When I encountered this collection of the nine-issue series SWORD OF SORCERY, I'd forgotten that DC had used the same title in the early 1970s for a five-issue series adapting Fritz Leiber's "Fafhrd and Grey Mouser" prose stories. The re-use of the old title was appropriate, given that all three of these "New 52" features are either outright reboots or loose callbacks to DC features from the seventies and eighties.
All nine issues of SOS include an installment of a reboot of the eighties series AMETHYST PRINCESS OF GEMWORLD. I've detailed my estimation of the original series in another essay, so here I'll just say that the basic idea-- that of royal houses in a dimensional otherworld using gemstones for sources of magic power-- was a decent gimmick, but that neither the storytelling nor the characterization proved anything special. In the new series, titled just AMETHYST, we're still dealing with a teenaged Earth-girl who finds out that she's a magic-using princess in another world, but in the original, she "aged up" from thirteen to become a near-adult, while in this version, she's 17 on Earth and 17 when she goes to Gemworld.
Artist Aaron Lopresti brings a fluid style to the series and proves generally good with individual facial characterization. Writer Christy Marx, though, didn't break her back re-inventing the Gemworld concept. This time, Earth-Amy's father is dead and her mother trains her for years until she's old enough to take to the otherworld to battle the enemies of the House of Amethyst. Marx-- who worked more in animation than in comics-- has a certain notoriety in being one of the writers who contributed to the Saturday-morning neutering of Conan the Barbarian. Marx works out all the details of her revised fantasy-world well enough. But given that she wasn't going to own the property, she doesn't bring a lot of passion to her buckling of swashes and spells. Originally Gemworld was independent of the DC Universe but became affiliated with continuity in late iterations. Here the editors decided to include crossovers with DC regulars John Constantine and Eclipso right away. I don't think it helped, as it sounds like the concept was rebooted once again in the 2020s.
Two shorter backup strips appeared in the nine issues. One, BEOWULF, has nothing to do with an entirely dissimilar 1970s series from DC, but I deem it a callback just because older fans might wonder if the two have anything in common. Actually, whereas the seventies comic was an endearingly goofy take on the Old English poem, "New 52" Beowulf initially looks like it might actually be a serious (if loose) adaptation by writer Tony Bedard and artists Jesus Saiz and Javier Pina. However, it's no big reveal that the world of the savage Beowulf really takes place in a technological future, though I have no idea why the people of the era should sport Old English names. In the last installment Beowulf visits modern DC-Earth but meets no famous characters, though superhero images are mimicked by a shapechanger. The final part suggests a new direction for future installments, though I doubt BEOWULF got a second chance. Art and writing is better than average here, making it the best of the three features here.
STALKER, unquestionably a reboot of a four-issue sword-and-sorcery series of the seventies, focuses upon an adventurer who's lost his soul and goes through hell to regain it. His fresh hell takes him out his archaic time into the present-era of what seems to be DC-Earth yet again. At least, it may be modern DC-Earth since the devil with whom Stalker deals is Lucifer Morningstar-- though this character doesn't seem much like the one popularized in Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN. I found the art by Andrei Bressan ugly and the script by Marc Andreyko muddled.
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