https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dezzyozBtWo
What are yours guys thought on King Sombra Origin comic

4229178 It feels very much like a Shakespearean tragedy, and I sure hope that little bit at the end isn't just a red herring. The writers had better have plans for Sombra at some point in the future.

The only nitpick might be Cadence's lack of sympathy towards Sombra, even after she read his diary. Unless she's the daughter of Princess Amore it seems like a bit of a stretch for her to hold a grudge against Sombra for what he did in the past.

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For a supposed children's comic, this was surprisingly dark, and how in the name of Celestia did the writer get away with Sombra murdering a princess!?

He shall return! Long Live the King!
I hope someone does a fanfic on this and his relationship with Radiant Hope if/when he returns.

4229200 Murder would imply she cannot be ressurcted in any way, shape, or form. She's still likely alive, but she would need someone to reassemble her staute pieces and know the spell to free her from her binding. As such, it is highly unlikely she will ever return.

4229178 Mostly a good read, and very tragic, but his transformation into evil at the end felt a little rushed in my opinion. Sure he still held onto a little of himself after meeting his 'mother' (I don't understand how that works, the Crystals are sentient?), but he seemed a little too eager all the same to slide down the slippery slope. Elements of both the Lich King and Darth Vader come to mind with this comic, its clear the writers took inspiration from one or both sources, if not more. There are thousands of stories of heroes turning bad throughout history and mythology.
I think if the comic is ever given a dramatic reading, might anyone consider using some of this music? I know its obvious but still, I think its fitting.

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Here's my rather extensive blog post on the topic:

"A Comparison of FIENDship Is Magic # 1, 'Sombra Rex', and the Story Arc of My Sombra."

and here's the text:

Introduction

I just read IDW Comics' FIENDSHIP is Magic # 1, "Sombra Rex,"

which is of some interest to me because it tells IDW's version of the story of King Sombra. Here are my thoughts on the matter.

I. The Comic Book

Aww ... they played The Princess Game (though, at least some of the time with Radiant Hope as the rescuer)! Why is it such a terribly-effective ironic technique to show the future villain fantasizing about becoming a hero ...?

Adult-Discord watched the children growing older, their play becoming more complex.

He remembered how Celly had invented the Princess Game, which became their favorite. Celly would be the Princess and she would send Lulu and Dissy on quests to slay monsters. Lulu always wanted to be her big sister's War-Leader, and Dissy would sometimes be a brave Knight who was her Companion, and sometimes the Monster Lulu had to slay. Celly didn't care which Dissy was, but Lulu really liked it when Dissy was her Knight-Companion. Sometimes they got Spike into the game, to be either a Knight-Companion or Monster.

Celly was always good at looking beautiful and regal, making a very convincing Princess, whether she was sitting on some chair she had pressed into the role of her throne, or being the captive of the Monster. She would always be very cunning and crafty, and sometimes she would escape the Monster by trickery before Lulu and her Companions could get there. One time when Dissy and Spike were both playing Monsters, she tricked them into fighting each other and escaped while they were arguing.

They talked about what they wanted to do with their lives. As young fillies and a colt, their ambitions were of course exactly like the games they played.

Celly, of course, wanted to be a Princess. "I'll rule the land wisely and fairly and bring justice to all and I'll be really beautiful and everypony will love me!" she explained. And Dissy and Lulu could see no flaw with this plan.

"I'll be the War-Leader, fearsome to the foe but beloved by my friends, commander of the war-host, who will defend your realm and keep our Ponies safe from the Monsters!" Lulu declared, a fierce light shining in her innocent blue eyes.

"And I'll be the brave Knight, who fights with honor against the Monsters and wins the day for my Princess!" said Dissy.

Very similar concept, and tragically-ironic since in the end Celestia and Luna would fight against Discord, who became the Monster for real. Likewise, Radiant Hope does not rescue Sombra from a tower in which he has been placed by a Dragon; instead, Cadance (who in some ways is probably descended from a fusion of Hope and Amore's life forces) will rescue Spike the Dragon from the Tower in which he has become trapped by Sombra.

"Ha! A dragon could never defeat me!" Sorry, little Sombra, a dragon will. As will Princess Amore, in another form. In fact, in true Tolkienian fashin, neither will alone -- it will take the combined efforts of Spike and Cadance (obviously a reborn Amore) to defeat you.

And the extremely dark irony of Princess Amore, believing she's telling them something beautiful by telling them that the visions are what are in their heart ... without realizing what sort of vision little Sombra just had. The panel contrasting Hope and Sombra's subsequent reactions, with Hope utterly unaware of what Sombra's feeling, is horrific because it speaks of his emotional isolation -- and he's just a kid.

The way they use Sombra's repeatedly being hurt (withut realizing the cause) by the Crystal Heart's radiation every Crystal Faire as a coming-of-age montage, with Hope loyally by his side (I notice that in both my story and this one,, Sombra gets a faithful female companion -- the Lady Tourmaline in my version -- whom he is destined to betray by the emergence of his evil nature).

In my terms, this Sombra isn't really a Pony at all, any more than my Celestia and Luna (modeled on Alex Warlorn's) are fundamentally Ponies. But while they are Incarnations of the Cosmic Concepts that maintain the life this Universe, this Sombra would be an Incarnation of a Greater Night Shadow, the demonic anti-Concepts that maintain the false-entropic-maximum anti-life of the Shadowverse. And ... like Celestia and Luna and Discord, raised as a Pony. And, like my Discord, overwhelmed at adulthood when his true nature emerged. Then, he falls down past his Moral Event Horizon when he petrifies and shatters Princess Amore, when she was trying to help him, and does so right in front of Radiant Hope, thus forever alienating the one Pony he truly loved.

This is astonishingly dark for the comic book, and makes me hopeful that the series will take its villains seriously.

II. Crimson Quartz's Corruption

Of course, this is a simpler trajectory than I gave my Sombra. My Sombra -- Crimson Quartz -- was an insider who was alienated by suffering, rather than an infiltrator from outside. Crimson Quartz was a noble and idealistic Prince of the Crystal Empire, who sought to restore the glories both of the Old Empire and beyond that of the Age of Wonders itself, who was driven to madness and cruelty by horrible events, until he in despair and hatred invited in a Night Shadow, and became Sombra. Which makes this more an internal character development and less something imposed by a destiny of birth.

What happened to Tourmaline was an example of how Undying Loyalty, to the wrong Pony, can be a very bad thing. But then, he was a very good Pony once; really, quite similar to the Good!Sombra shown in the Reflections arc in terms of his general character. Which is why Luna was attracted to him too. The way Crimson Quartz, as Sombra, drove Luna mad would be far too dark to show in comics. Even after his destruction, his influence reached out, both through horrible memoris and through his work, the Codex of Shades, to turn Luna to her own Nightmare.

I use Sombra very much as a legacy of evil in my stories. Not only does the Codex of Shades corrupt Luna, but a thousand years later has a similar effect on the filly Cloud Kicker, and is the original source of the various grimoires used by the warlocks of the Shadow Cult, including the Nightstallion of Manehattan who becomes Trixie's arch-nemesis. And, because Crimson Quartz's ultimate enchantment was a personality backup spell, he's left dormant copies of himself scattered in various artifacts (most notably the Alicorn Amulet), ready to overwrite the personality of a victim powerful enough to contain him but weak enough to be overcome by his para-electronic ghost. Like Tirek, though for different reasons, he's an Undying force for evil.

The really tragic thing is that Crimson Quartz could have become an Undying force for good. He was trying to bring back the science of the Age of Wonders, a millennium and more before Equestria actually regained the heights from which their ancestors had fallen. And he was trying to combine this with the magics and nano-technologies of the Crystal Empire. Had he succeeded, the goal of the vanished Ponies of Paradise Estate -- still being fought for by Celestia and Luna -- would have been accomplished. When the Night Shadows finally did break through to attack Ponykind, they would have been met by a confident, united planet, one which had already passed through its energy and informational Singularities and begun building an interstellar empire, rather than a world still in the midst of its Industrial Revolution.

The IDW Sombra is also interesting, though his character arc is different. He begins inherently evil, but innocent, so that the mentorship of Chestnut Falls and the friendship of Radiant Hope turn him toward the Light. Sombra becomes a good colt and a decent young stallion. But the legacy of his true origin as a Shadow, coupled with the remembered cruelties of other Ponies, cause him to transform into a force of Darkness. He still has the power of free will, the power of choice -- but what he decides is that fear is stronger than love, and that all should fear him.

This is, actually, the exact same conclusion to which comes my Crimson Quartz, only he approaches it from the perspective of a very idealistic Pony who has had his dreams shattered -- first by his evil brother Morion and then by his decent but incompetent brother Aventurine. Crimson decides that in the decadent, amoral and hopeless environment of the Late Empire (at least among the aristocracy) good cannot triumph, and that only by forcing others to obey him can he achieve his ends. So that's what he does, becoming the increasingly-tyrannical King Sombra.

The irony is that Morion maims Crimson and abuses Tourmaline; Crimson and Tourmaline together manage to slay Morion, but in the end it is Morion's cruelty that triumphs, within the now-corrupted soul of Crimson Quartz. Sombra abandons Crimson's idealism, and eventually almost every shred of his original decency. His evil spreads to those who love him -- Tourmaline's loyalty to him leads her to do foul deeds in his service, and Luna is driven mad in part due to the failure of the hopes she had placed in him.

Crimson's fall into Shadow leads to the ultimate failure of all his ends. He is destroyed, and in his last act drags the Crystal City with him down to Limbo, to be lost for a thousand years. He destroys the empire he meant to restore. sets back the technological revolution he meant to accomplish, blights the life of the Pony he loved most (Tourmaline) and mars the sanity and soul of the being of power who most believed in him (Princess Luna).

And yet, in indirect ways, he achieves much good in the end. Driving his sister Princess Iolite into exile, she spreads the Cult of Paradise into Equestria, where a thousand years later it will result in the birth of the three eldest Pie Sisters (Maud, Claire and Pinkie), Daughters of Paradise who will each play key roles in saving the Earth from the Night Shadows. His scientific and sorcerous achievements will be rediscovered after the return of the Crimson Empire (one of the medical devices he invented saves the life of a badly-wounded Rainbow Dash after Windvane's Rebellion, and contributes to the Ascension of both Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy). And, ironically, by plunging the Crystal City into limbo for over a thousand years, he preserves its culture intact to be passed on to Equestria during and after the Shadow Wars, so that the Crystal-Imperial civilization succeeds in attaining the stars. In a sense, Crimson achieves all his most idealistic ends -- at the price of the destruction of himself and everypony he loved.

Conclusion

Much as the existence of the IDW story josses my concept of Crimson Quartz and the Late Empire (which I don't think I'll change, though, as I like it and have integrated it into some of my other stories), I thought that this was a really excellent story, about as dark as the comic book could get away with, and well worth reading. I urge everyone else to read it as well.

I think this song can perfectly sum up this story.

Long live King Sombra!

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Sombrero has once again made its way to the front stage.

Some

Aaaaand the gender role reversal games also continue.

Aaaaand the unicorn master race theory continues.

Aaaaand the cutie mark crusaders will eat their hearts out when they see how long you can go without a cutie mark.

Plot confusion. Why wear this black cloak when on his way to the Crystal Heart post-darkness when it is literally the most suspicious thing he could have done. Like, really?

But dem puns. And how they would come back to haunt him in the future.

The story mildly reminds me of a Tale of Two Shadows. Mildly. The power to heal any ailment is kind of OP though in my opinion, even by FiM standards.

Overall, I can't say I am disapointed by it. This means that there is a slight chance that he might come back in the comic verse (one of them anyways) in a more present continuum. Though I still don't get why they call it the Crystal Empire when there is like, only one city in the entire "Empire". Seriously, they are mildly considered Equestrian turf even in the comics if you consider the Crystal Faire being the bigget event in all Equestria.

Something tells me that these ponies don't know how to name their stuff. Calling their empire kingdoms and their city-states empires. It's madness I tell you all!

Aaaaand the cutie mark crusaders will eat their hearts out when they see how long you can go without a cutie mark.

Imagin the fanfic

4229178 I'm all for fleshing our everything but safe for the target audience nightmare of a stallion. I feel like this was a step in the right direction, that this is the format where we can actually apply Sombra without as much hesitation. I'm hoping that Tirek's comic can really sell him to me cause between The Return of Queen Chrysalis, Reflections, and now Sombra Rex, he has some big shoes to fill. Villains from the show who have been placed in the comics are playing for keeps and I just don't want him to fall short of the expectation that he will follow suit. Don't blow it mister.

4230816 Let's see it happen people!

Oh, man. I feel ...I don't want to say 'uncertain'. I guess I just have a confused opinion about this comic. I've only read it once, so I might of missed something. When I think of Sombra, I think of somepony who's truly evil, brilliant, dead-serious, and symbolizes fear. Those are basically what I think are the key requirements for successfully portraying King Sombra.

I figured it was only a matter of time until he got some backstory, and with the loads of potential he has, his origin could have it's roots in many places. So I asked myself 'Why bother giving him an origin story?'. So I built up my version of Sombra as somepony who's seen through his misdeeds. So his origin story doesn't ruin my view of him, since I focus mostly on what he does. Unfortunately, his rule seemed extremely ...brief.

As for his character, I liked it. His personality reminded me of Fluttershy and Twilight with notable CMC-like struggles. I love tragedy. I especially like that his villainy was arguably a force outside his control. And I really love the idea that there's an entire race of his kind sealed away. I guess the ending comments by Twilight and Cadance are meant to give us some 'maybe he is, maybe he isn't', regarding how sympathetic King Sombra is portrayed.

Again, the only problem I have with the comic is how brief his rule over the Crystal Empire is implied to be. To me, it doesn't seem like much time to get anything significant done.

But that's remedied with these factors.

1. He could still be alive, so cool. He can still get things done.

2. That brief amount of time he ruled was spent to free his imprisoned people from underneath the Crystal Empire. Did he manage to free some of them, before being sealed away?

3. Now that we know that Sombras people were imprisoned underneath the empire, it raises some questions. When he curses the Empire (including the Crystal Heart), did his curse effect the Umbra as well? If no, then his curse made them free from their weakness, but vulnerable to the Princesses. If yes, then they share the same fate as the Crystal Empire, but are also protected from outside intervention.

4. Now that I think about it, maybe I don't have to worry about King Sombras lack of sufficient tyranny time. He was sealed into the arctic north, but what if he could still influence the minds of ponies during his imprisonment? I know, that's a stretch, but it's better then 'rule for a day, get banished.' Yes, I'm exaggerating, but that's what his rule feels like in the comic to me.

Overall, I liked it, but feel it focused on character at the possible expense of actually getting things done. What I love about this comic is; Sombras tragic 'Can't fight Fate' villainy, Sombra belonging to an entire race of Shadow Ponies, and how he's still alive in a way. My only complaint is his extremely brief rule over the Crystal Empire, which, again, can be remedied.

Just watched it again, and I'm liking Sombras character even more now. Also, he did have an army. They were just trapped underground.

Well, this comic came around a week after I uploaded a fic about my own Sombra's origin headcanon...talk about bad personal timing.

Anyway, I think Amore's fate is actually a big hint about Sombra's current state. The princess was broken into crystal chunks and dispersed..and that seems quite similar to what happened to Sombra (even better, Sombra's horn was left intact). In other words, if somepony collects Sombra shards and gather them together, the King could return at full strength and against such a threat the mane 6 would also set to find Amore's shards.

Now the question...who could resurrect Sombra?
Radiant Hope? If she survived by some mean like gaining alicornhood (and went a little mad by isolation and heartbreak) she might want to reunite with her old friend ...and love interest.
Chrysalis? She might be desperate to send her minions in search for a powerful ally ...and potential love interest
Rarity? She might be gem searching for a dress and find something sinister ...and a very crack love interest

Oh, I can see it now! Their quest is a double-edged sword.

Both Amore's and Sombra's shards are either purifying or corrupting the landscape, and influencing the minds of anypony present in said area. The Mane 6 must travel all around Equestria to find the shards of Amore, (to resurrect her) while at the same time collect the shards of Sombra. (to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.)

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I disregard it completely. It's someone's headcanon* and their allowed to have it.

*I consider the comics on the same level as fan content- Love it, hate it, ignore it, etc.

4229246 So...