My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Comic Arc #25 (IDW My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Issues #51-53): “From the Shadows”

Tags

Applejack, Fluttershy, IDW, IDW comic, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, review, Shadow Lock, Spike, the Pony of Shadows, Twilight Sparkle

Synopsis:

After an outing to see “The Bridle of Frankenstag” with the rest of the Mane Six, Twilight Sparkle and Spike are heading home to the Castle of Friendship only to find it has been broken into. The thief is still inside, a mysterious gray unicorn stallion, but he manages to escape with several of Twilight’s books after ransacking the library. Fearful about what just happened, Twilight calls the girls over for an impromptu sleep-over, and on ordering the remaining books she finds that none of the spellbooks have been taken but, rather, history books about monstrous figures from Equestria’s past. The next day, Twilight and Spike use a Location Spell she placed on the books to find them, but on finally tracking them down she finds the books abandoned in an alley with all of their pages blanked out. The girls split up in town, realizing the thief couldn’t have gone far, and through independent investigation find the culprit is a pony named Shadow Lock who has a specialty for book magic, including the ability to erase not only the contents of books but also the knowledge that the content gave to anyone who ever read that book. They manage to track him down to the Public Library just as he’s about to check out even more books, but on being confronted by the girls he uses his power to bring multiple monsters to life out of the books to attack them.

As the girls begin to struggle with the monsters, Shadow calls out that what he’s doing is for their own good; that he’s trying to keep “a darkness” from returning to Equestria. While the girls manage to stop the rampaging monsters by hurriedly moving to the end of their stories, he escapes in the confusion. Over the next few days the girls attempt to stake out classrooms, newspaper offices, and historical reenactment sites to try and corner Shadow Lock, but he either doesn’t show or manages to escape in the same way he escaped the library: unleashing more monsters. Finally, Twilight and the girls set a trap at the Canterlot Museum by holding a huge “History of Equestria” exhibit, then staking out that location. Sure enough, Shadow Lock sneaks in and makes for the archives, thinking the girls asleep, but on arrival he’s surprised to see Twilight Sparkle is awake and waiting for him. She stops him from summoning another monster from a book and offers to hear him out on his reasons for why he’s doing what he’s doing; suspecting that she has the upper hand in she can always call out to wake her friends up to help her. What she doesn’t realize, however, is that Shadow Lock already dealt with them by trapping them in a world brought to life by the museum exhibits.

Pinkie Pie and Applejack find themselves stuck in the cavepony exhibit, Rarity and Rainbow Dash are stuck in the Egyptian-themed exhibit with Queen Cleopatrot, and Fluttershy and Spike are stuck in the medieval exhibit with pony knights and a full-sized dragon. Shadow Lock, deciding to let Twilight continue to think everything’s fine, explains that he discovered he is the last descendant of an ancient pony who was corrupted by darkness into a horrible monster capable of dooming all of Equestria. He first discovered it on reading about him in a book, and ever since then he’s continually found more passages of him that has made him obsessed with the fear that he too will be corrupted by darkness into the same monster. He felt the only way to prevent it from happening was to erase all memory of his existence so that none will ever follow in his footsteps. Twilight, however, points out this won’t stop the inevitable of another tyrant appearing and that erasing and hiding from history won’t stop it; that one has to embrace both the good parts and bad parts of their history if they want to learn from it and keep it from happening again. Her point is proven when Shadow Lock realizes, to his own horror, that by using his spell he has already erased from his own mind how the monster was stopped the first time. Not long after, he is surprised as the rest of the girls show up; revealing they escaped the history traps that they had been stuck in by doing something different from normal history–further proving Twilight’s point. He apologizes for all he’s done and changes his strategy; instead deciding to go through Equestria and use history to find a way to stop the monster from returning and the same thing from happening again. As he departs, Twilight realizes she never got the name of the villain from him, but the girls brush it off. Meanwhile, in the Ponyville House of Antiques, a shoppony accidentally knocks over a blind buy barrel that contains an old journal marked with a star swirl and a picture of the same monster from Shadow Lock’s memory inside…

Review:

With this story arc, the combination IDW comic/main series arc of the Pillars of Old Equestria and the Pony of Shadows was officially launched. The timing was good as it came out prior to the start of Season Seven, even though the actual arc on the show wouldn’t start until midseason. Plotwise, it was an interesting and clever way to launch things to me.

Overall, this whole arc is well-balanced. All of the girls are given something to do although they are shoved into pairs for most of it. Each one gets their own lines, quirks, and gags, just like you would expect from any episode trying to use all of them. The girls treat the whole plot in a rather “light” manner even though it does have some heavy implications, especially when the audience doesn’t know what Shadow Lock’s intentions are exactly initially. The balance works out well in this one rather than being a sharp contrast such as in “Reflections”, “Chaos Theory”, and “The Ponies of Dark Water” (to a lesser extent).

On the “darker” side, the biggest standout is Shadow Lock himself. There’s been a number of OCs in the IDW Comic over the years; many of them just there to fulfill minor roles. Creating a new villain, and a stallion no less, was eye-catching a bit in and of itself. I’m a bit grimacing at the use of a cloak yet again, but overall there’s something about Shadow Lock personality-wise that makes him seem a bit different from the other Equestrians. His attitude seems a bit sharper and more severe.

Some of the last issue is a bit of a callback to the plot in #15 and #16, especially with more monsters coming out of books. I kind of kept thinking of that arc as this one went on, so if there was anything I would mark this arc down for that would be it. Nevertheless, it was still fun and made for some good jokes.

Seen in the context of the entire season arc, a point I will make here and will make later is that the comics went a long way into making the Pony of Shadows a much more intimidating, fearsome, and dangerous foe than the show itself managed. Liberated from the Y-rating and having much more room to work with as they could focus on individual characters, the comic overall did a much better job of promoting the stakes for the Season Seven finale, which itself had such character overload it really only had time for a 44 minute exposition dump. This arc, on the other hand, created an intriguing and foreboding villain in Shadow Lock, and the fact that he was trying to save Equestria from something far deadlier and went to such lengths to ensure it, not to mention the hints and hype that began in this issue, really geared me up more for the Season Seven finale than I would have been otherwise. In that regard, it did its job very well.

If you frame this prequel in the light of what we eventually got out of the show, it seems to downgrade its rating a bit. But keeping in mind how much better the comic did plus how effectively this started building up for the finale, I give it a higher rating it deserves.

Fun Facts:

This comic arc is the prelude to the IDW “Legends of Magic” limited series and the second half of Season Seven’s overarching story arc. The last page connects directly to Season Seven’s “Uncommon Bond”. This arc also, in part, fixes the plot holes of many of the Pillars of Old Equestria never getting mentioned, the Pony of Shadows not having any reputation from legend, and Celestia and Luna not remembering that the Pillars were real individuals, although the “Legends of Magic” arc would later explain that as well by having them purposely avoid making their presence known to either of them. (As well as a brief line from Fluttershy using the incident to explain why the CMCs are still in the same grade after seven years. :P)

“The Bridle of Frankenstag” is playing in the same theater from “The Ponies of Dark Water”, which was apparently rebuilt. Although the girls clearly point out it was a play, the IDW Comic writers seem to have forgotten that film exists in Equestria (as evidenced in “Hurricane Fluttershy” and “One Bad Apple”). 😛

I just noticed…instead of sleeping bags, rollaways, or even spare rooms, for sleepovers Twilight has entire beds in her own bedroom. Weird.

As a nod back to Rainbow Dash admitting to Scootaloo that scary stories got to her when she was younger in “Sleepless in Ponyville”, she’s the only one who had nightmares of Frankenstag.

This arc might be the first time Fluttershy has ever used her attractiveness to get out of a situation.

The cyclops pony bears a resemblance to Bulk Biceps. His Cutie Mark is an eyeball. H. Pony Lovecart is a parody of H.P. Lovecraft, whose horror writings often featured elderich horrors of monstrosities that included tentacles. Hence, nothing but a mass of tentacles comes from his book. Frankenstag’s monster is a parody of Frankenstein’s monster and, as if often the case with those who have read the book, he corrects the cast on misconceptions given from the popular media version. 😛

The “Marshans” are parodies of the Martians in “War of the Worlds”. In that story, the Martian invaders were eventually destroyed by contracting infections and sickness from Earth’s native bacteria.

The Mane-Iac briefly returns in a cameo.

Trenderhoof (from “Simple Ways”) cameos at the Canterlot Daily News office. (Were newspapers really around back in the days of the Pony of Shadows? :P)

Ponebert by Trot Adams is (obviously) a parody of Dilbert by Scott Adams. It seems, just like in real life, the quality of its humor is somewhat up for debate.

In Colonial Whinniesburg, Prancy Drew makes a brief cameo.

So ponies DO have bathrooms and they DO use toilet paper. 😛

Somnambula as a locale (rather than an individual) is mentioned for the first time in this arc.

This arc is the first appearance of the Pony of Shadows (although only as a drawing in a book).

It’s never explained how Shadow Lock managed to descend from the Pony of Shadows, although it’s safe to assume he isn’t a direct descendant of Stygian. It’s also never explained how he got the scar across his snout. Shadow Lock doesn’t look like it compared to the show version, but he does bear a slight resemblance to Stygian in “Legends of Magic”.

Some of Pinkie Pie’s attempts to talk to the caveponies include saying “Artoo Deetoo” or R2-D2, the droid from the Star Wars franchise.

Pinkie Pie randomly mentions the Matrix, complete with shades.

Rating:

4 Stars out of 5

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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Comic Arc #24 (IDW My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Issues #48-50): “Chaos Theory”

Tags

Accord, Applejack, Chaos Theory, Discord, Fluttershy, IDW, IDW comic, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, Pinkie Pie, Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, review, Spike, Twilight Sparkle

Synopsis:

The Mane Six, Spike, and Starlight Glimmer are all heading out with the residents of Ponyville to enjoy the Cosmic Convergence Conjunction, only to find that they have a “party crasher”: Discord. It’s not long before his chaotic nature and need to be the center of attention earn him a scolding from the girls, who pouts and disappears. Not long after, the Cosmic Convergence Conjuction occurs but, as it does, Starlight notices something nearby. The girls look and see what appears to be a blend of a strange egg and Discord smoldering in the ground. They take it back to the Castle of Friendship only for it to hatch, revealing a creature that looks like Discord but dresses neatly, talks calmly, and acts mannerly. He indicates that he’s a creature that Discord transformed into as a result of the energy of the conjunction, and is not a spirit of chaos but one of order and harmony. Twilight Sparkle names him “Accord” and, on learning that he wants to help bring order and harmony to Equestria, decide to reintroduce him to town. He ends up being extremely mannerly and helpful, earning the admiration of all of the girls except Fluttershy, but Starlight gets uneasy when Accord, rather than fix a hotel under construction that is suffering from a clash of styles from disagreeing architects, momentarily mind controls both of them instead to make them agree on the same design. Twilight and the others rub it off as a mistake, however, and the next day Accord and the girls are invited to Canterlot for a royal luncheon with Celestia and Luna to formally introduce him. While at the luncheon, Starlight vocalizes her disapproval with how Accord acted the other day, but Accord soon surprises everypony by saying he wishes to bring complete harmony to everypony in Equestria via unity, and he plans to achieve unity by making every resident in Equestria think exactly alike and run it under his own direction. He starts by trying to mind-control everypony in the palace and, while Celestia manages to protect the girls, herself, and Luna, everypony else is turned into a like-minded zombie.

Unable to reason with Accord, who believes he is simply doing what Celestia and Luna were trying to do “more efficiently”, Twilight tells Celestia and the rest of the girls to start evacuating Canterlot while she and Luna enter Accord’s mind using her dream magic. While they successfully enter, they soon discovered he’s changed inside and out and all he has is a uniform sameness throughout his mind. Nevertheless, Twilight manages to find a snow globe in one of the monolithic offices inside his head that contains the original Discord. She breaks it open and frees him, but Discord informs her that he is merely the last part of what Accord is now that is still Discord. He confesses that he was truly hurt when the girls scolded him at the Cosmic Convergence Conjunction and felt he would never fit in with them, so he decided to change himself into a harmonious form instead. Unfortunately, he can’t change back unless Accord willingly changes himself back into Discord, and shortly after confessing this the Accords inside his mind trap the three of them… Back outside, Celestia and the girls break for it only to discover Accord is not only rapidly expanding his control to all of the other ponies in Canterlot but he is, in effect, copying his own consciousness onto them in order to make them partially clones of himself from a mental standpoint. They manage to escape the zone of his magic influence and round up whoever isn’t converted yet to the train station, only to get a rather bad surprise: Twilight and Luna, both now mind-controlled as well, suddenly arrive.

The group manages to escape on a train and head toward Ponyville, but while en route Celestia begins to wonder if Accord might actually have a point; seeing as he seems to have brought harmony and balance far easier and more quickly than Celestia has. Starlight protests that he’s gone about it through making ponies conform and be controlled, as she did once, rather than trying to get them to work together as friends. She begins to speculate based on similar incidents (such as with the cursed water, the Mirror Universe, and Inspiration Manifestation) that both Discord and Accord themselves actually had the same goals (making friends) but went about it in different ways. On arriving in Ponyville, Celestia leads the girls to go for the Elements of Harmony with the intent of using them against Accord and Celestia taking Twilight’s spot. Soon after, Accord teleports in and invites them to try, and not only do the Elements not work they actually enhance his power to allow him to instantly mind-control everypony in Equestria except Starlight (who was protecting herself at the point of the attack). However, before Accord can do the same to her, she points out that since she’s the only non-controlled one left and no threat to him that he should be able to convince her to join his philosophy without forcing her. Accord agrees to the challenge, claiming that he’s made everypony in Equestria his friends by making them think alike and that “friendship is order”. Starlight counters that friendship is about understanding and connecting with others because of differences, and that Accord hasn’t really made a single friend or brought any ponies to work together. All he’s made is copies of himself who can only think and act the way he wants them to “and not a single friend”. Realizing he was wrong all along, Accord tells Starlight goodbye and says he hopes this is the last she’ll ever see of him before turning back into Discord. The girls all welcome Discord back and learn to appreciate how differences and “chaos” helps build friendships, and the cast ends with a proclamation that “friendship is magic”.

Review:

First things first. (Holds a gun to the head of the part of my Angry Inner Fanboy who’s mad that Starlight’s second appearance in the main IDW series was another “Starlight Saves Absolutely Every Other Protagonist in the Entire Series by Herself” story to keep him from complaining.) On we go.

A big theme that keeps getting revisited in the “My Little Pony” franchise is the idea of what would happen if characters would be the opposite of their true selves. Ironically, that idea first came around because of Discord way back in Season Two’s “Return of Harmony”. But with Discord reaching the point where he tried to fit in more with the regular cast, and him being such a stand-out character, it caused no end of fan speculation as to what Discord would be like if he was the opposite of his current self.

It was played up mostly for laughs but with a touch of “aw” and drama in “Discordant Harmony” in Season Seven. By comparison…this arc went much darker with it. It essentially showed that being an omnipotent creature is pretty much a dangerous thing for Equestria whether he wants chaos or order.

The art is really great and the pacing is pretty good, keeping things at a very tense progression after Accord reveals his intentions that keeps you engrossed in the story. I don’t think that the show could ever get away with an ending this philosophical, but…it was rather appropriate, fitting, and even clever. Most of the times in the main series when a character talks down a villain it basically amounts to “I’ll be your friend”. In this one, the dialogue was more mature and satisfying. Using the more mature rating for a more intelligent plot is good to me. And there were quite a number of callbacks both to the TV series and the comic, making this a very unifying arc. And the ending message is good as well…that chaos in and of itself isn’t necessarily evil just as order in and of itself isn’t necessarily good, and that it’s possible to appreciate and even befriend both.

However, for being an arc that focuses on Discord and the normal zaniness that surrounds him, even when he’s trying to be “orderly”, this arc goes in a dark direction pretty quick. Even the narrative hook is a bit unusual. The odd egg/chrysalis thing that Discord changes into is a bit unsettling looking right at the start, already foreshadowing that things are going to go from humorous to dark pretty quickly in this arc. And indeed they do. Similar to the “Reflections” arc, this plotline very quickly gets into dark territory. Many of the scenes of the Stepford Smiler ponies are very disturbing looking, especially when it starts showing the other ponies aren’t merely brainwashed but have been turned into copies of Accord, in a sense. The comic makes numerous attempts to try and alleviate this with comic relief, but…similar to the “Reflections” arc, it doesn’t work out that well to me. In fact, it works a little less. The plot just gets a little too heavy to be able to lift it out of it, even with someone like Andy Fleecs doing the normally wonderful art.

This does have the feel of a season-capping episode, but…it also suffers from most of the pitfalls of one. The biggest part is the rest of the girls are just there to be random gags and one liners. Celestia, Starlight, Luna, and Twilight get a good amount of focus, but Fluttershy gets largely ignored after the first part even though anything that would happen to Discord would impact her the most.

And…what the heck, I’ll let him get it out. (Lowers gun)

This comic was likely in production long before “To Where and Back Again” came out or was even known about, but I’m a little disappointed at the show staff for not warning the IDW Comic writers they planned to do an arc where Starlight would save the entire cast more or less by herself, because the fact they put out a second arc where she does the same thing in the comic made me frown a little. In several ways, it’s worse than it was for “To Where and Back Again”. In that one, Starlight found herself forced into a position of leadership she didn’t want to be in. She was hesitant and self-doubting at least, and part of the story had to be her being willing to direct others to work together. In this one, Starlight is portrayed as already being smarter, stronger, and even possibly more empathic than the others. And the issue with that is that it continuously renders not only the Mane Six superfluous compared to her but also casts doubt upon how they ever did anything to change her, as she already seems to be “better at friendship” than them without them saying or doing anything to change her…a fact that seems accurate considering the flimsy resolution of “The Cutie Re-Mark”. It’s not to say I don’t like Starlight Glimmer, but…seriously? Could they have not done an arc or two where she was working with the girls instead of bailing them and the princesses of Equestria out? …Again?

All in all, this is still a good arc in spite of its flaws. It’s not quite as funny or show-appropriate as it would like to be and I personally feel it could have gone in slightly different directions, but overall it’s still a tense, dramatic, and colorful arc. A good solid benchmark for their 50th issue. Here’s to seeing fifty more. 🙂

Fun Facts:

This arc is also known simply as: “Accord”.

Discord breaks the fourth wall earlier than usual, saying “in the four color flesh”. Comic coloration is done in only four colors: Yellow, Cyan, Magenta, and Black. A moment later he’s unhappy on seeing that the script for Issue #48 has him saying puns.

Accord is physically identical to Discord in spite of being “a creature of harmony” except in one detail: instead of a beard he has a mustache.

In possibly a nod to “Fairly Oddparents”, Accord’s word bubbles are more rectangular and rounded on the sides rather than ovals.

Both this arc as well as “Discordant Harmony” in the main series explored the idea of what would happen if Discord started acting “less chaotic”, but it’s interesting to note in both versions Fluttershy doesn’t like how he’s changed and wants him to be more chaotic.

Spike dreams of eating Kentucky Fried Crystals. Not sure how that will work out…

As with most Andy Price drawn stories, the IDW exclusive character Kibitz makes a return.

I’m sure most fans thought Twilight Sparkle eating her Toasty Oats breakfast was adorable. 😀

This comic might be the only indication we’ll ever get of numeric distances in Ponyville. The distance between Ponyville and Canterlot is 14 miles, the distance between Canterlot and Dodge Junction is 48 miles, and the distance from Canterlot to New Horseleans (never before mentioned in the TV series) is 260.

The looks on the faces of the mind-controlled ponies is a classic “Stepford Smiler”, which is similar to what was done in Season Five’s own “The Cutie Map” with Starlight’s commune members.

This story arc features a number of callbacks to earlier arcs. A major plot point is a callback to the “Friends Forever” issue with Luna and Discord–namely the fact Luna has entered Discord’s mind before. Another is a callback to the “Reflections” arc when Celestia mentions the evil version of herself. Lastly, there’s a callback to “The Ponies of Dark Waters”.

In a bit of comic relief, when Accord says he’s trying to achieve the same goal as Princess Celestia, Celestia screams: “WAT.”

Discord’s original persona is found in Accord’s mind in a snow globe, which may or may not be an allusion to “Coraline”. At any rate, the sled in the snow globe is named Rosebud, an allusion to “Citizen Kane”.

The mysterious fedora pony appears at the train station.

A pony version of Jimmy Olson calls out on seeing the mind-controlled Twilight and Luna.

As more comic relief, Starlight easily distracts the mind-controlled Twilight and Luna with a toy monkey.

When Princess Celestia tries to use the Magic Element of Harmony, it connects to her golden collar instead of as a tiara.

At the part where Starlight makes the point that you can’t be friends with “someone who’s exactly like you”, she’s looking at a random picture of Sunset Shimmer. As this arc came out in Season Six, it’s likely that this is a joke at the frequent fan complaint that Starlight Glimmer was nothing more than an attempt to clone Sunset Shimmer into a permanent role on the show.

A number of jokes are on the page where Discord returns. He brings Twilight and Luna in a fourth-wall breaking cardboard box that says “characters not seen for 16 pages”, he has a pizza from Panucci’s (the pizzaria in “Futurama”), and Doctor Whooves, no longer brainwashed, says he can finally blink…an allusion to Doctor Who’s fights against the Weeping Angels. Soon after, Discord complains about the entire story arc, saying he was only on nine of the sixty pages.

The final page is a tribute to IDW’s 50th issue of the My Little Pony series. It has numerous little nods, such as another appearance of the fedora pony, a Changeling, a foal with a horn like King Sombra’s, and an appearance from a buffalo and stag.

Issue #50 was a plus-sized issue that capped the “Chaos Theory” story arc with a ten page short called: “For the Pony Who Has Everything”, in which Discord gives Celestia a “birthday present” of turning her into a normal pegasus to take a day off as an average pony. Her Sun Cutie Mark is replaced with a Christmas tree light bulb. Eventually, Discord turns himself into a pegasus to tag along…with the Cutie Mark of an electric cord (obviously to plug in Celestia’s light bulb). When incognito Celestia says hi to Pinkie Pie, she reenacts her reaction to Twilight from the first episode, and one of the ponies in the impromptu pony parade is Jay Fosgitt, the short’s artist, in pony form.

Rating:

4 Stars out of 5

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Comic Arc #23 (IDW My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Issues #46-47): “Election”

Tags

Applejack, election, Filthy Rich, Fluttershy, IDW, IDW comic, Mayor Mare, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, review, Starlight Glimmer, Twilight Sparkle

Synopsis:

Shortly after Mayor Mare dedicates and opens a brand new playground on a plot of land donated by the Apple Family, an earthquake suddenly destroys it in spite of the fact the ground has been stable for years. Some of the Ponyville citizens end up blaming the mayor for not being better prepared for the incident, in spite of her insistence that not all disasters can be prepared for and some have to be dealt with as best as they can when they show up before making sure they don’t happen again. Filthy Rich seizes the opportunity of discontent to make his own bid to run for mayor, leading to Ponyville needing to hold its first election in years. All of the girls are divided, each wanting to vote for a candidate for different reasons, and Twilight Sparkle herself ends up joining Mayor Mare’s campaign team. Filthy runs an aggressive campaign making a great deal of promises for benefits for everypony, swaying a majority of the voters, while Mayor Mare’s own campaign of only making sure ponies get what they need rather than things they want but can’t have ends up falling flat. Filthy Rich wins the election and starts off with a fresh slew of promises, capping with a vow that no earthquakes will ever happen in Ponyville again…right before one demolishes a house.

As soon as Filthy Rich is sworn in, things start going bad. The earthquakes continue to destroy parts of Ponyville, the new Hoofball Stadium is being built right next to Fluttershy’s property (keeping her and the animals up all night), taxes are soaring in a vain attempt to try and pay for all of Filthy’s promises, the new playground he builds is made using the cheapest labor and materials and falls apart instantly, and pretty much all other promises he made he has to renege on. The girls try to ask (Former) Mayor Mare for help, but she answers not only can one pony not fix everything, but she’s not the mayor anymore. At a town hall meeting that night, Filthy gets pelted by the furious townsfolk and vainly tries to promise them more to pacify them, which prompts Mayor Mare to make an appearance and set the townsfolk straight that an elected official’s job is to make plans, work hard, and fix things when they go wrong. At that moment, the source of the earthquakes reveals itself: a tatzlwurm. Mayor Mare ends up rallying the town and using them to drive the monster off. Filthy Rich, ready to be done with politics, begins to go about the long bureaucratic process to resign from being mayor and turn it over to her, while Fluttershy finally gets some sleep.

Review:

Considering the timing of this issue on when it came out and the content, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that this was poking at one 2016 US Presidential Election candidate in particular. However, I don’t agree even if that was the intention. The moral of this one could apply to pretty much any political candidate, including both Presidential ones in 2016 or any election.

The moral is a pretty good one for living in any sort of republic or democracy, or even for something as simple as putting your trust in anyone such as a lawyer or salesman: be careful about individuals who tell you what you want to hear and stop to think about whether or not they can deliver. This goes certainly for candidates you are not in favor of but more so for ones that you are, as you’re likely to simply hear what you want to hear in those cases. The problem is the lesson was more one for the citizens of Ponyville as a whole rather than just Filthy Rich, although he still needed one of his own. After all, they were the ones who fell for Filthy’s promises to begin with.

Other than that, it’s a pretty good story. I tend the Apples were a bit more ornery and hostile than they needed to be, but it was fairly entertaining. I noticed with Agnes Garbowska’s art style that the comic story can be more “drawn out” because she tends to draw big characters with fewer word balloons in a panel, so that even though this is a two-issue comic it feels more like a one-parter. While I normally didn’t take Filthy Rich for the politician type, I’ll admit that in the situation he seems appropriate. The only real alternative would have been to create an OC just for the issue, and it would have had less of an impact that way. Ironically enough it didn’t seem to have the same amount of laughs as the previous arc, but I liked the inclusions not only of Starlight Glimmer (appearing on equal footing with the rest of the Mane Six is always a plus) but also giving a bit of time to Diamond Tiara, who has had little reason to be in the series since Season Five.

All in all, a nice little story.

Fun Facts:

This was the first IDW arc to feature Starlight Glimmer as a character, although the events of “The Cutie Map” were mentioned in an earlier issue.

At this point, “Crusaders of the Lost Mark” had taken place, so Diamond Tiara was finished being a bully. I think the few lines she got in this arc was the most use they’ve had for her character since. 😛

After the town meeting, the girls return to the Castle of Friendship for a snack. They aren’t actually eating at the Cutie Map but the dining room, but, for some reason, Twilight’s chair is in there…

One of the mayor’s aides that’s spazzing out is named Nervous Nellie. Please don’t tell me her special talent is being nervous. 😛

In spite of the fact that “Slice of Life” called him “Doctor”, in this issue the Doctor Who pony is officially named “Time Turner”.

Pinkie Pie is dressed as Abraham Lincoln for election day. Was there an Abraham-Lincoln-Pony at one point…?

Starlight raises the question of if “Mayor” is a part of Mayor Mare’s name. 😛

Boffyball, from Rarity and Gilda’s “Friends Forever” issue, gets a callback.

Apparently, at one point, Filthy broke the fourth wall and promised background characters more screen time. 😛

The Tatzlwurm, which first appeared in “Three’s a Crowd”, is back. Apparently it behaves just like the Grab-oids in “Tremors”: attracted to small sounds but scared away by really loud ones.

One of Andy Price’s cover illustrations features the pony version of Tara Strong voice acting for Twilight Sparkle, and not being happy with IDW’s choice in dialogue. 😛

Rating:

3 Stars out of 5

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Comic Arc #22 (IDW My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Issues #43-45): “The Ponies of Dark Water”

Tags

Apple Bloom, Applejack, CMCs, Cutie Mark Crusaders, Fluttershy, IDW, IDW comic, My Little Pony, opinion, Pinkie Pie, Princess Luna, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, review, Spike, Sweetie Belle, The Ponies of Dark Water, Twilight Sparkle

Synopsis:

On the way back from Abyssinia after saving Equestria yet again, the Mane Six and Spike hear a bubbling and a rumbling, and soon discover a recently-emerged hot spring. Deciding it looks like a good place to relax, they all slip in and ease up for a while before heading home. The next day, Spike wakes up and sees Twilight missing. On going into town, she finds that the city is routinely being disrupted by continuous Sonic Rainbooms, Applejack is acting like a ruthless, cutthroat businesswoman and yelling at Apple Bloom for being a bad “employee”, Twilight is using her magic to declare herself the new Empress of Ponyville by virtue of her intelligence, and Rarity’s vanity has grown so staggering that she can no longer tolerate the slightest imperfection and is wanting to challenge Twilight for rule as she is “the finest”. Spike gathers the CMCs and they retreat to their clubhouse, where they determine all of this happened as a result of the hot spring. Not knowing what to do, they send a letter to Princess Celestia, who, on realizing that the Mane Six are being dominated by their own darker natures, dispatches Princess Luna (who has experience) to help. Soon after, Spike and the CMCs are bucked out of the clubhouse by Applejack who demands rent. Luna arrives and puts a stop to her, discovering dark magic inside of her. Before she can draw it out, however, she discovers the hard way that the magic has also increased her power; allowing her to break free of Luna’s holding spell and flee. Unable to change her or the others back on her own, Luna dispatches the CMCs to go get Zecora and see if she knows a potion to undo the magic while she and Spike try to maintain order in town. However, on entering the Everfree Forest the CMCs almost immediately run into a hoard of savage animals being led by Fluttershy, and back in Sugarcube Corner Pinkie Pie gets ready to unleash her own twisted brand of “fun”.

The previous day, Twilight, obsessed with gaining all knowledge and gaining it immediately, invents a device to allow her to steal the brain power of other ponies and add it to her own; soon running around town and turning ponies into morons to add to her intelligence. In the present, the CMCs are surrounded by Fluttershy’s animals and Scootaloo accidentally steps on Angel Bunny’s foot. As a result, Fluttershy calls for their blood and sics the forest on them for intruding. Back in Ponyville, mysterious gifts have been left all over town, but on opening them they explode; driving panicking ponies into the local theater where Pinkie Pie holds them hostage for a deranged comedy show. At the same time, Rarity, infuriated at outdated fashions, blows up a clothing store, getting the attention of Luna. Back in the forest, the CMCs manage to meet up with Zecora just as Fluttershy catches up to them, but on using one of Zecora’s smoke bombs to escape she ends up growing so angry she has the forest declare war on Ponyville. Back with Luna and Rarity, they get into a battle and, in the ensuing struggle, bust into the theater; prompting Pinkie Pie to blow it up with her (live) party cannon to escape. In the aftermath, the CMCs, Luna, Spike, and Zecora reunite and realize that Spike was not affected by the water like the Mane Six were. Zecora theorizes that the cure may reside in Spike’s draconic nature, but before she can do anything Rarity and Pinkie Pie re-emerge, with the former running off to confront Twilight for rule of Ponyville while the latter begins bombarding the town with water balloons loaded with the same hot spring water. As all of Ponyville begins to turn evil, the group runs for cover only for Luna to get hit by one of the balloons, causing her to revert into Nightmare Moon.

Pinkie Pie gloats over her success only momentarily, before Nightmare Moon sets her sights on her as her first target. Fortunately, in the length of time it takes her to finally disable Pinkie Pie, Zecora and Spike are able to make a cure from his scales. Once Moon disables Pinkie and runs to the Castle of Friendship to deal with Rarity and Twilight, they give the cure to Pinkie and revert her to normal. The girls go to Applejack next, stopping her from cornering the Appleloosan market and reverting her as well. On hearing Pinkie say she only cared about being funny no matter what, and Applejack say she only cared about caring for the farm and her apples, the CMCs realize the water took their virtues and enlarged and distorted them into vices. Using that as an idea, they create a cure-water-trapped target and start loudly boasting that nopony can hit it, causing Rainbow Dash to come out of the sky and nail it to prove them wrong and, as a result, curing her as well. She takes pails of water loaded with cure and creates a thunderstorm over Ponyville next, curing both Fluttershy and the rest of the afflicted residents. Unfortunately, Rarity and Twilight were both indoors locked in a battle for supremacy. As the two battle on, Princess Luna is cured by the rainstorm, but continues the guise of Nightmare Moon and gets Rarity and Twilight to agree to a compromise to divide Equestria among them, sealing it with a toast spiked with cure. Although Rarity falls for it, Twilight does not; boasting that at this point she is so intelligent she has already imagined every possible contingency and future imaginable. Soon after, however, she sets off another one of Pinkie’s cure-water-traps, because the essence of comedy is unpredictability. All of the Mane Six are miserable that they caused so much trouble from doing things they thought were their assets, but Luna comforts them: telling them to be glad it was just cursed water and not their own arrogance and jealousy. The girls undo all of their damage that they can, and Zecora purifies the hot spring before Luna sets off to depart. She leaves saying she was glad that the corruption of the water also ruined their friendship–saying if they had been both evil and united no pony could have stopped them.

Review:

It had been a while since the IDW Comic did a multi-part story, and even longer since it had done a multi-part dramatic arc. To me, similar to the plotline itself, this arc suffered a bit of an identity crisis.

The storyline itself isn’t necessarily new. As early as “The Return of Harmony” we had a storyline where the Mane Six were acting the opposite of their true selves. This one ramped it up to eleven, however, basically turning each of the girls into a different form of supervillain. I also give it props for being something that hasn’t really been done on the show or the comic yet: an installment where both the Mane Six and the CMCs highlight the same storyline. In fact, this goes a bit farther by having it be the CMCs and Spike vs. the Mane Six. In “The Return of Harmony”, the girls still seemed like themselves but just grossly (and humorously) exaggerated in the opposite direction. Here they all seem far more mature and dark-natured in all aspects. Hence, I think it’s different enough to not think of it as a ripoff. It also highlights both Princess Luna and Zecora, who are two of my more favorite recurring characters, so it has that going for it too.

However, as a I said before, this arc has an identity crisis. Similar to “Night of the Living Apples”, the storyline doesn’t seem to know whether it should be the theme of a normal episode or if it should aim for something darker. Whereas the silliness in “Night of the Living Apples” eventually won out, here…I don’t see a clear victor. While the evil versions of the Mane Six get to go overboard to a humorous degree a few times, the “fight” between Pinkie Pie and Nightmare Moon is pretty amusing, and some of the comments from the stupefied ponies are funny, there’s something missing in the tone in this one. A lot of the dialogue doesn’t even seem like it’s still MLP:FIM, and at times it looks like it’s relying on the artwork to keep the story grounded in the show’s motif. I know the girls aren’t exactly supposed to be acting like themselves, but at times it seems like that’s being used as an excuse to go beyond making them evil versions of themselves and go straight to making new characters.

I got a little hung up on the fact that the evil versions of the girls kept insisting they were “better”, while once they were cured they claimed they were obsessed with one thing. The two don’t seem to connect to me. I’m not a big fan of “corruption” in fiction, in which a character is turned by external means into an evil version of themselves. I always have the thought that if a character we normally think of as moral, upstanding, devoted, and determined can be so easily turned evil just by a cosmic light switch, then what does that say about the character?

This storyline does have what you would expect from a drama-based episode, namely a mixture of the show’s signature humor along with some points of genuine tension and drama. Especially at the conclusion of the second issue. The problem is a lot of the tension that’s built up at the end of the second issue goes nowhere. Even as Nightmare Moon, Luna ends up helping out by disabling Pinkie Pie and then reverting back to normal “off screen”. The plotline with the rest of the town beginning to turn evil doesn’t seem to go anywhere (other than a quick piracy joke by DJ-Pon-3). But most of all, it ends rather awkwardly. I’m not sure if Luna’s final statement is supposed to be in praise of the Mane Six (who, admittedly, have little to be proud of by the end of the arc) or ending on a bit of a dark note. Either way, it seemed an odd way to wrap it up.

In the end, I’m not really sure whether this should be taken as a more serious arc or something that, in spite of having the evil Mane Six, is all there just for an odd yet good laugh. I think it’s ultimately a pretty good story and entertaining, but it’s not quite as smooth or memorable as it could have been.

Fun Facts:

The title of this arc is a knockoff of “The Pirates of Dark Water”, an early 90s action/adventure animated series.

In the beginning of this issue, the girls are coming back from an adventure in “Abyssinia”. Aside from a brief mention in Season Four’s “Glass of Water” song by Discord, this region has never featured in the main TV series. However, one of the MLP Movie prequel comics placed Klugetown within its borders.

When Evil Applejack tries to buck the CMCs out of their clubhouse saying she’s taking it back, she says: “I eminently need your domain.” Eminent Domain is a principle of government to be able to seize private property for public use under certain conditions, provided it compensates for it.

Evil Pinkie Pie is a parody of the Joker. In her first appearance, she parodies not one but two scenes from the 1989 “Batman” film: breaking into hysterical laughter on seeing her appearance in a mirror and quoting: “Wait ’til they get a load of me!”

As another Batman parody, Evil Twilight Sparkle’s brain-power-stealing device resembles the Riddler’s first model of “The Box” from “Batman Forever”.

The two philosopher ponies mention an older philosopher named “Sowcrates”. In “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”, the title characters routinely mispronounce Greek philosopher Socrates’ name phonetically as “Sow-crates”.

Part of Evil Pinkie Pie’s act is to imitate Jerry Seinfeld, while at another part her puppet show quotes the novelty song: “Yakity Yak”.

Issue #44 was actually used in the Screwattack series “Death Battle” for the match between Pinkie Pie and Deadpool, when it was used to show the destructive potential that Pinkie Pie’s party cannon has when loaded with live ammunition. Oddly enough, if they had included Issue #45 as well, it would have shown she shares another power with Deadpool: namely in that she can’t be predicted.

Spike mentions that he had tickets to see “that Celestia Rap Musical”, likely an allusion to “Hamilton”.

In spite of the continuous “Sonic Rainbooms”, Evil Rainbow Dash doesn’t even appear until the final issue of the arc.

It’s never really explained if Evil Fluttershy was able to command the animals or if she somehow infected them with the corruption as well. At any rate, when she dismisses them some of them look annoyed that she canceled the war…

One of the philosopher ponies, once stupefied, says: “Mashed potatoes can be your friends”, a line from Weird Al Yankovic’s “Dare to Be Stupid”. The other philosopher pony says: “You see, both characters’ mothers have the same name”, an allusion to the infamous “Martha” scene from “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”.

When cleaning up Ponyville, Twilight enchants multiple brooms to sweep together, a possibly allusion to “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” from “Fantasia”.

Rating:

3.5 Stars out of 5

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ IDW My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Equestria Girls Holiday Special 2014

Tags

Anon-a-miss, Apple Bloom, Applejack, CMCs, Equestria Girls, Fluttershy, Holiday Special, IDW, IDW comic, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, review, Ron the Death Eater, Scootaloo, Sunset Shimmer, Sweetie Belle

Synopsis:

The holidays have come to Canterlot High School, but it’s a melancholy time for Sunset Shimmer as she’s been alone ever since coming into the human world. To try and treat her to a nice holiday as well as to show how she’s been accepted as more than a friend but part of their “family”, the Humane Five decide to treat her to a series of slumber parties at each of their houses along with the other girls, culminating in a big holiday party at Sweet Apple Acres at the end. The first night is at Pinkie Pie’s, and during the night, after a call from Apple Bloom, Applejack finds herself forced to relate an embarrassing story of how she got the nickname “Piggly Wiggly” before they turn in. The next day at school, the girls find out that someone has created an online profile called “Anon-a-miss”, using Sunset Shimmer’s silhouette and color scheme, and has leaked the name to everyone, causing everyone to start making fun of Applejack. The next night is at Rarity’s house, where Sunset take some outrageous pictures of the girls playing dress up in Rarity’s failed wardrobe design. Yet the next day, Sunset comes to school and finds the girls enraged at her when they see Anon-a-miss posted the pictures taken from Sunset’s phone. They now believe her to be Anon-a-miss and that she just pretended to be nice to start backstabbing them again, and they break off their friendship from her.

Things get worse as days pass as Anon-a-miss continues to post everyone’s secrets, and the school starts turning on itself as it did before the events of “Equestria Girls”. Sunset is hated more every day as everyone blames her, and finally in despair she writes to Twilight Sparkle asking her if she thinks any Windegos might have gotten into the human world. Twilight answers that the human world doesn’t need Windegos to spread about distrust and discord, as demonstrated by the abuse of social media, and encourages her to stay strong and “find your family”. After the entire school joins in on taunting Sunset and reducing her to tears, she thinks on what Twilight says and meets the girls at the coffee shop, where she shows them what Twilight has been writing in the journal to get them to reluctantly give her a berth. Soon after, she manages to deduce who the real culprits are just as they finally have a crisis of conscience and walk in to confess of their own volition: the humanized Cutie Mark Crusaders. Jealous of the Humane Five spending time with Sunset Shimmer instead of them, they created Anon-a-miss to get the girls to break off their friendship with her, but ended up posting negative content about everyone as well when things got out of hand. Sunset and the girls end up forgiving the CMCs, who publicly confess to everything, take down the account, and receive six months suspension. The Humane Six decide to invite the CMCs along with them to the holiday party at Sweet Apple Acres so they don’t feel left out, noting that with family “there’s always room for more”.

Review:

If you’re a fan of “One Piece”, you may like the series…but you know the Skypeia arc was pretty bad. If you’re a fan of “Star Trek”, you may like most of the movies…but you know the fifth movie was trash. If you’re a fan of “Sonic the Hedgehog”, you may like the games in general…but you know the 2006 game was terrible.

And if you’re a fan of “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic”, you may like most of it and the IDW comic…but you have…this.

Before I begin, I’ll start by acknowledging some people actually like this story. Some people even like it a lot. And that’s fine because all art is subjective and you might see things in it that I don’t. But if that’s you, you should probably leave right now. As for me and my personal opinion? (Starts the pilot light on a flamethrower)

Buckle yourselves in.

As with the Annual #1, this special is solidly grounded in “reality”. It could very easily be a perfectly realistic story if not for the few panels that show the pony Twilight Sparkle receiving Sunset Shimmer’s journal entries. No magic in this one, villains or otherwise. Similar to Annual #1, that kind of puts it in an odd camp to begin with. Because there’s only so many Equestria Girls movies, almost all of them have to be the more “drama-based” type of episode rather than the “friendship problem” ones in at least some way. It’s a bit interesting that the comic decided to go with that when the comic has more of a reputation for drama-based episodes. I personally thought they might have gone with a human-transformed Windego, especially as it was hinted at mid-story. Instead, well…we’ll get to that in a second.

What they went with was still ok, though, because they don’t have a chance to do many episodes like that in the series. And early on, it looked like it was going to be pretty heartwarming and cute. Sunset Shimmer had become the show’s newest ensemble darkhorse (pardon the pun) following “Rainbow Rocks”, and the chance for her to get to have a nice holiday with her friends looked like it would make a nice little tale.

Then, of course, things start going wrong…and they just keep going downhill from there.

Initially, I don’t mind the conflict that much. I realized someone was trying to frame Sunset pretty early, obviously. And I thought it would cause a bit of contention. Now if it had stayed mild, if it had caused the Humane Five to doubt Sunset, maybe even start mistrusting her a little or express some anger, that would have been one thing. Yet it quickly becomes worse than that. After only the second incident, the Humane Five outright reject Sunset completely and kick her out of their lives.

One can make the argument that the girls still have “a lot to forgive” Sunset for, although by the beginning of “Rainbow Rocks” it seemed as if the girls had already forgiven her and the one person who still needed to forgive someone was Sunset…needing to forgive herself. And unlike the situation with Starlight Glimmer, a lot of “Rainbow Rocks” was devoted to how much effort Sunset made to try the monumental task of remaking her image in the face of the very individuals she tormented…something that few people in this world would be willing to try.  And aside from that, the girls had gone the extra step in this story. They called Sunset more than their friend. They called her family. The very fact she was being welcomed into their homes in this series of slumber parties was to make her feel like she had a family in the human world. So…there is some validity to the complaint that the girls were too quick to outright shut Sunset out, and even that it was almost OOC of them to do so. That if they were serious about everything they said, they owed her the benefit of the doubt or a chance to prove herself. Instead…

“Maybe…even family can make mistakes.” “Maybe. I don’t know if you can forgive them though.”

Remember this in a second.

I didn’t think it was too bad at this point, though. Everything would be made right in the end, I knew, and the girls would apologize for having doubted Sunset, Sunset would say she understood based on her past, and the holidays would still be great. Yet things kept getting worse.

Not only do the Humane Five fail to think maybe they mistreated Sunset as time goes on, but the situation becomes worse than ever as everyone gets turned against each other by the gossip and newsmongering of “Anon-a-miss”. Now, everyone turns against Sunset. This is dark. In fact, it’s possibly the darkest the series has ever been because it’s something completely real. It’s cyberbullying at its worst, and yet Sunset Shimmer is ironically the worst victim of it all as everything is being pinned on her. The worst part about cyberbullying is it’s an infectious cancer of poison impossible to remove. Once a secret is out on the Internet, it is out there forever. It can’t be reined in. And it spreads like a plague. Yet Sunset gets the worst of it. Someone has stolen her identity to make all of these posts, so she can’t get away by staying offline. She has no family (or home, really) to run to in the world. Her friends were the first to be poisoned against her, so she has no one to go to or talk to except Twilight Sparkle.

It’s terrible because it’s a nightmare from real life. Now, of course, Sunset Shimmer was guilty of three years of cyberbullying. I suppose some individuals would make the argument that this was “karma” for her.  But most of us, myself included, had seen the other side of Sunset Shimmer and saw this as simply cruel.

By this point in the story, I was beginning to think like Sunset. I figured this had to be a humanized Windego. There was no other explanation, after all. Who else would have had access to her phone? Who would have known their secrets? No one…at least no one who I knew would be cruel enough for that. Even if they wanted to hurt Sunset Shimmer, there was NO character around who would want to see the whole school tearing itself up to do it. So the only logical conclusion was there was a monster somewhere the girls would have to fight, and I waited for that.

And then, at long last, came the big moment. I noticed in the exchange with the Humane Five at the coffee shop, all of them are still giving Sunset the cold shoulder. Even with Twilight’s comments vouching for her innocence, they seem to only be willing to listen to her because of Twilight…not because they’ve softened to her in the least. Applejack outright states she doesn’t trust Sunset anymore when they’re trying to figure out the culprit. And who does it end up being?

The moment the villains (note no quotation marks…because they were the worst villains in possibly the entire series at that point) are revealed, this entire story becomes bad fanfiction: the type with “Ron the Death Eater”. I don’t know what the writers were thinking or how they could be so naive to make light of everything that happened in this story. The fact that the humanized Cutie Mark Crusaders would do such a thing makes them the most despicable characters in the comic franchise. It was bad enough that they were trying to drive a wedge between her and the girls. It’s worse when they wanted her destroyed.

The CMCs were turning everyone against Sunset Shimmer. They tried to make her the most hated individual in the school. And even when they saw the school starting to eat itself alive, they kept going. Why? Pure sadistic glee. No, I’m serious. That’s the only explanation. This wasn’t like “Ponyville Confidential” where they were attracted by fame and later coerced by their unscrupulous editor. They felt making the lives of their own sisters and friends hell and making the school eat itself alive like in the days before Twilight Sparkle was all acceptable so long as they could make Sunset suffer and drive her away. All motivated by pure jealousy. That’s…despicable. Monstrous.

And, of course, it gets worse from there. Everyone immediately forgives the CMCs completely. Right. Why?

“‘Course I forgive you, Apple Bloom. You’re family.”

Yeah, remember this earlier?

“Maybe…even family can make mistakes.” “Maybe. I don’t know if you can forgive them though.”

Sunset had the biggest right to carry a grudge. About the one virtue of this story is that it shows her Element probably really is Forgiveness/Empathy because she does immediately forgive the CMCs. But the Humane Five…what a bunch of two-faced creeps. They treated Sunset like she was a leper no matter how much she pleaded and begged them to believe her because they felt so backstabbed and betrayed. Yet they instantly just smile, shake their heads, and say “what are we going to do with you?” to the CMCs?

I already said it. Cyberbullying is a cancer. So is gossip. Everything they put out there isn’t going to “go away” because they said sorry. And it won’t go away from taking down the account, publicly confessing, or getting suspensions either. That’s why cyberbullying is so hideously evil–it can’t be fully undone. Part of it will linger forever. Can you forgive a cyberbully if they’ve done absolutely everything they could to try and undo it, like the CMCs did? Yes…it might take some strength of character that’s not common, but yes. Will you trust them as easily from now on? Probably not for some time.

The school literally formed a mob to bully Sunset Shimmer because they thought she was the culprit. Do you think that sort of anger is going to subside just like that for the CMCs now that they admitted to the truth?

The message the story was giving there was that cyberbullying is evil but can be undone, which is not only inaccurate it’s irresponsible. The real message should have been cyberbullying is horrible…so never do it. Period. Kids have refused to go to school, had plastic surgery, and even committed suicide over cyberbullying. There’s nothing “light” about it.

And it gets worse. A story that centered so much on the torment Sunset had to go through and emphasizing the evils of cyberbullying and the need to be responsible with social media…suddenly shifts it all to a lesson about Sunset and the Humane Five being in the wrong for not including the CMCs all along.

The one problem the writers of the IDW Comic seem to share along with those of the show is that there is such thing as a Moral Event Horizon. It is possible to do something so despicable and depraved that extenuating circumstances can no longer be used not only as an excuse but even as a reason for pity. Bit of a background story…when Marvel published the end of the infamous “Dark Phoenix Saga” of the X-Men, there was considerable debate among the writers as to whether or not Jean Grey should live at the end; enough to where two separate cover arts of the next issue were done, one with a happy ending and one with a sad one. Ultimately, they decided on death. Why? Because it didn’t matter if Jean fully regained control and maintained it for the rest of her life, never hurting another living thing again. She had murdered five billion people just for fun. That sort of thing couldn’t be overlooked.

It was bad the girls weren’t included, yes, but it was even worse how they responded. They created a hundred fold worse bad blood for it and they tried to drive the school to run Sunset out of town. And even when things were getting out of hand they wouldn’t stop. It almost looks as if they threw in the CMCs apologizing at the last minute as an aside rather than a confrontation, as it happens at the exact same time Sunset deduces it was them. And they had to do that, because otherwise the CMCs would have been totally irredeemable…as opposed to about 95% irredeemable.

And still it gets worse than that. The CMCs end up apologizing to the girls for the most part…not to Sunset. They seem to be more upset about what happened to their sisters and the school rather than her. Granted, there is a panel where Sweetie Belle explicitly apologizes to Sunset directly, but that gets negated a moment later by her saying: “We had no idea what would happen to you!”

No, writers. No. They knew exactly what would happen.

That was the whole point. Apple Bloom said this was all about jealousy. They wanted revenge not for anything Sunset did but for the mere fact that their sisters liked her. They were trying to drive her away by making her friends hate her so that they’d kick her out. Heck, on reread, you see Apple Bloom not only drew attention to Anon-a-miss to begin with and planted the idea in Applejack’s mind that Sunset had betrayed her, but she went even more Shakespearian by planting the idea of exposing Applejack’s bad nickname at the start. She purposely said that over the phone so that the girls would overhear, Applejack would be forced to explain, and that night she could write the story. And if they really hated it, again, like I said earlier, why not stop? They were under no compulsion to do so. They simply kept posting bad content and secrets people sent them…why? Because they were sadistic monsters, I guess.

Everything happened exactly the way the CMCs wanted it to. The only excuse you can plausibly make is they finally had a crisis of conscience on seeing Sunset in tears and realized they weren’t driving away some unfeeling creature but they were hurting someone extremely badly. That…might have been passable as a lesson. But that’s not what happened. Not only is that not emphasized, but, again, the Humane Six are made to look like the ones in the wrong for not including them.

Finally, the icing on the cake. After the way Sunset was treated so unjustly, after her friends disowned her for something that wasn’t even her fault, after she was left in tears because they wouldn’t give her even the benefit of the doubt, after they treated her like a outcast and yelled at her to get out of the coffee shop, not one…not ONE…member of the Humane Six says so much as “sorry” to Sunset. They owed her an apology for doubting her. A BIG one. The fact they didn’t give it, well…let’s just say it’s a good thing the CMCs are the hate sink in this one.

The only explanation I can think for this is that the concept started going into play before “Rainbow Rocks” came out, and it seems supported by the ending message being given by Rarity and Sunset only appearing in the background after focusing the rest of the entire story on her…which is yet another problem. It probably was originally supposed to center on the CMCs and the Humane Five. But when the writers saw that Sunset Shimmer would have to be worked in, it turned into this abomination.

I can’t even articulate how much I dislike this. I spent days thinking of the best way to sum it up. To paraphrase another reviewer’s thoughts, this is a holiday special that has little to do with the holidays and almost nothing to do with “good will toward men and women”. On my part, this is like “Ponyville Confidential”, which was already a heavily disliked episode, only taking everything bad in that one and making it worse. Everything is off on it. The characters are OOC. The motivations are weak. The actions are unjustified. The theme is portrayed too mature while it’s handled too lightly. It’s unfocused at the end. The villains are made too heavy and get off too light. The conflict isn’t properly resolved. The message is muddled and misleading. Rather than leaving this story feeling encouraged or happy about the holidays, I left feeling sore, uncertain, and disliking the Humane Five. The sad part is this is probably the only real comic treatment Sunset Shimmer will ever get as, along with Fiendship is Magic #3 and Annual #1, this is the only time anything from the Equestria Girls movies ever appeared in the comic.

I’m sure if you like this comic you’re not even reading this anymore, but if you are I can see that there are some parts in this that can be fixated on to like, but to me only if I blot a lot of things from my conscious memory. I was able to overlook quite a bit in “The Cutie Re-Mark” by the time Season Seven rolled around but I still had to “overlook” it. This storyline has too much going bad for that. And, for me personally, it only deserves one rating.

Congratulations, Holiday Special 2014. When it comes to “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic”, you are, at least to me, the worst of the worst.

Fun Facts:

Tony Fleecs did art for both Annual #1 as well as this issue, and for this issue he basically took the same art for Annual #1, replaced Twilight Sparkle with Sunset Shimmer, and made the rest winter-themed.

Although the Equestria Girls franchise is set in a world of humans…MySpace is still MyStable…

At the time that this issue came out, Season Six’s “Flutter Brutter” was still almost a year and a half away. Fluttershy’s family gets incidentally omitted from any description or inclusion.

Although this comic came out almost four months after “Rainbow Rocks”, it’s likely production on it had to begin before the film came out. That’s the only excuse I can find for some of it…and one of the indicators is that Sunset doesn’t know what slumber parties are like although she attended the one in “Rainbow Rocks”.

Fluttershy, when playing the game, says for her character to use its “limit break”. “Limit breaks” are moves specific to the Final Fantasy series of video games.

The humanized gremlins appear…again…

It wouldn’t be all the way until Season Seven’s Equestria Girls short “Monday Blues” that we would finally see that Sunset Shimmer does indeed have a place to live in the human world. In this story, interestingly enough, Sunset Shimmer is depicted as sleeping in the library like Twilight Sparkle had to.

Although they aren’t real, this issue features a depiction of humanized Windegos.

One of the text boxes reads “this sucks”…a slip-up on the part of censors.

Rating:

0 Stars out of 5

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ IDW My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Annual #1

Tags

Annual #1, Applejack, Babs Seed, Equestria Girls, Fluttershy, Humane Five, IDW, IDW comic, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, review, Sunflower, Sunset Shimmer

Synopsis:

An unseen reporter for the school newspaper is interviewing the Humane Five about how they got to be such good friends, and pieces the story together from interviewing them all separately:

Freshman year of Canterlot High School, all five members of the Humane Five come to school. They initially meet with one another at the Freshman Fair but are soon swept up in their own concerns. Applejack wants to just fit in with the more urban student body although she comes from a rural background. Pinkie Pie is wanting to find the perfect extracurricular activity that’s fun. Rarity is wanting to make her mark on the school. Rainbow Dash is wanting to make the soccer team and become the school star. Fluttershy is just looking for where she wants to be in life right now but is afraid of everyone. Applejack ends up trying to pair with her two cousins, Sunflower and Babs Seed, but they tell her that her rural mannerisms won’t fit in and she needs to change. Meanwhile, they gravitate toward Rarity who’s self-confident, attractive, and catches the eyes of everyone; introducing her to the “elite” members of the school. Rainbow Dash focuses almost all of her attention on the soccer team and being the best, and Fluttershy, while able to hit it off with Rarity and being friends already with Rainbow Dash, is trying to support the latter but still feels “something is missing”. As the weeks go on, circumstances drive the group apart from each other. Applejack continuously tries to make herself more of a high class urban girl but is only shunned more by Sunflower and Babs Seed. As for Rarity, Sunflower, Babs Seed, and the rest of the school elites demand all of her time and discourage her from interacting with anyone else not at the top of the pecking order. Rainbow Dash makes the soccer team but soon gets a swollen ego and devotes herself only to being the star, getting the ire of the rest of her teammates. Pinkie Pie finds lots of activities that are fun for her, but she dislikes them all because they don’t let her make fun for anyone else. Finally, Fluttershy is continuously “lost in the crowd” and not able to find any place she fits in.

Finally, Canterlot High plays its first game against the “Shadowbolts”. Rainbow Dash’s grandstanding ends up costing the team the ball numerous times. There, Pinkie Pie finally gets an idea to help everyone else have fun by distributing Wondercolts horse ears and tails to whip up people for a pep rally, and “drafts” Fluttershy to help. While passing them out, Fluttershy notices that Sunflower has a sick dog and tries to offer her help, but when Sunflower responds by mocking and teasing her, Applejack and Rarity both erupt at her; the former for ever wanting to “be like a bully” and the latter for being stunned at their lack of gratitude. They end up helping her and Pinkie Pie distribute the favors and whip up the crowd, which in turn motivates Rainbow Dash to think more like a team player and pass the ball to Spitfire for the winning goal. Following the event, the girls realize both their respective virtues and become friends from the same event (paralleling how the Mane Six gained the Cutie Marks that led to their destined friendship by the same event).

The interview over, each of the girls thanks the reporter–revealing it to be Sunset Shimmer, who says she’s learned everything she needs to know about them.

Review:

At the time that the first annual for the IDW Comic series came out, the only entry in the “Equestria Girls” franchise was the original movie, and that wasn’t a good leg to start out on. The original movie is not the most beloved of the franchise. In fact, according to IDW, it’s the least liked of the franchise…and, if you’ve seen my review, for pretty good reason. It was viewed as unnecessary, bizarre, and simplistic. It wouldn’t be until “Rainbow Rocks” and the subfranchise finding a new deteuroagonist in who was regarded as a bland and uninspired villain that the series took off.

On one hand, that put a pretty tall burden on the writers for this issue. On the other hand, with a universe that only had so much canon, it left a lot of possibilities.

The fact of the matter is the Equestria Girls movies are mostly all the domain of Twilight Sparkle, Sunset Shimmer, and Sci-Twi. Any other character is there almost obligatory just for funny scenes and to round out the set. Most of the character development and individuality we’ve gotten from the Human Five came from the shorts, and none of those were meant to be poignant. The comic gave an opportunity to flesh that out, especially since, in this prequel, neither Twilight Sparkle or (technically) Sunset Shimmer are around to steal any spotlights.

How did it do? Well, at first I didn’t think much of this arc because I focused on the wrong things. Now? I appreciate it more.

The story works pretty hard to both maintain the identity of the Humane Five as well as make them more relateable to the real world as they’re human high school students. For the most part, it works out in that way. Each one features a realistic problem that would apply to high school students. Applejack comes from a different background and is pressured to change herself to fit in. Rarity immediately gets absorbed into the upper cliques because of her high manners and attractiveness. Rainbow Dash is out to forge her identity through athletic excellence, not only for school notoriety but for herself. And Fluttershy has the problem a lot of students face…they don’t know what to try for in forging their own identity and they end up just kind of wandering around aimlessly.

Pinkie Pie is the only one who really doesn’t fit in to a section of reality, and it causes the story to suffer a bit for it. This particular arc was going for fairly solid realism. No magic or monsters or anything like that. Therefore, when the occasional antic of Pinkie comes out such as narrating her own story, having tea with a ferret, or random confetti happens, it’s a bit out of place. Yet what’s most off about her is that she already knows what she wants to do with her life, which makes her actually more “mature” than the rest of the girls. She just doesn’t know how best to do it, and she ends up being the lynch pin for the group instead of Rainbow Dash (with a Sonic Rainboom) at the end.

The other thing that’s jarring is Sunflower and Babs Seed. Sunflower not so much as we don’t know anything about her character prior to this, but not only is moving Babs Seed to an older age than Applejack kind of odd, but it seems odd after trying to make her a sympathetic character (though still a bully) on the show they decided to make the human version of her just a pure rotten bully more or less. It was rather distracting to me on the first readthrough.

Yet those two points aside, on the second readthrough everything clicked a lot better. What we ended up with was something that was a logical “re-telling” of “The Cutie Mark Chronicles” for the human version, and what they gave was something that was a bit unique but also had the feel of that same episode. It might not have been quite as fanciful or poignant, but I’d saw the IDW writers still managed to put something together that expanded logically on the show in a new and intriguing way. Even the last page seems to be hinting at a way to draw Twilight Sparkle into it, indicating she too is part of their destiny.

At this point it’s been almost three years since IDW handled an Equestria Girls storyline (I can’t honestly blame them after the Christmas Special…but all in good time…), so it’s doubtful they’ll ever do one again. Yet for this storyline, I think it was definitely a winner.

Fun Facts:

This comic serves as the prequel to “My Little Pony: Equestria Girls”. When it was originally released, it contained an 8-page short originally published as an exclusive in the San Diego Comic Con version of Issue #9: “The Fall of Sunset Shimmer”, which also, naturally, served as a prequel.

The entire story is presented in the form of a single narrative being gleaned from interviews with the Humane Five. A similar motif would be used in Season Six’s “The Saddle Row Review”.

Human Rainbow Dash and Human Fluttershy are already friends from “Cloudsdale Junior High”, which serves as a parallel for how Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy became friends originally in Cloudsdale long before both relocated to Ponyville and met the others.

Although Babs Seed’s older sister was never named on the show, she was named Sunflower in the comic. Interestingly enough, she is the only character whose humanized appearance came before her pony appearance, as she would go on to appear in Friends Forever #9 and the main series Issue #32. In an even more bizarre twist, Babs Seed is older than Applejack in the human world.

The humanized gremlins are at Canterlot High School. I guess the gremlins are the IDW signature or something…

The team that Canterlot High plays against is the “Shadowbolts”. This was two full years before “Legend of Everfree” would create the Crystal Prep Shadowcolts, but one can overlook one letter and assume they’re the same team, making the Shadowcolts the first thing from the IDW Comic that became show canon.

Foreshadowing is made to “Equestria Girls” on the very last page, when the girls mentioned they felt they were destined to be friends before they even met: “And all it took was…a spark.”

Rating:

3.5 Stars out of 5

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Comic Arc #21 (IDW My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Issue #42): “A Pinkie Pie Story That Pinkie Pie Kinda Sorta Remembers”

Tags

A Pinkie Pie Story That Pinkie Pie Kinda Sorta Remembers, IDW, IDW comic, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, review

Synopsis:

Rarity is enjoying a normal day at work when Pinkie Pie bursts in, saying she is stuck with no idea of what gift to give a friend of hers. She has the idea for a storybook called “The Princess’ New Dress” but she doesn’t remember it. Rarity remembers the story as one of her favorites, but Sweetie Belle accidentally destroyed her copy years ago so she can’t give it to her. Instead, she suggests that Pinkie Pie make one herself to make it more special. Soon after seeing how crazy Pinkie Pie is being in her concepts and ideas, Rarity decides to help, and is soon being driven nearly crazy by Pinkie’s wildness, sense of humor, lack of focus, and practical insanity as she insists on doing the story in nonsensical and nearly meaningless ways. Yet in spite of all of that, she keeps her cool as she admires Pinkie’s nature and the story is completed as a unique creation. As soon as it’s done, however, Pinkie automatically presents it to Rarity; saying it was meant as a gift for the anniversary of when they met. Rarity is touched not only by the unique gift but the experience of making it, and the two head out to celebrate with “BFF smoothies”.

Review:

All in all, this story has much of the same feel as the previous arc, in which the storytelling format itself is a medium shift. This one is more similar to a real comic but, similar to how the plotline of the story goes, it’s more like how the comic would be run if Pinkie Pie was in charge of it.

Similar to the “Friends Forever” issue that featured Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie, this issue features Pinkie at some of her craziest and, very slightly, I think takes her just a little too far. Although on the show she is usually wacky and cartoony, she can and does focus. Here she seems almost like an uncontrollable child at points and incapable of concentrating on her task at hand or, at minimum, concentrating enough to focus on it enough to actually get it done halfway decently. It seems as if she never would have been able to stay working on it long enough to finish making the book if Rarity wasn’t there to constantly rein her in. That might have been the point, but…it’s a tad OOC. That or one of those times like in the series where Pinkie’s energy and wildness started to cross over into being thoughtless. Nevertheless, it’s not as bad as that “Friends Forever” issue, so it’s a bit easier to overlook.

Aside from that, however, it is a cute and very creatively told storyline. I do think the photoshopped bits could have been confined to being done just one time as they lost their novelty on the second and third appearances, but all in all I like the variety of art styles and depictions throughout the comic, and I like that this plot was a nice excuse to do them all. While there may not have been a big moral at the end of this one, the story is very cute none the less with Rarity finding out she was helping make her own gift the whole time. It wasn’t quite as enjoyable as the previous arc, but it was still a nice story, so I still rate it pretty high.

Fun Facts:

This has actually been going on for several issues, but every time the art style in the story imitates another artist’s art style, there’s a caption that reads “After ______”, where the blank is the artist’s name. I only really noticed it here.

Although the title “The One Where Pinkie Pie Knows” from Season Five was itself a knockoff of the titles of episodes of “Friends”, the title to this story seems to be a knockoff of that in turn.

One of the exclusive covers for this issue features a parody of the Fonz from “Happy Days” and his famous jumping the shark moment, the instance that gave the world the meme “Jumping the Shark”, which refers to when a show is out of ideas and resorts to something cheap and extreme to try and get more episodes out of it.

This story has a full “title panel” in movie format with numerous credits to Pinkie Pie. Everyone else, like Rarity, is listed as a “minor cameo appearance”. 😛

“The Princess’ New Dress” is a knockoff of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.

In the flashback when Sweetie Belle is practicing chemistry in Rarity’s old room, the book she’s reading is “How I Did It” by V. Frankenstein, an allusion to Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein”. Considering the decor of the room, it seems as if it took quite a while for Rarity to develop her taste in fashion. 🙂

Rarity’s depiction of the princess is her as an alicorn. It’s rather lovely.

When Rarity tells Pinkie “let’s get started”, she makes a fourth wall joke. “I thought we were already five pages in?” This is, naturally, the fifth page of the comic.

“A long, long time ago in a city far away” is a parody of the infamous starting line to the Star Wars films.

One of the books Pinkie Pie tries is “Crochet for the Thumb Deprived”…and leads to real life crocheted Pinkie and Rarity photoshopped into the story. O_O She ends up taping a real life paper horn and wings to make a princess. After that, she grabs boxes of clay-dough and ends up molding real life photoshopped clay Pinkie and Rarity. Finally, she glues real googly eyes onto real fruit.

I’m sure there’s some joke that artists would get about the giant portrait of Rarity, but…I don’t know much about art.

Pinkie Pie eats horn chips, not corn chips.

In one panel, Pinkie Pie is reading the comics “Tales from the Loft”, a parody of “Tales from the Crypt”, and “Heckcolt”, a parody of “Hellboy”. The next panel is done in the style of the latter.

Two pages of the comic are turned into a cut-out paper play for the reader to act out the last part of the story within the story. 🙂 The fake paper theater is called “Kazumi Theater”. (Kazumi Evans provides the singing voice for Rarity on MLP:FIM.) The mysterious fedora pony cameos here.

On page includes a parody of Chuck Jones’ art style for Looney Tunes, another “Peanuts” parody by Charles Schulz, and a generic anime “kawaii” style (no artist is listed for this one).

Rarity finally breaks the fourth wall and asks the audience for help, holding up a sign that reads “What color is the sky in her(Pinkie Pie’s) world?”

One page of the comic is devoted to one of the classic MAD Magazine fold-ins. It’s pretty clear what it makes even if you don’t fold it…but I’ll tell you the pumpkin and the ice cream cone become her tongue. 😛

Rating:

3.5 Stars out of 5

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Comic Arc #20 (IDW My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Issue #41): “Rainbow Dash and the Very Bad Day”

Tags

IDW, IDW comic, Little Golden Book, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, Rainbow Dash, Rainbow Dash and the Very Bad Day, review, Tank, Zecora

Synopsis:

This story is told in the format of a children’s story, with Zecora as the narrator. It tells of how Rainbow Dash got up early with her pet Tank to head out to the bookstore and grab part two of “Daring Do and the Treasure of Saddle Mare”, yet on the way out she flies right into a wall made of “brick clouds” and hurts herself, causing her to fly into a bad mood and vent her anger on the construction worker Plumb Bob. This, in turn, causes Plumb Bob to go into a bad mood and vent on somepony else, who does the same to another, and another after that, and so on…behavior that Zecora personifies as passing along the “Drearies”. On going into Ponyville Dash sees there’s already a huge line for the new book, causing her to unload more of her bad mood on her friends for not getting there sooner and getting them into bad moods as well, which in turn “pass the Drearies” onto everypony. Soon everyone is in a horrible mood, causing Zecora to break the fourth wall and intervene by shoving Tank out to Dash to try and get her to cheer up. Yet on running into her, she vents her fury on the tortoise, causing him to break down and cry. Realizing at last what she’s been doing, Dash apologizes to Tank and breaks out of her bad mood. She soon apologizes to the rest of the Mane Six, setting off a new chain reaction that causes everypony to apologize everypony else and end the bad moods. At the end of the story, Zecora cautions her audience to always be nice to others even if you don’t feel like it, as it’s not their fault you’re upset and it will only “pass along the Drearies”. Unfortunately, at the end, Plumb Bob is still angry.

Review:

Now this is a cute little arc, and with a nice little story.

This is one lesson that I feel fits in perfectly with the show, but it can only be “presented” well on paper, which makes the IDW Comic a perfect fit for it. Being able to tell the story in a child’s storybook motif is the best way to sell this kind of plot, which would be a bit awkward to do on the show proper, and it got nailed perfectly with the amazing and inventive artwork in this issue. Lots of allusions to other famous children’s books makes this issue both heartwarming and cute to the reader.

The lesson here is simplistic but applies to adults as well as children. Moods are infectious; whether they be good moods or bad moods. You can only go around taking out your bad attitude on other people so long before they get the same bad attitude you have, whereas if you’re nice and considerate to others 99 times out of 100 they’ll be nice and considerate right back to you–more so than they would have been normally. Besides that, it’s not fair to others to take out your feelings on them. They could have done it on the show, but…like I said, they would have had to go for something completely different in presentation. This interesting little way of telling it as a story within a story only could only be accomplished here, and that gives it some points in my favor for finding a unique way to have the IDW Comic enhance the MLP mythos besides just giving it a higher rating.

The one point that I can imagine people would hold against it was how Rainbow Dash was the main instigator and perpetrator of everything that happened. Some might think it makes her a jerk. As for me, well…I’ve unfortunately been in Rainbow Dash’s position before and I’m terribly proud of myself for it. It doesn’t excuse her behavior at all, and I’m not trying to do that. I’m just saying I sort of understand where she’s coming from. And the lesson rings true for me as well as her.

So all in all, as far as the one issue stories go, I think this is easily one of the best.

Fun Facts:

This entire comic is framed like a children’s story. The first page is a signature page, such as in the old “Little Golden Book” series. Being told in rhyme is an allusion to old Dr. Seuss stories. The title itself is a reference to “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.”

As the story is told in rhyme, Zecora is the narrator. 😛 However the characters in the story speak normally.

Every page of the comic is drawn in a different style, but Andy Price is the sole artist.

The panel with the bubble with “Patient Zero” includes Zecora and Tank emulating Charlie Brown and Linus from “Peanuts”, by Charles Schulz. As a result, he gets a credit on the panel.

When Rainbow Dash blows up at the sight of the line, Tank holds up an index card with the definition for “Enrage”, saying the definition is Rainbow Dash herself. 🙂

The bookstore is named “The Noble Barn”…a parody of “Barnes & Noble” bookstores.

Among new “horse named towns”, San Franciscolt, Chicoltgo, New Horseleans, and Horsolulu.

Shining Armor still RPs “Ogres & Oubliettes”.

Pinkie Pie wipes Tank’s tears with Rarity’s mane.

Maud Pie cameos in a panel. She named a rock: “Unless”. This is an allusion to “The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss.

In the big panel near the end, the Blues Brothers ponies from the very first issue make a return appearance, as does “Tom” from the Season Two premiere (XD), Flax Seed and Wheat Grass, Luna’s opposum, and the mysterious “Fedora Pony”. At the very bottom of the page, in the background, are the Marx Bros. ponies.

Zecora trips on the rhymes from time to time, at which point Spike interjects. To accent the problem, her own unique Daring Do book at the end is “Daring Do and the Lost Word that Rhymes with Orange”. 😛

The last text box in the story is an allusion to the cliffhangers of the old Batman TV series, complete with the infamous: “What’s this?!”

Rating:

4 Stars out of 5

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Comic Arc #19 (IDW My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Issue #40): (Untitled)

Tags

IDW, IDW comic, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, Princess Celestia, Professor Inkwell, review, Spike, Twilight Sparkle

Synopsis:

While Rainbow Dash is over at the Castle of Friendship looking to borrow the latest Daring Do book, she notices Twilight Sparkle is looking through a photo album she recently got sent by her parents. It includes pictures of her as a filly and baby Spike, and she ends up telling Rainbow, as well as the rest of the Mane Six who wander in during the course of the tale, the story of how they “met”:

Following the events of the first Sonic Rainboom, filly Twilight Sparkle is starting off at Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, but is met by Celestia on the very first day and given a surprising task: she asks her to help her take care of the the baby dragon she hatched for her entrance exam. Twilight’s first semester at the school is soon turned into a disaster, as Twilight’s natural worrying and obsessive-compulsive nature not only makes her schoolwork unbearably stressful, but she’s also taxed physically and mentally with taking care of the baby dragon. Her only outlet becomes talking to her Miss Smarty Pants doll as her “therapist”, but things come to a head at the Annual Royal Tea when Twilight is not only too afraid to sit with the students (being friendless) but also flips out when talking about her classwork to her parents, all before the dragon gets free and causes a mess. Unable to take anymore, Twilight screams at him as to why he can’t be more like Miss Smarty Pants. On hearing that. however, he tries to be helpful and say he can be like her doll by saying: “‘ike Suh Pah!’. On realizing the dragon is trying to make her feel better, Twilight realizes the real reason Celestia gave him to her was so that she’d have a friend and apologizes. Deciding to give him a name, she mentally rearranges his babbling to be “Suh Pah Ike”, and names him “Spike” before introducing her new friend to her parents.

Back in the Castle of Friendship, all of the clamor of the Mane Six woke Spike up, and Twilight offers to make him some cocoa with extra marshmallows (just the way he likes it) to get him back to sleep.

Review:

As I’ve said before, the backgrounds of the Mane Six represent largely virgin territory for the show to use for story material…or the comics, for that matter. About the only ones who have really been dug into are Applejack and (indirectly) Pinkie Pie. Twilight Sparkle has had a bit more done for her in “Amending Fences”, but to a large degree her background is still unknown…especially how Spike went from being the end result of an entrance exam to being her baby dragonservant and, until the show began, only friend.

The artists responsible for this arc are some of my favorite in the IDW series, as they manage to make things colorful and interesting to look at without going so far as to lose the feel of the original artwork of the characters. As for the story itself goes, though, it was an odd one. It almost seemed to be an allusion to the problems high school students or college students who end up having teen pregnancies experience when they try to finish school along with their children. That, or the old exercise they had us do back in school with the 5 lb sack of flour being carried around for a week to simulate caring for a child.

The main problem I had with this arc was that it seemed to be misplaced. I haven’t had any children of my own yet although my sisters have, and from what little experience I had tending to them I can imagine just how bad it would be to care for a baby 24/7, and how that could quite easily cause the rest of the problems filly Twilight encountered, including slipping in class and not having the opportunity to make friends. The problem is that there wasn’t a whole lot of emphasis on the fact what filly Twilight needed was a real friend, other than the fact she was trying to substitute an unfeeling toy for one. It seemed like Spike himself was the source of her trouble. As such, this whole arc feels more like an allegory about a teenage pregnancy learning to appreciate their new child rather than a story of forming a friendship between Twilight and Spike.

That said, I think it was a bit clever how they managed to not only work Miss Smarty Pants into this, but also got Spike’s name from it. I have to give the arc a bit more credit for that. And it’s really not a bad storyline. It’s just, like so many others, kind of average. It does have some good stuff with the art and the callbacks, and I can tell it’s trying to go for more heart like Princess Celestia’s Pony Tales arc was, but it just doesn’t seem to hit for me.

Fun Facts:

This arc is a continuation of Twilight Sparkle’s segment of “The Cutie Mark Chronicles”, all the way back in Season One.

On the two-page panel when filly Twilight Sparkle is arriving at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, filly Trixie Lulamoon is also out there, and one filly with her face away from the audience has Moondancer’s mane coloration. Both appear in later panels. The mothers of the arriving fillies are G1 My Little Pony characters.

Professor Inkwell, from Princess Celestia’s Pony Tales issue, is a minor character in this arc. The Annual Royal Tea, which was featured in that arc, is also featured here.

Rating:

2.5 Stars out of 5

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Comic Arc #18 (IDW My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Issue #38-39): “Don’t You Forget About Us”

Tags

Apple Bloom, CMCs, Cutie Mark Crusaders, Diamond Tiara, IDW, IDW comic, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, review, Scootaloo, Silver Spoon, Snails, Snips, Sweetie Belle

Synopsis:

Ms. Cheerilee is taking her class on a bird-watching field trip to the Foal Mountains with Applejack and Rarity acting as chaperones. While nearing the end of their checklist, she mentions that any student who manages to spot an extremely rare bird called a Turul will get no homework for a week as a reward; getting everyone to eagerly look for one. When the CMCs think they spot one, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon immediately try to close in on it, hoping to get the reward first, and Snips and Snails follow after out of sheer curiosity. As a result, the entire group ends up getting lost. Diamond initially tries leading the way back herself, but doesn’t know the way and gets the group more off track. Apple Bloom suggests they stay in one place until the others find them, but their yelling attracts a bear, and by the time they manage to evade it they’re more lost than before. Sweetie Belle, Snips, and Snails try using their combination of weak magic to send a signal flare, but it fails, and Scootaloo (obviously) proves unable to fly to higher ground for a vantage point. The group begins arguing with each other, with Apple Bloom pointing out Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon have done nothing to help the situation and are still concerned with mocking the “blank flanks”, and end up climbing up higher to try to get to a higher vantage point. Everyone but Diamond ends up following, yet in the end, out of fear of being abandoned, Diamond runs after them only to trip and nearly fall off the mountain. Apple Bloom goes to help only to fall as well, leaving them both dangling over the side.

By reluctantly working together, the others manage to get a tree branch lowered to rescue Diamond Tiara and Apple Bloom, and continue to hike up the hill. They get caught in a downpour heading up and nearly get in an argument again, until both Diamond and Apple Bloom admit to one another they don’t know what to do now. They finally reach the top but don’t see anyone, and after shouting for help only nearly gets them buried in an avalanche, they end up taking refuge in a cave Diamond Tiara checks out for them. Snips and Snails end up having enough magic talent to build a fire, but when they talk about rationing food they start arguing again; resulting in everyone talking about their respective pressures. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon admit they’ve always been told by their families that they’re better than everyone else and feel pressure to live up to that; the CMCs admit they feel inadequate trying to live up to the example set by their “older sister” figures; and Snips and Snails admit they hate always being thought of being the “village idiots”. Although they argue again soon enough, the group shares a few moments of mutual understanding. The next day, both Apple Bloom and Diamond Tiara go out to look for signs of anyone, and end up spotting the Turul, who cries out and then flies away. The others wake up and ask them what they saw but decide, so that neither one will get the credit, to claim they saw nothing. Soon after, Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, and the Wonderbolts arrive to affect a rescue. The CMCs believe they all learned to appreciate each other better and think this is a chance to turn over their relationship…only to find Snips and Snails are nonchalant about the whole thing and Diamond Tiara tries to take credit for seeing the Turul as soon as she’s back to Ms. Cheerilee. They end up wondering if they’ll get their Cutie Marks for patience.

Review:

The worst part of this entire arc is the timing, and illustrates the danger that IDW has inherited in trying to run comics on series that are currently in circulation. Comic books take considerable time and effort to bring from conception to publication, and the length of time between the plotline idea and actual release can be considerable. Even worse in that IDW’s deal with Hasbro/DHX Media only allowed them to get general feedback on whether or not storylines they envisioned were something the writers were currently considering for a plotline. Although Hasbro/DHX Media and IDW have tightened their relationship in recent years, working closely hand-in-hand on the “Legends of Magic” to have concurrent releases both on the comic stand as well as on the show itself, for now the lag really killed this plotline. “Crusaders of the Lost Mark” had aired almost four months prior to this arc being released, and while a lot of the events of this two-issue arc are somewhat canon with events on the show, the truth is it still portrays Diamond Tiara in a slightly more negative light than she deserved: having some of her character traits be out of genuine flaws rather than being cowed and impressed on by her mother.

On the second reading, it’s not really as bad as I thought, although the mere fact “Crusaders of the Lost Mark” had already come out makes it hard to see Diamond Tiara in a negative light considering how much she changed. And it does allow Snips and Snails a chance to expand on them a bit more, as they had gone so largely untouched in the series that occasionally the writers seem to forget they’re foals (such as in bits with Trixie or when Snails joined the Hoofball team in Season Six). And it was honestly a nice bit where the CMCs ended up having to work with Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon and they learned they both feel pressure to live up to standards imposed on them.

What ruins it to me is that the story is forced to obey the “Elastic Principle”, which I pointed out in my trope suggestions. At the end, the CMCs and Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon have to be the roles of victims and bullies again, with no real ground having been gained. That was an inherit difficulty of this entire arc as the IDW Comic is forced to obey that principle to not violate show canon, but it was made much worse by the fact they could have let it slide if they had foreknowledge of “Crusaders of the Lost Mark”. Aside from that, while there is a bit of good drama in this, there’s a bit too much. While there’s a few jokes here and there, it fails to have a lot of the entertainment value in terms of wackiness or zaniness. It’s very dialogue intensive and survival drama. Most of the humorous interest comes from panels with unique art style, which is nice but not really entertaining.

In conclusion, if you take “Crusaders of the Lost Mark” into account, this arc really falls flat. If you ignore it and take it in and of itself, it’s…alright, but still hampered by needing to be back where they started at the end and not really leading to any growth of anyone. As such, I can only rate it as average.

Fun Facts:

While most of the IDW Comic manages to keep up with the show pretty well, this issue was, by far, the worst timed of the entire series. The first issue was published in January 2016, while “Crusaders of the Lost Mark” had aired in October of 2015.

The title of this arc is a knockoff of “Don’t You Forget About Me” which gained notoriety for being the ending song to “The Breakfast Club”. Like this arc, its plotline involves classmates from different backgrounds and “cliques” coming to understand each other.

The scene where the group is hiding from the bear while it’s trying to sniff them out might possibly be an allusion to a similar scene in “The Fellowship of the Ring” where the hobbits are hiding from the Nazgul.

After the snow falls on the group, Apple Bloom has a “snow hat and beard” similar to Gandalf the Grey in another Lord of the Rings allusion.

Rating:

2.5 Stars out of 5