IDW Comics Review: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #49 & Friends Forever #35 · 11:19am Jan 12th, 2017
Oh bother. It's Trauncles Comics.
Friendship is Magic #49
This issue has a singularly amusing cover.
We're continuing the "Accord" storyline in this issue. For those of you who don't remember, Discord has become the order-obsessed Accord, and has hypnotized every pony at Canterlot Palace except the Princesses, the Mane Six, and that other unicorn into obedient slaves. In order to save Equestria from Accord, Twilight and Luna are going into his mind while Celestia and the others evacuate Canterlot.
The inside of Accord's mind is a maze of bureaucracy and cubicles. While Twilight and Luna try to navigate it without the use of their wings, Celestia and the others discover that all of Canterlot is already under Accord's control.
The Canterlot scene may truly horrify younger readers, but for those of us who've been around the block a bit? It's a blatant ripoff of both the Borg AND the Master (remember his scheme in "The End of Time", when he literally became every human being on Earth? Yeah, they did that.)
Eh, it's still kinda freaky even knowing what they ripped off.
Anyway, Accord tries a "we should be allies" speech on Celestia, claiming that Celestia and Luna seek to control Equestria just like he does, and this doesn't set well with Celestia at all.
In Accord's mind, Twilight hits upon the bright idea to find some remnant of Discord within the order, and immediately does so, finding Discord trapped in a snowglobe. She breaks the snowglobe and she and Luna are sucked into its winter landscape, where they find a weak and barely alive Discord. Twilight asks Discord what happened and how he got changed into Accord, and Discord says he caused this himself. After the ponies chewed him out at the thing with the conjunction, he got depressed and realized he was never going to fit in as a lord of chaos, so he decided to reinvent himself as the Lord of Order. Twilight apologizes for making him feel awful and tells him that he can change back and stop Accord, but it isn't that simple--Accord has taken over, and Accord is the one who needs to be convinced to change. But before they can make the attempt, they get Accorded. And the issue ends with Accorded Twilight and Luna finding Celestia and the Mane Six, and the latter being upset at this turn of events.
Yes, there's going to be at least one more issue of this storyline.
Gonna be honest, the biggest problem with this issue is too many sad/freaked-out pony reaction faces. It's like the only faces Celestia and the Mane Six can make are either sad or terrified. There's no determination, anger, etc. to be found, or at least not in sufficient quantities for these characters. Just a lot of Attack on Titan faces.
Things to watch for/visual gags:
- One of the Accord cubicles has a Star Trek (TOS) style PADD and stylus--you know, the thing Kirk wrote his logs/reports on and pretty much the thing the iPad and its ilk are based on (well, the thing that predated the thing they're based on, anyway).
- The snowglobe containing the true Discord has a sled with "Rosebud" on it.
Friends Forever #35
GODDAMMIT, FOSGITT, WHY DO YOU STILL FUNCTION?! 
So we've got a Twilight/Starlight issue with Fosgitt's encephaloponies. And a pretty thin, pathetic plot setup that reads like bad fanfiction. Twilight is planning to booksortcation at the old castle and pick some volumes to send to Celestia as a present (giving her HER OWN BOOKS as a present? Uhh...OK), and drags Starlight and Spike along. The castle is dustier than it was last time Twilight was there, and it turns out there are some malevolent, mischievous kudzu spraying dust all over the place and making everypony sneeze.
So that's basically the entire plot of this issue: Twilight, Starlight, and Spike being pestered by allergy vines.
Yeah...I'm not even bothering with this one.
Oh God. No. No, no, no. Please tell me they didn't.
Are they honestly trying to put the blame on the ponies not being "accepting" enough? For real?
If, by the end of the comic, somepony didn't mention they were annoyed because Discord was being a friggin' jerk, I'm going to flip a table.
4380082 What I find insulting is that Discord turned himself into Accord, but for some reason he can't change himself back. That makes absolutely no sense from a narrative stand point, if the Accord change was Discord's own doing then there should no reason why he doesn't still have some control over his mind and the ability to change back. At least if the comet was responsible for the change, it would make sense. I think this comic arc suffers from a lack of planning, they just threw together a story after thinking "What would Discord's polar opposite be?" and that was it. At least "Ponies of Dark Water" could've been great if it had given four or heck even five parts instead of a two parter parodying Trump v.s. Hillary that NO ONE wanted!
Okay, I admit I don't read the comics and Moth's comments certainly don't make me want to, but are the comics intended for a more mature audience cause that Discord story sounds like it would be too much for the show if they did an episode.
4380313 I think the comics are largely geared toward the intermediate audience.
4380401
What's that?
4380499 Older kids and bronies :P
I've been thinking: Maybe we should start saying nice things about Dave Fogsitt. Half the tumblr ask blogs I follow do a better job artistically than he does, so it's got to be that Fogsitt is working practically for free that they keep him on. But if a bunch of fans start saying Fogsitt is actually a good artist, maybe some poor fool will hire him away from MLP comics. I know this sounds crazy, but we just got rid of Polsky, so anything can happen, right?
4380729
You could even start by getting his name right!
But yeah, the problem is Fosgitt needs to go back to doing his own stuff, that his art style is actually suited for, and stop working for IDW.
4380738 Ooops.
It's too bad they're not doing an active Tiny Toons comic, he'd be fantastic at that.
4380738 Crap, just looked on his personal web page to find other projects he was working on to try and support them so they will need Fosgitt full time, and it says he did the interior art for MLP #50 & #54.
4380289
Well, that doesn't bother me that much. It's the standard "surrender your mind" plot, nothing wrong with that. Much like what Luna did to turn to Nightmare Moon, unless you count the comic's Nightmare Forces. So yeah, the "polar opposite" idea is actually kind of neat.
What I was afraid of from the start was that the story would go on to paint the ponies as in the wrong for not enjoying Discord's egotistic, asshole antics. That they were wrong for asking him to please, please not do that for once. It was stated that the cosmic convergence conjunction they were out to watch was a literal one-in-a-lifetime opportunity—and Discord tried to ruin it anyway.
It sounds like the comic is pushing a message of "it's okay to be an asshole to everybody around you, they need to suck it up cause it's your nature to be one". I hate that. It's like those stories where Spike does horrible things but since "he's a dragon, he can't help it" all the ponies have to smile and nod and bend over for him. Sometimes literally. Heaven forbid somepony ever speak up about their right not to be mistreated.
Is that first one the one where Celestia makes that WAT face? Seriously, that comes entirely outta nowhere.
4381787 Yes. Yes it is.