Thoughts on My Little Pony Friendship is Magic IDW comic series omnibus 1

So this comic omnibus is broken into four stories, the first twelve issues printed by IDW all put into a single Omnibus. I'll go through them from the one I liked the least to my favorite. This one, in particular, would be difficult to rate in order, as I loved all of them.

How Shining Armor and Princess Cadance met: this story was funny and had a lot of implied world-building, but I felt it wasn't as tense as the first two stories and less funny than the Big Mac one. Basiclly, Shining Armor and Cadance are having dinner with Twilight and her friends, and the conversation turns to ask the two how they met. So we first learn that Shining Armor was a nerd back in high school and his crush Cadance is with a douchebag named Buck Withers. It becomes a stereotypical high school drama story of his geekiness impressing Princess Cadance while he (with the help of his nerdy friends) tries to get her to be his date for the school dance. He then tries to talk to her before his Flugelhorn recital and can barely say hello to her. Then he puts on a concert for her to win her heart but ends up embarrassing himself. After that, he and his nerd friends try to embarrass Buck Withers by sabotaging his polo game on the night of the dance, but they end up only helping him win and look more relaxed. So Shining Armor walks off in defeat, thinking that Buck Withers has taken the mare he has a crush on.

But from here, Princess Cadance continues the story, and we get more information. After Shining Armor's failed attempts to talk to her, she finds it cute and has Twilight talk about him and confess her love for him. Then at the game, we learn she feels pressured to go out with Buck as she already agreed to go with him to the dance. But she was now feeling conflicted. So her other friends help her devise a plan to basiclly ditch him at the dance so they can swoop in and try to get his attention. Meanwhile, Shining's friends were all helping him devise their plan to basiclly have him go out with the nerdiest-looking pony (poindexter in drag) and then have his other friends annoy the crap out of Buck until he chases after them so he can go with Cadance.

Then the cliche stuff happens where Buck and Cadance dance, but she quickly ditches him, which makes him pissed, but Shining's friends can keep him away from her as she and Shining get to know each other abit. However, Buck and Cadance are named king and queen at the dance, but everyone hates Buck because he's a bully and praises Shining, as it seems he does a lot of good around the school. He's then the new king, and Cadance dances with him instead. Overall I enjoyed the simplicity of the story being a "high school drama thing" it felt real, and it was fun, plus it didn't take itself seriously. I honestly could see this being the most canon of the four, as it doesn't try to do anything that would break the show's canon and add context to existing characters.

The Return of Queen Chrysalis: This story was fun to read and intense, as the stakes were pretty high. I think the Nightmare Rarity story challenged the Mane 6 more. But this was also quite the trial of their friendship, so it wasn't easy to rank these two stories.

The story begins with the CMC being foalnapped and ponies starting to act weird in town. Twilight quickly realizes that they're missing and that Changelings are impersonating the ponies or brainwashing them. Then Queen Chrysalis baits them to her kingdom where she had the CMC hostage. They, of course, go out to rescue them, and along the way, they defeat a rather stupid troll. They are soon broken up due to the changelings impersonating them and saying horrible things about each pony making it look like their all talking behind each other's backs. But spiders soon capture them. Still, the troll they befriended earlier helps them escape from their webbing, and he takes one of the spiders as a pet. This causes the group to fracture and the 6 to break off into teams of two. They each face their monsters as they end up at the castle of Chrysalis. Then after taking down some horrors in there, Chrysalis tries to get Twilight to work with her to take over equestria in exchange for her friends, whom she captured, and she does. But there's a comet coming that would give creatures more magical power, and Twilight utilizes this to fight back against Queen Chrysalis, saving herself and her friends. This story is fantastic because it ties up how the friendship between the mane six was truly tested as they started to distrust each other midway through, and they had to overcome this obstacle, which was rather tense. Some of the funniest parts were the CMC annoying the shit out of Queen Chrysalis as they prattled on about what kind of cutie marks they could get from this (as they even annoyed Celestia, who came at the end thanks to Spike). This comic may be a bit cliche, but it was such a fun and intriguing read I couldn't keep myself from doing anything else until I finished this story.

Nightmare Rarity: of the two adventure stories, this was maybe the best comic of the four in the omnibus (but the next one after this is my favorite for personal reasons).

So this story it's similar to the season five episode "Do princesses dream of magic sheep?" (seeing this comic was made before that episode aired, so It's not a copy of that episode at all). This story deals with the Mane 6 all having nightmares and Rarity being sucked into the Nightmare realm. So her friends go and ask the princesses for help which they do. Luna has to go back to the moon and through the Nightmare Realm to find Rarity and save her. The mane 6, of course, accompanied her (after they pulled down the moon with a magical lasso, which was so cool to see). They then enter the nightmare realm and face their worst fears. Each member of the mane six deals with horrifying nightmares of defeat, loss, and guilt. They pull through together but are eventually overwhelmed by the nightmare creatures inhabiting the realm. They see that one had taken hold of Rarity and possessed her body. Luna flies back to Ponyville to prepare for the nightmare creatures' invasion.

Meanwhile, Spike goes through the nightmare realm and tries his best not to get captured (as he also has to face a dream of him being Rarity's queen and reject that dream which was cool to see) and finds the mane 6 locked up. He frees them as Nightmare Rarity, and the other creatures invade Ponyville. The residents face them off pretty well until Nightmare Rarity shows up when she is defeated by the others of the Mane 6, who convince her they would never forget or abandon her, as that is what Rarity fears most. They are then able to save Rarity, and Luna helps the other nightmare creatures home as they seem to have become reformed.

Overall this story was intriguing, with a lot of heart and tenseness throughout the story. Every character had a moment to shine, and the panels looked amazing with Nightmare Rarity's iconic design. This comic was nearly perfect with the art and story.

Zen and the art of gazebo repair: This comic was my favorite of the four, mainly because it centers on my favorite male character Big Mac. It's hard to compare, seeing they're different genres because the first two stories had much higher stakes and were well-written adventure series. But this was just the one out of the four I enjoyed reading the most.

The story is pretty straightforward from the sounds of it, with Big Mac on a hunt for some nails as he's trying to build a Gazebo, so he goes out to get some more pins at the local hardware store. But everything becomes much more difficult with him ending up at the Summer wrap-up festival. Here he gets up to a bunch of shenanigans at the festival, with the first being the CMC, who are trying to get their cutie marks in pyrotechnics, and witnesses them cause a massive explosion from a dozen fireworks. Afterward, he hastily leaves and sees Mr. and Mrs. Cake dealing with their rambunctious foals. Upon seeing Big Mac, they hurriedly walk the Cake twins to him as they deliver a cake. The Cake Twins then ride him around while bonking his head and biting his tail (the panels depicting this happening are so adorable). He then sees that Trixie is putting on a Puppet Show (depicting altered events from the Episode Boast Busters with her being the hero) and takes the twins to see it so they can calm down, which they do.

Luckily for Big Mac, the Cakes come back to collect their foals, and he continues on his trek to find some nails. But then a Wonderbolt fell from the sky and slammed into him (thanks to the CMC firing another round of fireworks). And she crashes right into Big Mac as he becomes infatuated with him. After she's taken to the hospital (He ends up talking to Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon at a spoof of Lucy's advice table from the Peanuts comics and dealing with Bulk Biceps), he ends up with Princess Luna. The latter has him become her partner in a bunch of competitions. During a scavenger hunt, Big Mac sneaks off and trots along with Zecora only to find the CMC's fireworks destroyed the hardware store.

Seeing the store destroyed, he goes and searches for the owner. First, he wins at a game where you throw a ball to hit bottles stacked on top of each other and wins a giant plush Pinkie pie (which he quickly gives to the Wondrbolt whose been following him); he has to cross a parade to do so, becomes a backup dancer to Sapphire Shores, gets chased by Photo Finish, then spends the bits he would have used for the nails on a figuring Spike made for him and unintentionally gives it to the Wonderbolt following him (which makes her think he's really into her when in reality he barely notices her). It's now late in the afternoon, and he ends up at the hoedown on accident and dances with an earth pony here (in which the panels that explain her mindset think that he's some spy for some reason?), the crush that was following him the whole day fights with her Big Mac ends up eventually talking to Cheerilee. She then tells him where Lugnut (the store owner) is (who is back at his store fixing it) is. So Big Mac now has to head back to the hardware store, but Zecora finds him first and convinces him to have fun (which he does, getting a kiss from Princess Luna and hoof-wrestling Celestia). Ultimately, he learns that Lugnut borrowed some nails from the CMC, who took the ones he recently bought at the story's beginning. So, in the end, it was a fun-filled romp with a very comedic ending, but it was unique and entertaining simultaneously.