Comic Review - Main Series #39 · 2:46pm Feb 17th, 2016
Let the adventure continue!
We pick up where we left off, Diamond Tiara and Apple Bloom hanging from a cliff on a branch too low on the cliffwall to reach. Silver Spoon sees a branch long enough to reach them and tells Scootaloo to fly and get it, and she has to or they'll die. The unicorns suggest using their magic to life somepony up to get it, and even in the face of death, Diamond Tiara is snooty. With Scootaloo given a head start by standing on Silver Spoon's back, the three unicorns lift Scootaloo up to the branch. They stick it down and Diamond Tiara bites into it, and she and Apple Bloom are pulled up. Exhausted and relieved, the seven ponies lie on the ground for a bit.
Until lightning strikes and it starts raining. As you do. Apple Bloom tells them they have to get to higher ground for better chances of being found, and they trek up the mountain. Also in an odd miscolor here, Silver Spoon is dark purple, like Rarity's mane-color purple. Weird. As they climb, Diamond Tiara protests, and Apple Bloom admits she doesn't have any better ideas; DT admits the same. The rain stops and the ground sees a rainbow... colored yellow, orange, red, purple, blue, green. I don't see Heather Breckel's name on this issue, so I pin the blame on artist Agnes Garbowska. Snips and Snails holler for help and some snow falls on them. Apple Bloom tells them they need to find shelter for the night and they head on.
The seven find a cave, and while some are hesitant, Apple Bloom points out they can't camp out on a ledge. Diamond Tiara heads inside and tells them it's fine. And in what I think is a deliberate joke, DT's expression in the cave looks just like Grumpy Cat. Apple Bloom makes a firepit to start a fire, but admits she doesn't know how. DT insults her some more, but Snips and Snails come to the rescue (now THAT's a sentence I never thought I'd say seriously) by setting the wood on fire with their magic, which they do know how to do. The group now pools their food for the night, but Diamond Tiara refuses to share her food with Snips and Snails, or to eat their snacks.
Apple Bloom intervenes and demands to know what DT and SS are always acting like they're better than them. "Because we are!" Silver explains that they come from the two richest families in Ponyville, and they represent those families every day. There's a lot of expectations placed on them. Given the lead time for comics to be written, drawn, and inked before they hit stands, I'm very curious now when this comic was conceived compared to "Crusaders of the Lost Mark," if it predates it or not. The CMC point out their sisters are heroes of Equestria, not to mention they're respectively hard-working third-generation farmers, an ambitious fashion designer, and an aspiring Wonderbolt. They have high expectations too. "Who knew ponies without tons of money had problems?" "Gee, thanks, Diamond Tiara. Your sympathy is touching."
Snips and Snails speak up to remind the two groups how they're always treated like the dumbest ponies in town, but they have feelings, too. What did they ever do to anyone? They remind the two about the ursa minor incident, and they own up to it, and everyone has a good laugh. DT and SS are still gonna head off alone, but it's too dark and an eerie howl scares them back inside. The group sleeps together, and in the morning Apple Bloom goes outside to see Diamond Tiara watching the sunrise. The two see something on the horizon and in a two-page spread I can't view properly because of the PDF format of this comic, they see the Turel, a gigantic eagle with a crown on its head. It caws and flies off.
The rest of the group comes out, and the calvary is here - Rainbow Dash, Twilight, Fluttershy, the main three Wonderbolts, and... Bulk Biceps? That's a very odd choice for a cameo, why not just a fourth Wonderbolt, or even Derpy? They fly back to Ponyville, and the CMC reflect maybe they've reached an understanding with Diamond Tiara... cut to her being her as she rants to Filthy Rich and Cheerilee. Snips and Snails likewise say they're not gonna hang out or anything, and the comic ends with them slapping on sunglasses to head off.
This issue isn't bad. Not great, but decent.
Once again the major problem here is pacing, very little happens and a lot of panels are big but empty. We don't need three page-wide panels of them walking up a slope when only two of them are talking, we'll take your word for it that they're all there. The two page splash for the Turel is fine, though. Beyond the pacing problems, the comic gives us character depth and growth that ties in very well to Crusaders of the Lost Mark, some of the art is funny to look at, and it's overall a neat little adventure.
Really, this story should have been compressed into one issue and tossed into Friends Forever, while the Rainbow Dash and Twilight issue from yesterday got expanded into a two-parter. But, oh well. Both are still a step up from Siege of the Crystal Empire.
The cover and that one weird-ass panel with Silver Spoon sleeping on her BACK on top of the pony pile were the best parts of this issue.
This comic really missed an opportunity to foreshadow Diamond Tiara's redemption in "Crusaders of The Lost Mark". They also kind of lied in the descriptions used to promote these comics, they made it sound like Diamond Tiara was going to be the one to unexpectedly do something to save the day, but she didn't do anything other than complain and belittle others. Silver Spoon was the one who got any sort of development here, as did Snips and Snails surprisingly.
3760399 I dunno, I think Grumpy Tiara was pretty funny too.
3760409 I agree about the lying thing in the description, they did that with Siege too, in #37 they said "tough decisions" had to be made but I saw none, so IDW is relying on false advertising.
3766811 I sure hope that's not a trend. Next month is a one-shot focusing on a young Twilight raising Spike, and if they screw that up, there's no hope for them.
3767673 Me too. I'm not reading that (Ted Anderson's writing it, but that's not why) because I feel it'll come off as a badly written fanfic if not handled correctly like Seige and The Good, the Bad, and the Ponies...
3768286 Oh no! Ted Anderson?! Why oh why did they have to pick him, he should've been fired after the disastorus holiday special in 2014.
3769462 Yeah, it's him. I luckily never read that holiday special, but I've heard how he included that infamous "Dicks and Dragons" bitch as an OC in one of his comics. Shame; I was planning to read the Pinkie micro but I may not now...how bad was that holiday special? You can spoil if you want, I don't care.
I think Jay Fosgitt should also be fired too (he's doing FF #28 along with Whitley, and considering Whitley's recent trainwreck, IMO it's going to be pretty much like taking a cyanide pill mixed with rat poison...
) he is one of the shittiest MLP artists I've ever seen, and I just have to laugh at how that whole Clipart thing happened!! 
I think I've seen your comments on EQD though, and I agree, Hasbro should just terminate the partnership with IDW. I've found out Katie Cook is writing #41 and #42 with Price doing the art, but the former just looks generic with Rainbow being grumpy and it affects everypony else. Oh gee, how original and exciting. IMO Care Bears (I'm also a Care Bears fan besides MLP) did that better with the episode Last Laugh. #42 we're going to see what happens in Pinkie's head, but then again, bad fanfiction alert (I love how the tags on EQD ironically claim it's "not-fanfiction"/"official"
)...
But I also heard that Katie Cook actually wrote something insulting and mocked readers, something to do with the Reflections arc...that actually sounds really unprofessional and uncalled for!
Then again IMO the MLP comic series should have ended at Reflections looking back on it...
3770133 You can find reviews of the holiday special just about anywhere, it's that bad. Fosgitt claims when he was hired he didn't know anything about the show, which sounds fishy to me considering we live in the era of the internet, if you don't know about something you can easily LOOK IT UP! And that only excuses his first comic, not all of his subsequent ones, he's gotten so lazy that he actually didn't bother to look up the models for characters for Friends Forever #24, and the writer of said comic actually complained about it. It's fine having your own art style, but sometimes you have to face facts and realize what you're doing isn't very good. Why stick to your guns if almost everyone hates what you're doing?
3770171 Yeah, I've heard about the whole thing with FF #24 and how lazy Fosgitt was, he even screwed up Georgia Ball's name on the cover...
I feel so bad for Georgia and hope she's doing well now.
I'd say Fosgitt was just cut corners whenever he could. This probably suits what he's doing working with the comics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjWq2Yrfz0I
Even Thom Zahler never did anything like this, and his artwork for Twilight's Micro sucked! I could even draw better (and I drew my profile pic even!)...I'll check up a review for the holiday special now to see...
3770171 One other thing I wanna say is, I'm conflicted about the whole comic canon thingy and whether they're canon to the show or not. Some say they are, some not. What do you think? I heard that they were as in a secondary canon like the chapter books (I've also heard what Jim Miller said too), and sadly Hasbro isn't using Sombra again, they told Whitley that, that's why he got his shitty redemption in Siege...
Me, I can't see #25-37 as canon at all...it would be frustrating to see them as canon.
3795189 Yeah, that's what I think. The comics are canon, as long as they don't contridict show events. But if they're really bad, I like to just consider that they didn't happen and ignore them.
3795205 Me too; IMO #25-37 are not canon to the show at all (maybe that's what secondary canon means in a way, you don't have to consider them canon if you don't want to). Me, I only could see #1-4, 13-14 (dunno about 15-20) as canon.