Profile: Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld

Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld, aka Amy Winston
First appearance: Legion of Super-Heroes #298, April 1983, in a special promotional story that served as a lead-in to the maxi-series that followed a month afterwards. Originally a princess from the magical dimension/planet of Gemworld whose parents had been slain by the evil Dark Opal, she was sent to our dimension on Earth, where she was raised as a youngster named Amy by a couple called the Winstons. Since time moves differently between our world and hers, she became approximately five years younger on Earth. On her 13th birthday in her Earthly state, that’s when she found herself travelling to Gemworld again, where she became her older self and discovered her heritage, and did battle with Dark Opal.

Current status: after Infinite Crisis, not sure what it is, if at all.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: she’d been blinded at one point, and later merged along with a Lord of Chaos called The Child with Gemworld itself in order to stop him from causing more disaster in the magical planet. Still later, she was wrecked even further in Legion of Super-Heroes, where her story background may have been retconned to be more part of the 30th century. And then, during the 1990s, she became a power-hungry witch in Book of Fate.

What’s wrong with how this was done? It’s sad enough that she had to be “killed” in order to stop The Child from carrying out his acts of terrorism for the Lords of Chaos. But even sadder still is how she ended up being turned into a villainess in Book of Fate, and bringing her back into the spotlight in the awful Day of Vengeance miniseries as well as Infinite Crisis was also a perfect way to sour people’s milk.

These days, of all the characters rendered almost completely unrecognizable and grossly misused, she definitely tops the list.