and sparkly. I love that, despite the floofy dress and her high-heeled shoes, Amy is all action.
Turquoise is also lovely. Even if you were new to the characters, you can tell at a glance that Lady Turquoise is much more aloof than Amy was expecting. Her face is so calm and placid, which makes Amy’s emotions seem that much stronger. And the colors in Turquoise are so pretty – obviously a dappled blue – and they way the blend with Amy’s purple is just fabulous.
BOTTOM LINE: A FANTASY WORLD WITH NO LIMITS
Amethyst #1 has all the trappings of a fantasy story, but the Gemworld is not exactly like any familiar fantasy setting. Right from the start there are hints of interesting things that intrigue me and make me want to do more exploring.
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Amethyst #1
Welcome back to the Gemworld, where things are not quite what Amy expected.
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By day, she’s a mild-mannered bureaucrat and Ms. Know-It-All. By night, she’s a dance teacher and RPG player (although admittedly not on the same nights). On the weekends, she may be found judging Magic, playing Guild Wars 2 (badly), or following other creative pursuits. Holy Lack of Copious Free Time, Batman! While she’s always wished she had teleportation as her superpower, she suspects that super-speed would be much more practical because then she’d have time to finish up those steampunk costumes she’s also working on.