Tumbleweed vs. Friendship in Disguise #4! · 2:45am Nov 6th, 2020
I would've picked this comic up yesterday, save for the fact I didn't get any sleep on Tuesday night (for obvious reasons) so I was something of a shambling wreck of a man who probably had no business driving anywhere.
But I'm better today!
Mostly.
Ehem.
Anyway, the comic!
It's ... okay.
Once again, it's chopped up into two seperate stories. The first one is about the Insecticons (including the deluxe Insecticons!) menacing Sweet Apple Acres, until Discord shows up for no apparent reason, and then summons the whole Apple clan to go fight 'em. Really I get the feeling the artist just wanted to make a 'everyone going through portals like in Endgame' splash page. And a bunch of earth ponies clobber the Insecticons, which ... well, kind of embarrassing on the 'cons, part, but what can ya do.
(That's not Special Agent Golden Harvest in there, is it?)
And then the Apples win. The end.
The second part is better, but not by much. It's the grand finale, in which Chrysalis and Megatron show up with their combined armies to wreak havoc. But then Optimus Prime and a bunch of ponies show up to stop them, and ... then they do. At least we get some pretty sweet splash pages out of it?
Though admittedly, pages like this aren't as good as Tom Scioli's Transformers vs. GI Joe splashes ... but then again, what is?
But I digress.
Now, there are some really fun gags throughout the fight (Crasher cameo! Orange safety cap joke!) buuuuut there's just not much in the way of narrative, I guess? And again, they're only working with like 12 pages here. Still, it would've been nice to have some more back and forth, you know? Something to raise the stakes? But I suppose Hasbro wouldn't let IDW have Megatron vaporize a couple ponies just to show off how dangerous he was, either.
I think the series' generally fragmented nature is what throws things off. It's mostly a collection of loosely connected stories that are basically "What if Pony X met Robot Y?" and go from there. Which is fine! There's a lot of potential in that sorta thing. Then again, I think a more focused, month to month story would have been more entertaining. But that's just my 'oh hey I wrote a couple thousand words of crossover fanfic' self speaking. (BTW: call me, IDW).
Still, as far as temporary distractions go, it was entertaining enough. And now I get like, DOUBLE entertainment out of it, because I'm thinking too hard about a silly comic book and TALKING ABOUT IT ON THE INTERNET. Le gasp. Considering that 24 hours ago I didn't even have the energy to so much as boot up my word processor, that's ... a kind of progress, right?
So yeah. Not much to report on otherwise (yet). Which ... is kind of good, in a 'no news is good news' sort of way? Hm.
I'll check back in in a couple of days. Maybe sign up for Jinglemas, while I'm at it. Writing pony stuff is better than writing nothing, right?
only issue id say the comic has is they bring in discord a reality warper and he is like not op in the slightest