Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld #3

Issue three of DC's twelve-part maxi-series keeps the momentum of Gemworld fully alive, with Ernie Colón's cover packed with vivid peril: a blonde girl in street clothes scrambles across a field of shattered crystal shards while a fierce red creature lunges nearby, a muscular warrior grapples blade-to-blade with a green reptilian monster above her, and the looming face of a dark-haired woman watches over it all. The contrast between that ordinary teenager and the wild fantasy mayhem surrounding her captures exactly what makes Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld so compelling in 1983. With Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn scripting and Colón handling both pencils and inks, "Tangled Web" promises the kind of richly layered adventure this series does so well.