Pryzm, the Beginning: A Costly Peace (2002)

Pryzm, the Beginning: A Costly Peace (2002)
“A Costly Peace”
Story – David Artuso
Script – Brian Augustyn
Penciller – Val Semeiks
Inker – Rodney Ramos
Letterer – Ken Lopez
Color/Separations – Digital Chameleon
Editor – Paul Kupperberg


If you’re following me on Twitter (@acecomics), you might know that I’ve spent the past few days rooting through my overstuffed garage.  I’ve come across a whole bunch of stuff that I don’t know how or why I held onto… most of it comics related.  I mean, there’s Marvel Internet discs, bookmarks, stickers, hell… San Diego Comicon brochures going all the way back to the mid-1990’s… why?!  Ehh, guess that just comes with the territory if one is a comics-packrat.


Anyhoo… now that the stage (as it were) is set… onto today’s discussion piece.  While digging through a particular box, I came across a nice fistful of ashcan-sized promotional comics.  Atop the pile was one with the ol’ DC bullet in the top left corner… Pryzm!  What is Pryzm?  From the looks of it, it’s a PlayStation 2 game… one that was supposed to be a series.  The game is called Pryzm, Chapter One: The Dark Unicorn… and if the Metacritic is to be believed… it’s a pretty dismal affair.  So dismal in fact, that Pryzm, Chapter Two: Pegasus Boogaloo never saw the light of day.


What does that mean for the comic prequel?  Well… I suppose we’re about to find out.  Good or bad… it’s always fun to dip our toes into the unknown.


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We open with a fleet of winged women descending on their target… a tree town, that sorta resembles the Ewok village on Endor.  They proceed to lay waste to it by firing blasts from the crystals they carry.

On the ground, a wolf-riding elf fights back… hurling a flaming javelin.  The leader of the ladies is struck, and she plummets to the ground… which she hits without a thud.  She is met by a white unicorn, who promises her safety.

The unicorn introduces itself as Anrenna, and heals the young winged woman.  The wolfrider rides up, with murder in his eyes.  Before he may act, however, he is felled by a… black unicorn called Zartu.  Zartu claims that they killed the elf to save Anrenna…. Anrenna ain’t buying it, however.

The two-horsies argue whether it’s okay to kill being in order to save another.  It gets sillier as we learn that Anrenna can see the future… and sees that Zartu (now, the most powerful sorcerer in Luminantia, oi…) is on an evil path.  This causes us to flashback to Zartu standing before the High Council of Horsies… who refuse him (him?) a proposal to do… something.  Okay.

We wrap up… yeah… already, with Anrenna telling us what is yet to come… we gotcha plagues, we gotcha monsters, we gotcha fires… annnnnd, that’s it.  Not even a “to be continued in the game” (until an ad that follows), just a “The End”.

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Oof.  Welcome to what is likely to be my lowest-viewed piece ever.


I almost feel like I’m cheating today discussing such a short and nothing-happening issue.  That wasn’t my intention at all… I really expected there to be more to this.


Really, this was so short and uneventful that I wonder why they wasted the time, cost, and energy into producing it.  I can’t imagine reading this caused a single soul to run out to Gamestop to preorder Pryzm, Chapter One: The Dark Unicorn… hell, this just might have caused a few folks to cancel theirs!


Very boring… can’t hold that against the creative team, because, really… what could you hope to achieve with something like this?  Hell, I never played the game… but it wouldn’t surprise me if this whole mini-issue wasn’t part of the opening cut scene.


What’s worse… with what little we do get, so much of it is spent discussing strange-named characters who we may or may not even meet here.  Eh, at least the art was pretty nice.


Overall… I couldn’t imagine anyone would waste even a minute trying to track this down.  Hell, this was so boring, I doubt anybody is still reading this discussion piece at this point.  If you’re still here, I thank you.  I guess the humble blogs “Random DC Comics Discussion and Reviews” mandate means we’re going to have some days like this.  We’ll try for something a bit more substantial tomorrow!


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