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Amaya is not a character who is visited as often in the DC canon as others, like the core members of The Justice League. However, she is a bright and often joyous part of DC Comics history. While her latest entry, Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld, is not part of the main DC canon, she is a welcomed part of the future for DC in this new graphic novel.
Reworking the Princess of Gemworld’s origin, Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld sees Amaya and Citrina sent to Earth as punishment for young Amaya’s misbehavior. Sadly, what was supposed to be a short trip turns into years, prompting the two to lose their memories. However, the royal Topaz finds Amaya and her friend, Autumn, and brings them back to Gemworld to save their kingdom. This iteration of Amaya’s story is written by Shannon and Dean Hale and with artwork by Asiah Fulmore. The three DC creatives sat with CBR for an exclusive interview about this new chapter of Amaya’s life and what’s in store for Gemworld.
CBR: What about Amethyst and Gemworld made you want to tell this story in particular?
Shannon Hale: That’s a good question.
Dean Hale: Because it’s different.
Shannon Hale: I love the character and concept, but why this particular story?
Dean Hale: I think part of it is, at least from the comedy standpoint, is fish out of water stories are fun.
Shannon Hale: We have a kid who, when she was four, would tell us all the time, “I’m really a queen in a different kingdom.” When [she has] nap time at preschool, she lays down her blanket. When everybody’s asleep, she lifts up the blanket, and there are stairs that take her to her kingdom. That’s where she’s really a queen, not even a princess.
Dean Hale: She sold it like, “I’m not telling a story. This is a fact.”
Shannon Hale: She’s not the only kid who probably feels more natural to be royalty in other lands than be in reality. We’re definitely drawn to Amethyst in that way. Beyond the wish-fulfillment, we wanted to tell a story with real human connection, the story of a girl’s relationship with her brother, the story of two friends, and then we meet a third awkward kid who they bring into the fold. I think all stories are about relationships, so in this particular story, we’re looking at the fun wish-fulfillment fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, and superhero fantasy world of Gemworld, but also looking where we make those relationships and those connections.
Asiah Fulmore: For me, it’s definitely the same. It was the relationships in the story when I first got the script that hooked me and reminded me of my childhood and my childhood friends. I would love to have been a princess from a distant world.
I said earlier that would have been terrifying, but it would have been fun. When I was approaching this world, I was trying to make sure I made the world as fantastical and the relationships as connected and as simple as possible. Those are the things that made me super passionate about this comic. It’s so much fun, and the kids are so sweet. They love each other and love everything else. It’s just so much fun.
Speaking about the fun side of this comic, as well as the comedy, what was it like writing this comedy? Asiah, what was it like translating that into the artwork?
Shannon Hale: If something is funny, it’s just better. Even the most tragic movies have a little moment of humor. It feels so good. Especially with how hard everything has been the past couple of years, I’ve always looked for opportunities to laugh.
Dean and I, whenever we’re writing, we’re always asking ourselves, “Where could it be fun?” We never want to sacrifice the real emotion and the human experience for the sake of comedy, but find ways that we can intertwine that. Sometimes it’s just something ridiculous like assuming there are two fountains in this palace and they’re not full of water. One of them has chocolate, and the other one has camel milk. It’s just random absurdity.
Dean Hale: Or the boy in detention who ate bugs.
Shannon Hale: It’s these little background moments.
Asiah Fulmore: For me, usually with my art style, I really like to focus on expressions. So when it came to these humorous moments, I wanted the characters to look and feel like they’re actually kind of goofy, cartoony, but it was really important to have those expressions be as expressive as possible. I want people to look at this, and go, “I know exactly what that feeling is. I’ve been there. I can completely connect with that.”
As far as the humorous moments, there’s a sense of humor, obviously. There’s the random humor. There’s situational humor. All those things have to be approached differently. I really wanted it to be all about their expressions and their body language, so hopefully, that came across.
Dean Hale: There’s a panel when Autumn is excited about the ball, and when she rushes in and is super excited.
Shannon Hale: There’s a great relationship between Autumn and Amaya. They are getting so cracked up about she’s a princess in Gemworld. I can see in my mind that visual when she is like, “I am the princess of fairy land,” and they just lean over together laughing hysterically.
Asiah Fulmore: That was fun to do. It was also fun doing Topaz, being like, “What are y’all doing?”
Speaking about Autumn, as well as Topaz, what about that relationship was so important to this graphic novel, and what was the most fun about exploring this dynamic, both in the writing and when it came to the art?
Shannon Hale: Stories are about relationships, so we come into this book with Amethyst already being an established character. She’s already been created. We’re going to do our take on her, but what can we add to this? Nothing’s more important than a friend at that age, so we wanted to make sure she had a friend, and also to play off the fish out of water thing, as she starts to get her memories back of Gemworld. It’s still new to Autumn, and it’s really fun for readers to see through the point of view of someone who this is all very new to. While for Amaya, her family is missing, and it’s very serious, we still wanted to have some levity with it. Autumn has the chance to just be enchanted and delighted by all of this and be this amazing, supportive friend.
Dean Hale: To always have someone who can call out the weirdness. The reader is going, “Now what,” and to have the character say, “Now what,” is great.
Asiah Fulmore: Autumn was probably the character that was easiest for me to nail down when it comes to the pages because she would react how anybody else would react. For her, it was super easy to have Amaya and Topaz play off of her responses. He knows what’s going on. He’s super serious. Amaya was like, “I don’t know what’s going on,” but Autumn’s having a good time. They’re all playing off of each other.
It was very much a group experience, so Amaya’s friends really helped her through this experience, but they also kept her grounded, kept her having a good time, kept her not getting super sad about it. There were moments where she was just like, “Man, this sucks. I’m in a really bad situation. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know these people. What happened.” And then for Autumn to come back and bring her back to the moment and be like, “Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay. We’re having a good time. Look at that. That’s weird.” That was for me, visually in moments where Autumn isn’t even speaking, she’s still giving that energy of, “This is super serious and awful and super weird.” Like you were saying, we need to address the weirdness. This is still weird.
Speaking about that weirdness, Gemworld is such a magical, wild, weird world. What was your favorite thing to play with in the setting?
Shannon Hale: We definitely wanted to look at all the flora and fauna. As a writer, you always want to leave lots of room for the illustrator, don’t want to over-describe things because the illustrator, like Asiah, is so amazing at what she does. We want her to have the ability to create this world. We also don’t want to just be like, “Okay, you do whatever,” because that’s just rude. Give a place to start.
I think Dean and I are always trying to write in little nuggets of the landscape. One of the things I think we talked about in the script was like, “Watch Labyrinth.” This is everything we were thinking of Gemworld and a little bigger, a little more vibrant. There’s a little bit of Oz too in Gemworld.
Dean Hale: It kind of has an ’80s vibe with that neon.
Shannon Hale: Like our world but bigger, so brighter colors, bigger hair, more of that. Then we were thinking about having a dragon, and then we ended up going back. There was a Gemworld creature called the Vyala, so that was something we pulled back, but Asiah got to do her own twist on it.
Asiah Fulmore: I think the funnest part was the backgrounds. It’s funny because before I started Amethyst, I was very much an artist that was like, “Ugh, backgrounds.” For me, it was really a good chance to sit down and have fun. Because it was such a mystical and fun-filled world, I didn’t have to feel as constrained to just make things. It gave me a lot of room to express myself and go with my wildest imaginations.
The foundation y’all set for me was so great. It was so easy for me to think of things. That’d be so cute. That’ll be fun. That’ll be super weird. That’d be something that Autumn’s staring at off in the distance. Stuff that was so much fun because there’s so many things that I didn’t even get to include in the illustrations. There are so many little surprises.
You guys briefly brought up Labyrinth, and this has a very fairy tale feel to it. Were there any fairy tales or other stories that helped inspire the direction you were taking this graphic novel?
Shannon Hale: We’ve written superheroes before. We’ve written a few other superhero stories.
Dean Hale: And fairy tales before.
Shannon Hale: We’ve written fairy tales. With this one, we definitely were looking at what sub-genre of superheroes this was. It definitely has that old sword and sorcery feel to it. We really wanted to lean into that. We want to make sure she had a sword. There’s magic, but there are also dragon-like creatures and big monsters. We spent so much time coming up with a Gemworld mythology and how the magic system works and what the different stones do. We’ve worked it all out in advance.
Dean Hale: How it fits into the larger DC cosmology.
Shannon Hale: There’s so much you do that you can’t put into the story, but we figured it out. So it makes sense to us. Then we worked in what we could. There’s so much going on because you’re looking at fairy tales. We had a little Cinderella moment when she’s at the ball, but then we twist that where she’s like,” I don’t want to dance many of these weirdo princes.”
When you think about it, from my point of view of a preteen, they show up in a ball and a bunch of randos ask her [to dance]. She’s like, “I came with my friends. Gonna dance with my friends.” Of course, that’s what they’d do. It’s not that romantic to dance for a total stranger, especially at that age. We also kind of have a little bit of Wizard of Oz, and then the whole DC mythology.
Dean Hale: I love putting in whatever Easter eggs we could. My mom just called out — this is super nerdy to talk about. There’s a reference to Doctor Fate. There’s a Doctor Fate helmet, and there’s a mention of great grandmother Enza, who is Doctor Fate’s wife, and who was the Lord of Order in the DC universe — which earlier Amethyst established that — but also Enza is my grandma’s name. My mom read it, and she was like, “Did you put your grandma on this?” Is grandpa Doctor Fate?
Shannon Hale: It’s a nice crossover of DC and personal history.
Asiah Fulmore: For me, when I was approaching it, I was thinking about what I enjoyed as a kid — the books I read and the cartoons I watched. I can’t even list all the things that went into this that I’m not even conscious of, but it’s how the things in my childhood, things I used to enjoy, those are the fairy tale type things and how they made me feel that I can bring to Amethyst.
There’s an Amethyst cartoon a while ago that I looked at. There’s a current DC comic I looked at, just to see what’s there. How do people feel about Amethyst? What’s her general energy? I knew of her before starting this, but I really got to learn about her and figure out what I wanted the world to look like. From there, it was childhood Asiah — drama, chaotic energy. All of that.
Speaking about childhood, what do you think about Amaya makes her such a good hero for the target audience of this graphic novel?
Shannon Hale: One of my favorite parts about writing this book was she gets in trouble at home. She goes to Earth. She’s gonna be grounded there for a week. She’s really miserable. She can’t use her magic. She’s so grumpy about it. Then you turn the page, and it says three years later. As a reader, I know I’d be like, “Three years later!” Then you see her in this grove on Earth.
We have four kids 11 through 17, and whenever we’re writing these books, we’re thinking about ourselves now. We’re thinking of our younger selves, which are always inside of us, but we’re also thinking about our kids and what they would be interested in. We knew that would draw them in.
As far as Amaya, I like that she’s naughty. She’s not a perfect kid. I feel like there was some pressure in the early Amethyst that she had to be this perfect model child on Earth and this perfect serene Princess on Gemworld. That’s not the reality of who kids are. So letting her make mistakes, letting her be a problem, and giving her the opportunity to realize her own power, to fix mistakes. I think that is more relatable for kids.
Dean Hale: Something that I liked as a through-line is channeling her rebellious nature into a positive direction. She wants to push back.
Shannon Hale: She’s a troublemaker by nature and that’s not a problem. We need troublemakers.
Dean Hale: There’s something about being able to be extracted from her privilege that enables her to kind of wake up a little bit.
Asiah Fulmore: I think it’s definitely her being not perfect and very obvious that she’s uncomfortable, nervous, scared. She’s also a little spiteful. She doesn’t feel like the perfect model character, like, “Oh, no. Gotta be careful, we can’t do everything Amaya does. You’ll get in trouble.” She does have to deal with the consequences of her actions.
I think the kids will enjoy that part where it’s like, “I can be a princess and not be perfect, but I can have a good time with my friends. I can run around and break stuff. I can, but I’ll get in trouble for it.” Any kid can be Amaya. That’s the really fun part. You and your random friends can sometimes end up in a crazy situation. You’re just gonna have to deal with it and have a good time at the same time. That’s what I liked the most about it.
Looking at the behind-the-scenes of working on this comic, I would love to know what your collaborative process was like between the three of you.
Shannon Hale: So Dean and I, when we write together, we talk a lot. We go for walks, we sit down, we eat, and we talk for weeks and weeks as we figure out what is interesting about the story, what we’re excited about, how we see the characters, how we see the world, like the bigger ideas. And then we outline. We outline extensively. Often our outlines are even longer than our scripts. Then we split it up and write different parts, and then we revise and revise. By the time it gets to Asiah, we’ve really been revising and working on this for a long time, because you don’t want to waste the artist’s time. So then we pretty much just give no art notes, right? She gets the script, and then she goes, and she does it. Our part is almost done by the time Asiah jumps into it.
Asiah Fulmore: When I got it I was like, “Oh, no! they didn’t tell me what to do.” That was the first week, and then afterward, I got comfortable. If they want me to change it, they’ll let me know. It very much felt like you gave the block you finished, a solid building block. I can really work with this. It also gave me enough space to take a little risk, to say, “Okay, let’s see if they liked that. Oh, they like it. Cool!” If not, let’s go back and do it.
I really enjoyed working with you guys. Super fun. Felt very much supported. This is my first comic. I was super nervous by turning stuff in, but it definitely felt like a group project. I felt very much welcomed to explore things and express myself in my art in my way. The script is so easy for me to connect with it. We really didn’t have that much of an issue.
Dean Hale: We saw those first pages you turned in. I was like, “We don’t need to worry about this anymore. That’s awesome.”
Asiah Fulmore: I was shaking in my boots. If they don’t like this, I don’t know what to do.
Shannon Hale: Do you remember we had a completely different story at first?
Dean Hale: Oh, yeah.
Shannon Hale: Dean and I actually pitched this as a monthly comic to revive [Amethyst] in the early aughts.
Dean Hale: Like twenty years ago.
Shannon Hale: At the time, they were not ready to do that. When DC started doing these OGNs, we came up with a completely different concept. I can’t even remember.
Dean Hale: I can’t either. This one has taken all of the real estate.
Shannon Hale: We tried out Amethyst in several different ways, but this is the one that we ended up with.
Looking back at Gemworld, we get a glimpse at some of the other kingdoms. If you guys were to return to Gemworld, is there a specific kingdom that you would like to explore a little bit more, and if so, why?
Shannon Hale: We had so much fun coming up with the magic systems of different gems, so different people from different kingdoms have different kinds of magic. Our idea with Amethyst was it was a protection magic, so she could create force fields, but then she could shape those force fields into different shapes — like a Green Lantern solid light construct. But all of them had different…
Dean Hale: Topaz was like Earth magic.
Shannon Hale: I love Topaz so much. I could write a whole book about Topaz. But also Citrina, the warrior mage. We really loved her when we wrote her, but then when we saw Asiah’s art for her, we were like, “She needs her own series.” She’s amazing. I have a little bit of a crush on her.
Asiah Fulmore: 100% yes. When I drew her, I was like, “She’s that girl.”
Shannon Hale: Both her versions on Gemworld and on Earth. I want to see her be the warrior mage. She would be fantastic.
Asiah Fulmore: I don’t know how to pick, guys. I’d love to see where Topaz is from. He’s a major character. You get to meet his dad. I would love to see what his kingdom looks like. I remember when I was drawing all the royalty at the table I wrote down my own lore and asked, “Why am I drawing this person in a toga?” I wanted to have very distinct outfits. Y’all give me some characteristics for them, so it was a little bit easier for me to distinguish between all of them. So based on their outfits, I don’t know. All of them.
Shannon Hale: We definitely like Autumn. I would love to see her more in Gemworld. Who would she be if she spent more time in Gemworld? She’d bring her sensibilities, and she’s an artist, so what would her adventure be in general?
Dean Hale: Have her take a backpacking trip through Gemworld.
Shannon Hale: I would love to see more of Autumn in Gemworld.
Asiah Fulmore: I really want to bring back the princess from…
Shannon Hale: Aquamarine?
Asiah Fulmore: Yes. I was so happy with her design. She’s so cute.
DC Comics’ Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld is now available for purchase.
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