Review: Sword Of Sorcery

BY CHRISTINA RIVERO

The New 52 from DC Comics is a reboot of the company’s entire superhero universe line. Within that there are series of what they call “waves”, which indicate when new comic series were released or when past comics were discontinued. With the third wave of the New 52 came new comics, or that’s what new readers believed.

When DC hit its third wave of comics it introduced new series, but with older characters, such as Sword of Sorcery. This title is not a new one (in fact I have the original from the mid 60’s) and neither of that series leads are the characters being featured in the new version of Sword Of Sorcery. Their main focus with the series seems to be Amaya Winston, or better known as, Princess Amethyst of Gemworld.

Amaya Winston comes from a magic bloodline known as Amethyst. The people from the House of Amethyst are able to manipulate matter, cast spells, and tap into other sources of energy. This part of Amy’s does not change in the New 52 but her back-story does.

Amy’s original story has changed since her 80’s story. At first the Winston family orphaned her after her parents were murdered by another house (House of Opal). Later at the age of 13 she discovers her powers and is transported to Gemworld. Where as in the New 52 she lives with her mother, always moving, on Earth and then is taken to Gemworld to discover her true power and family’s past when she’s 17. I do admire both stories; however, I enjoy the newest version due to its more upbeat tone of being with her mother and being older and more mature as to when she discovers her powers. Also it’s much better to relate to due to the fact that it takes place in the present day.

What is currently taking place is Amy’s struggle of getting used to her new home and learning everything about her house and family’s past. With all of that, she as a teenager has to learn how to control her new developing powers that she inherited from not just her mother but her father too (who is of a different house so he passed on different powers to Amy).

With this comic it is easy to tie in with other series, such as Justice League Dark. It has great potential, but my main concern about this comic is that little background information is given on the characters for new readers (I struggled with this for a while myself). However I do admire its complexity, which you do not see too often with more well known comics such as, Batman or Superman. I believe this to be the case because the popularity of those characters brings in new readers and because of that they make the more well known comic characters more understandable to a larger audience than lesser know characters. I guess this is why more avid readers are leaning towards more of the under the radar series like Sword of Sorcery. These types of series makes you think and leave you in greater suspense than more popular comics do.

The story itself has a solid point of view and allows the reader to grow with the story. This series does have a lot of information to take in, but the overall reading experience deserves more than five stars.

With the rumors of the comic being taken off of DC’s publication list, it is becoming very hard to believe that they could leave a story with as much potential as this one has to waste away. I do hope this information turns out to be false (it was rumored the series would end with the 7^th issue but the cover art and story for the 8^th issue were recently released).

Overall I recommend this comic to anyone interested in the slightly magic side of things and to whoever wants something a little more diverse and complex in their series reading list. It is a fantastic story that I hope to continue for a long time.