Sword of Sorcery #0
GRADE: C+
STORY BY: Christy Marx/Tony Bedard
ART BY: Aaron Lopresti/Jesus Saiz
COVER BY: Josh Middleton
PUBLISHER: DC

SYNOPSIS:
DC dives back into the world of fantasy comics with the launch of this comic that features the return of the 1980s character Amethyst who has been reimagined for the New 52 DC universe. This comic is written by Christy Marx who knows a thing or two about jewelry based heroines from her days writing for the Jem and The Holograms cartoon. The book also contains a back-up feature focusing on Beowulf by Tony Bedard and Jesus Saiz.

THE GOOD

While this issue was all set-up I liked what Christy Marx did with the characters and the Amethyst/Gemworld reimagining. I was never a fan of the original Amethyst character being only 12 years old on Earth and then transforming into a nearly adult teen on Gemworld so having Amy be 17 in both realities makes for a much better character. Also enjoyed the mother/daughter interraction between Amy and her mom. Lopresti did his usual solid work. While hsi stuff is never amazingly dynamic it is always very clean and crisp and works for this title.

The backup has some potential too mainly the visual hints that the story is set in a post-apocalyptic future Earth. I am probably more curious about what exactly happened to the planet than I am about the Beowulf character. The art by Jesus Saiz was great…very moody and heavy on the dark lines but never muddled.

THE BAD

The Amethyst story felt a bit rushed. I think Marx should have spread out our glimpse into Amy’s life on Earth over a couple issues instead of traveling at warp speed to get the action to Gemworld.
Also the title of this book is confounding…I keep calling it Sword and Sorcery and I bet I am not the only person having this issue.

THE UGLY

There is an attempted rape scene that has some comics fan outraged (and comic fans love nothing more than to clutch their pearls and rage about something in one of these funny books). Now I am not bothered by the inclusion of the scene or pointing the dreaded finger of misogyny towards DC or even declaring that including it is this book is some sort of 180 flip from the original series (where if memory serves Amethyst was almost gang raped by a couple of goblins). What did bother me is that the entire scene was just horribly executed.

FINAL VERDICT
An OK start for what I have always found to be a pretty interesting character and I am eager to see if Marx can bring some of her hard hitting sword and sorcery writing on books like Conan and Red Sonja to this title. And while the setting of the back-up was intriguing I am not sure if the extra pages wouldn’t be put to better use on the adventures of Amethyst. Actually dropping the Beowulf back-up and putting Jesus Saiz on art duty for the main story would not be the worst thing ever.