My Little Phony: A Brony Adventure review! · 12:56am Sep 21st, 2014
And now... the worst comic I’ve ever read.
Judging from the title and the cover, I thought it would be straight brony-bashing. I didn’t want to give this thing any money, but at the same time I wanted to review it, so I waited until it was in the back-issue bin. While it wasn’t attacking bronies quite as much as I thought, it still ended up being a waste of my time and money.
This book is mostly a satire of obsessive fandoms in general, and, looking at other reviews, I’m pleased most people read it as that and not brony hate, even among those who aren’t MLP fans, so I’ll give it that
We open at SDCC, where the premiere of My Little Horsey: Season Three is about to happen in one of the convention halls. Then it jumps to inside, where everyone tells the Lauren Faust analog to shut up and role the episode. Yeah, pretty sure no one in the fandom would talk to her like that. If they did, they’d likely get shunned.
But then things start picking up. We get a parody that doesn’t seem completely insulting. I get the feeling it’s a run-of-the-mill “let’s make it stupid” mindset than anything really mocking. In between, two fans start getting into an argument on whether the new horsey’s or the old horsey’s are better. I’ll admit, there's been arguments over stupider things.
But then, after the episode ends, the two’s argument launches into a full scale riot that requires the police to settle when the new-gen fan says the new designs are more faithful to Bonnie Zacherle-stand in’s original designs. Look, I don’t doubt that somewhere out there is someone dumb enough to get in a physical fight over this, but honestly? A whole convention hall? Anyway, the two nerds vow to outdo the other and prove that their view is best.
When then get one page devoted to showing the other convention attendees aren’t much saner. Okay, two things I want to say here:
First off, I’m glad they’re making it clear that idiocy exists in all fandoms and it’s not just bronies, but this has the same problem as the riot: not everyone who goes to a con is that crazy.
Secondly, it was pretty clear to me what this was a satire of obsessive fandoms in general, and not simply bronies. But the fact that they picked bronies makes the satire weak. We’re an easy target, and a satire needs teeth to be effective. Why not pick Trekkies or Batman fans to mock? Answer: that might piss off a bigger portion of people, and the comic hasn’t the spine for it.
Five days later, Old Gen Nerd whose name I can’t be buggered to learn is at home with another nerd, and they’re putting together a video on their position. They get angry when New Gen Nerd has posts a video first.
So Old Gen gets a tattoo in revenge. Not sure how that works, but apparently it pisses off New Gen.
And there’s where things really fall apart. New Gen nerds get long manes painfully grafted onto themselves. They show them off to the Old Gens, who got manes of their own already. I’m not sure why they needed to be grafted, since they look like normal hairstyles to me.
Then... oh man, get this... both sides decide to get horse parts grafted onto themselves. Yes, you read that right. And then... okay, you ready for this? Sit down... as soon as the procedure is finished, demons burst from the ground. One of the doctors is bitten in half in a bloody manner.
The nerds wake up, the Old Gens as centaurs, the New Gens with horse heads. They argue briefly before they realize the apocalypse has happened. For some reason, they think not-Bonnie Zacherle will have answers.
They go to her house and find her with her stomach ripped open and her insides being eaten. Yes, thank you comic, that’s what I wanted to see. Not-Bonnie Zacherle says that they caused it by becoming the Four Horsemen...
She then tells them to look in a safe upstairs to find her true vision. It turns out to be My Definitive Amphibian. The nerds realize they’ve been stupid... then start obsessing over the small clip.
...
Look, I know Lauren Faust gets a lot of Creator Worship, but I’m pretty sure everyone would keep watching even if she announced she hated it.
...Okay, this could have been a good satire, but it loses itself midway through by going this far. I read a review suggesting it should have been about two fans ruining their lives while normal fans point and laugh. If they had done that, it might have worked, even with bronies as the subject. Instead, it’s a pretty tasteless mess, and it pains me knowing that there are some brony-haters enjoying it.
Well, good comic next time: My Little Pony: Friends Forever #8.
...
wat?
Its right around here where my mind went blank.
To be perfectly honest, satire in and of itself is a pretty low form of entertainment that only serves to make people look horrible. And I mean people who read and enjoy it, not the character knock-offs within it.
Wow, that's bad. It's not Miller level, like you said it wasn't, but it sounds bad. It sounds like someone who wants to be a MAD writer, but doesn't have one-tenth of a percent of the skill to do a decent bit of parody or satire.
2470948
Not necessarily. Satire can be done well – Blazing Saddles, Office Space, Idiocracy, Dilbert, along with sociopolitical humorists like Tom Lehrer or Mark Russell... even some of the classic skits from Monty Python's Flying Circus or The Carol Burnett Show fall under that banner. Gulliver's Travels is a satire, and so is Dante's Inferno, though modern audiences don't always recognize them as such since a number of the social institutions being satirized at the time they were written have changed significantly since then.
That being said – a good satirist uses it as a scalpel to methodically dissect their chosen target, rather than simply flailing it about like a war club to bash their way through everything in sight. This My Little Phony comic sounds like it isn't satire, so much as the tiresome Seth McFarlane "throw everything against the wall and hope some of it sticks" school of "humor."
2470948 Yeah. It's an example of a genre that once had a place, but in this day and age is all but dead. Parody is another dead genre. Don't believe me, just look at "Teen Titans Go".
2486268
...It's not a webcomic. It was professionally published. I bought a hard copy.
...sounds like it was not really what I had in mind for a brony-fandom parody.
This feels more like parody I would have been looking for.
i don't disagree with you points. about it being satire and this comic isn't generally a good one. however i feel bronies being the one been made fun off is genreally is acceptable. see that's the thing. they could have gone with Trekkies. or batman or any franchise. teh thing is well brnies have kind of taken something which a lot people would consider to generally be something light and entertaining. we've all known our versions of a nutjob in any fandom. i think i tried the line with a lot of stuff that i like. hell even my little pony.
thing is that i look at a lot of stuff here on fimfiction and come away thinking that the show is taken to seriously. we get fucking epics which are trying to head to lord of the rings territory. we get works which pander to bronies by saying hey we have something you like. your fallouts equestria's your harmonys warriors. your horror stories which really want to play the idea of a slender man version of a pony as serious.
i refuse to believe that bronies should be let off because of the excuse that there are worse fandoms. we can't let the terrible members of the fandom off. we have call out the chantoyee the pinkieponies the tenaflyvipers. the harrassers the pony porn makers.the nationalist bronies the mra bronies the sjw's the people who want to attack anyone who raises a single complain with the show or it's fandom
Being a brony does not make you a terrible person. but to ignore those who are in the fandom is a genreally bad idea. and to say the bronies are immune to it. their have been hundreds of works that made fun of comic book fans and Trekkies. we can't pretend to expect bronies to be a special case.
Like I said I bought the comic on comixology and man while I thought it wasn't so bad at first, just making fun of fandomr it went all downhill in the second half
The only plus side on the second half is that I am curious for an mlp bojack horseman crossover