MYTHCOMICS: ['THE LAST ENCHANTMENT"] (1987)

This four-issue series appeared some months after the cancellation of DC's ongoing series AMETHYST PRINCESS OF GEMWORLD, which had been lauched with a 12-issue "maxi-series" and seventeen installments of an open-ended feature. The concept had been created by artist Ernie Colon and writers Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn, but by the later issues of the ongoing feature, Keith Giffen and Mindy Newell supplied most of the writing on the last few issues. This four-issue follow-up is plotted by Giffen and written by Newell, with art by Esteban Maroto. There is no unifying title for the four issues of the feature, simply called AMETHYST in the indicia, and each individual issue has an interior title different from the title cited on its cover. One of those cover-titles, "The Last Enchantment," seems to sum up the theme of this somewhat dolorous farewell to the Gemworld fantasy (which DC has never revived in any significant way).

The setup for the original series built upon a common fantasy-trope: the prince (or princess) of high estate raised among common people. In this case, high-schooler Amy Winston lives all thirteen of her young years believing that she's the natural child of two earthbound mortals, the Winstons. But then she's pulled into the dazzling alternate dimension of the magical Gemworld. She discovers that her true name is Amethyst, that her age on the Gemworld is that of a twenty-something woman, and that she's the offspring of two Gemworld nobles slain by the evil lord Dark Opal. This otherworld is normally ruled by twelve houses, whose potentates all wield specialized forms of magic based on the gems inherent to those houses-- and each ruler is named after a gem: Lord Topaz, Lady Turquoise, and so on. Amethyst is quickly pulled into a rebellion in which most of the Gem-lords seek to overthrow the tyranny of Dark Opal, though a part of her wants to return to the mundane world of Earth.

As a raw concept for a fantasy-adventure, AMETHYST is certainly better than most of DC's offerings in the genre. The designs of characters and costumes are generally good, though the Gemworld itself is just another Renfair-cosmos apart from the gem-theme. Amethyst's conflicts with her two lives have a strong basic appeal, and she enjoys some girly-romance with the aforementioned Prince Topaz, though said romance is pretty well doomed by the fact that he's always twenty-something in his world, and in Earth-terms she's hardly age-appropriate. However, the course of the heroine's adventures, like the Gemworld itself, proved pedestrian, and most of the characters were one-note types. 

Perhaps because the cosmos of the Gemworld remained so vague, Giffen and his collaborators decided to link it inextricably with normative DC cosmology. By issue #12 Amethyst learned that the ancestors of the Gemworld's inhabitants came from Earth, using sorcery to escape mundane persecution, and that one of those ancestors, Amethyst's almost immortal mentor Citrina, had made that escape possible. By accident or design, this exodus resembled one chronicled in a 1965 "Supergirl" story, which posited the magical beings of Earth emigrating to an alien planet. The story of Zerox the Sorcerer's World became more germane to DC-continuity in the 1980s, when the planet was retconned into the cosmos of the Legion of Super-Heroes-- a development in part overseen by writer-artist Keith Giffen. 

Zerox and Gemworld were tied together largely in terms of theme, but with issue #13 Amethyst discovered that one of her parents had belonged to an ethereal species of "good gods" called the Lords of Order, eternally opposed to the Lords of Chaos (and freely borrowed from the works of Michael Moorcock). The consequence of the heroine's discovery is that she's not purely human, which comes not long after seeing her beloved Topaz marry a more age-appropriate woman. Her destiny is thus one of grim duty: when the Gemworld is menaced by an agent of Chaos called "the Child," Amethyst sacrifices herself by melding herself with the chaos-creature, so that on some level both of them become part of Gemworld.

THE LAST ENCHANTMENT is alluded to in the final letters-column of the open-ended series, so it seems likely that its writers, Giffen and Newell, proposed a further send-off for the character, this time with the far more luscious line-work of Maroto. I don't know if the regular series would have succeeded had Maroto or someone comparable handled the art, but Maroto's Gemworld is a visual feast for a fantasy-lover's eyes. 

Giffen and Newell rewrite the concluding events of the previous series. The evil Child has not been merged with Gemworld after all, but is free to plot with the other Lords of Chaos to sunder the jewel-cosmos. Amethyst, instead of being one with the elements, has become a statue of pure amethyst, being tended by an old man, White Opal, brother of the man the heroine defeated long ago. Everything seems to have become all peace and harmony thanks to Amethyst's sacrifice, though there are suggestions of a new conflict in the lineage produced by Topaz and his queen Turquoise. They've spawned three children, a little girl who's only minimally important to the story, and two brothers, Donal and Wrynn, who in their moral stances are as opposed as light and day.

Both brothers happen to be hunting in the forest where White Opal tends the statue of Amethyst (perhaps keeping the local birds from abusing it), when for no clear reason, the statue returns to human form. The continuity becomes confused-- possibly Maroto misunderstood the script-- for Wrynn disappears from the forest, while Donal remains behind to get the backstory on Amethyst from White Opal. Later, Wrynn shows up at a hidden cave and casts a spell that unleashes the demon Flaw, formerly paired with the Child. However, Flaw only shows up to enslave Wrynn to the Lords of Chaos, and to re-christen the son of Topaz with a name well-known to Legion fans: Mordru, greatest magician from Sorcerer's World.

Not many of the old support-characters from either world appear in ENCHANTMENT, though of course Topaz and Turquoise get ample time to mourn the sad fate of their son Wrynn-- who also eventually kills Donal as well. For her part Amethyst seems flensed of normal human emotions, and she tells one character that "My form is only a vision." She fights Mordru a couple of times, but somehow can't stop the evil brother from killing Donal. This causes Topaz to expostulate: "Is this the way of Order then, Amethyst? To show no pity-- to leave death in thy wake? Thou are no better than Chaos!"

Though the Child causes a lot of havoc to Gemworld through his pawn Mordru, Amethyst does manage to right all the main wrongs before returning to her statue-status. But since she's not shown to be entirely without human emotions at all times, one can't help but wonder if the denouement-- in which her former beloved and her romantic rival lose all of their children in one way or another-- might not be a sort of indirect revenge on her part. As I said, the fact that this is the "last enchantment" of the franchise doesn't suggest a very cheery end to an originally light-hearted series. But as a psychological myth, the tragedies attendant upon Amethyst's brief return resonate with considerably greater depth-- though, to be sure, all the suffering is quite beautiful to behold thanks to Esteban Maroto.