Comic Review: Annual #1 · 2:36am Oct 31st, 2013
Halloween is just around the corner, which means it's time for all the spooky and terrifying fun to begin. And for FiM's first annual issue, we have a look at the most insidious of things, the monster that continues to haunt the franchise to this day and threatens to bring doom upon it all....
EQUESTRIA GIRLS!
The first few pages are a reprint of the SDCC-excluse “Fall of Sunset Shimmer” story. I've already reviewed it for you, and my points still mostly stand. The only difference is that I don't have to stare at this thing through someone's camera phone, meaning I can take in the good art. And I hope you enjoy that story, because it's all downhill from here.
The rest of the comic is a prequel to Equestria Girls, so let me make this clear: if you did not like the movie, you will most likely not like the comic. The annual suffers from many of the same issues the movie did, including a lot of high school clichés played completely straight, rehashing plot points from the show, and ultimately having an unsatisfying conclusion that really leaves more questions than answers. The Mane 5 (no Twilight) are being interviewed by a super mysterious school newspaper reporter (it's Sunset Shimmer) about how they first met and became friends, and they all proceed to tell how Applejack was pushed to the background, Rainbow Dash was an egotistical jerk, Pinkie Pie was certifiably insane, Fluttershy was very shy, and Rarity managed to convert her locket into a TARDIS for the sake of storing her wardrobe.
One really puzzling thing that carries over from the movie is how the annual handles ages. The characters are all supposed to be only freshmen and have a strange refusal to ever compromise, but they look exactly the same as in the movie, where they're either juniors or seniors. Nearly everyone else in the show is now a teenager (outside of Principle Celestia and Vice-Principle Luna, who just got back from a thousand years of detention)...but then Babs Seed shows up and is now either their age or older...and all the foal characters are at the same school, and...and...and...
…
Ah, sweet happy pills, take me away...
So, odd ages and incredibly stupid premise aside, the comic has another serious strike against it: the art. If you thought the movie's characters looked awkward, you haven't seen true horror. The characters have heads so huge that they might as well be bobble heads, several panels feel unfinished, and there's a sketchiness that really lets the whole thing down. It doesn't help that the source material was pretty bad in the art department to begin with.
All that being said, there are a couple things that the comic does do well. Unlike the movie, the annual moves at a good pace, leaving very few holes within itself at the end while still letting each character have a chance to shine. While it is essentially a repeat, the characters do develop and grow by the end, and Sunset Shimmer working on the school newspaper does help explain how she was able to manipulate and control the entire school for so long. (What it doesn't answer is why she was bothering to pick on these specific five to begin with. The out-of-movie explanation was that Rarity was running against her during one formal and she broke the five up as a message, but to quote SF Debris, “If you didn't put it in the movie, you didn't put it in the movie.”) And there are some scenes that genuinely work, such as Fluttershy as a vet's assistant.
But in the end, this thing was eight dollars. It's still double the size of a normal FiM comic...but it's also a meh addition to a meh movie. Unless you're a huge Equestria Girls fan, I would give this one a pass.
I must start collecting these comics...
(No, I'm not a huge EqG fan, though I enjoyed the movie well enough, so I will probably give this a pass. Otherwise, though, I need to start getting these)
So buying it.
I liked EQG well enough, flaws and all. 
Yeah I should have waited for a sale to pick this up, it wasn't really worth the asking price :/ It wasn't bad but not 7,99 on Comixology good.