Written By: Christina Rice
Art By: Agnes Garbowska
Published By: IDW
So in typical My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fashion, we start with a strong first issue and end with a disappointment—this one bigger than the norm. I’m getting really tired of writing these kinds of reviews.
I quite enjoyed MLP:FiM #55, which played with Equestrian lore and handled the characters quite well (especially Rainbow Dash and Spitfire). It wasn’t perfect, but it was fun, and as far as integrating season 7 into the comic book world goes, it worked. The Yaks can be well written! Who knew? #56 continues with this trend, answering our mystery with a bit of season 7 plotting. I won’t spoil the actual answer, but it’s…well, not good.
To be honest, it’s pretty stupid.
It’s also rushed, anticlimactic, and all around not executed very well. Or typical MLP:FiM comic book writing.
But perhaps the biggest disappointment is the focal shift away from the cast and onto Spike. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Spike. He’s the best character in the whole damn show when he’s written well, but #55 did such a good job handling an ensemble cast that reducing this down to one character having one conversation is a major step back.
To this book’s credit, Spike is written well. There’s a stab at commenting on prejudice using him and dragons as the focal point, and I guess it sort of works. Ponies fighting dragons, ponies have a dragon on their team, yadda yadda yadda. I can dig it. The problem is, I’d say half the cast are operating under a pretty serious lapse of logic—you’re telling me Twilight can’t force a conversation with Ember? She’s a goddamned princess.
Her and Starlight Glimmer literally tore the fabric of time and space apart in season five. I think they can handle freezing a few dragons for a few minutes to go, “Hey what the hell, man?”
It should also be noted that this stab at talking prejudice was done in a Friends Forever issue a few years ago, and I think it was handled a bit better. The stakes were smaller (not all out war), and Spike got to be a bit more naive. It was a slice-of-life story gone awry. #56 feels unnatural in comparison.
The other problem is with the art. The ponies are all drawn and colored well, but the dragons all look pretty bad. Ember looks flat half the time, and the other half she’s either awkward or bland. Her companies don’t fare much better. Even Spike suffers from some bad paneling, and he’s a main character. Given that this is a very dragon-heavy issue, it’s a problem.
To end where we began, in typical MLP:FiM fashion, we’ve ended on a sour note, and in typical MLP:FiM fashion, that needn’t be the case were this a three or four issue arc instead of two. Nuance and logic go out the window when you only have 22 pages to solve a war.
