Present Perfect vs. IDW Round 10: Fiends Forever! · 8:46pm May 12th, 2015
What better to do on a day when I'm feeling like shit than sit on my ass and read pony comics? :B It was high time I caught up with them anyway. On to the reviews!
Fiends Forever
#1: King Sombra
So the fact that they crossed out the r in “Friends” means we can confirm the comics staff watch Equestria After Dark, right? :V
So this tells a fantastic backstory for King Sombra. In doing so, we get the identity of a former Crystal Princess, a new race of ponies (shadow ponies, like we needed that), and a compelling tale about self-fulfilling prophecies that rivals the best of what fanfic writers have dreamed up for Sombra. (Also, King Sombrero is canon.)
There are, however, a lot of questions left by the end, and I’m going to have to use spoilers. Don’t spoil yourself on this one, it’s worth it. Okay, so Sombra’s horn coming back is kinda ehh, but what does it mean? I was under the impression these were all stand-alones; are they setting up for something later? :O Also, what happened to Radiant Hope? She’s obviously not Cadence, so she didn’t make it to princesshood. Did she just die in the snowy wastes after the Empire disappeared? I’m not entirely sure where that room came from, although it’s possible I missed something. Still, this is a good comic, and Radiant Hope was a great character.
4/5
#2: Tirek
This comic starts off in the best way possible: Once upon a time, Tirek was a moody teenager, and Scorpan was fat and annoying. :D I love it. My reaction to this comic was an extended squeal of joy. We get to see where they came from. We get to see their parents! (Either the two races can breed true with each other, or Tirek and Scorpan are brothers by marriage, because their father, King Vorak, is a centaur, and their mother, Queen Haydon, is whatever the hell Scorpan is.) Plus, there’s an old centaur named Sendak who Tirek learns magic-sucking from. (In opposition to griffons, centaur names all end in K, it would seem.) And Discord! Now we know how they met! Honestly, this doesn’t have much story to it, more or less just introducing a place for them to have come from, but I loved every second of it. The only question is doesn’t answer is why Tirek refers to pony magic as “what’s rightfully mine”. But damned if the two-page spread near the end isn’t one of the most badass things I’ve seen in the MLP comics. Gold star!
5/5
#3: The Sirens
I think this is the one I’ve been hearing everyone muttering about, and I can see why. The story of the Sirens’ downfall is…
God, it’s dumb.
For starters, it’s just Rainbow Rocks all over again, except with Star Swirl instead of Twilight and friends. Second, none of the humor works, especially given how serious the first two installments were. Third, Star Swirl invented rap music (and was David Bowie, apparently). Are you starting to understand how lame this comic is? (I don’t know whether to award points for a background appearance of Dr. Whooves and Roseluck.) Plus, it’s Agnes Garbowska drawing, and once again she has a hard time making faces look right head-on.
Finally, the way Star Swirl defeats them is just… He defeats them. He brings out the mirror and in they go, no muss, no fuss, no actually winning at music or beating them at a game of wits. It’s neat getting to see Canterlot a thousand years ago (minus all the anachronisms), and it’s kind of interesting how no one really seemed to care about these giant fish horses literally floating down the street. But in the end, this one feels sloppy. The Dazzlings deserved better. :(
2/5
#4: Nightmare Moon
I’ve got a lot to say about this one. It’s backstory for the second comic arc, essentially, showing us where those shadow/smoke monsters on the moon came from. It gives us Nightmare Moon being on the moon, not in it, as has so often been argued, trying to interfere with Equestria’s dreams, with help from the — wait for it — Nyx, who look like rejects from a different 80’s toy commercial show. And while this is all well and good, it does raise some questions.
For instance, what’s the time frame here? It seems to take place across two nights, directly after her banishment, in which case Celestia was able to sleep soundly that first night. I don’t want to think about that. Secondly, when did NMM get the time to convert all the Nyx into smoke monsters? We only see the one, but by the end, they’re all done for. And how does this factor in to Princess Luna’s dreamwalking? Did she not have to do it before Nightmare Moon? Is it her own destruction of the Nyx that makes it necessary for her to protect ponies’ dreams now? This one’s tantalizing, to say the least.
There’s some good stuff, like the name of the leader of the Nyx (I can’t figure out the reference, if there is any, behind that of the one who helps Nightmare Moon), what I’m pretty sure is a reference to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Nightmare Moon with braided mane and tail. This is better, overall, than the Nightmarity arc, but it’s also lacking something. Still better than the last issue, though. It’s also got the best cover image of the five.
3/5
#5: Queen Chrysalis
Whereas the last issue may have been a prequel to comic arc #2, this is a sequel to arc #1, and it’s got the Price-Cook-Breckel dream team, to boot. We begin with the mane cast off to visit Chrysalis in her prison, where she’s been doing not so well. From there, we get a number of tales of various calamities which she was the center of.
This issue is everything #3 wanted to be. It’s both serious and funny. It tells not one, but four great stories in Equestria’s past. It’s got Star Swirl. It’s epic. There are so many amazing things in this comic, it’s like starting them all over again! Here’s a whiff of the best things you can expect:
-Spike lampshading the show’s time frame.
-GEM EYE PONIES
-Chrysalis confirmed for 1000 years old.
-The origin of her crown (it’s not part of her!)
-The funniest usage of “schmoopy-doo” since the original.
-Chrysalis in bug armor!
-Chrysalis confirmed beaten by Celestia.
-Rarity going on a date.
And last but not least, the origins of the changelings and OH MY GOD it’s not the most creative or believable story, but it blew my mind. Just, everything about this was fantastic. I’m pretty sure Cook and Price are just showing off now.
6/5
The Dazzlings comics was shit.
Utter shit.
Seeing as how you raised your maximum score for Chrysalis, I'm surprised you didn't go in the opposite direction for the Dazzlings.
Because the Dazzlings comic was utter shit.
I'm iffy on introducing an entire new race of ponies just so Sombra can be extra-special, but it was a nice story. I like tragic Sombras.
Scorpan and his mother are apparently gargoyles. And gargoyle names seem to end in N. I think that applies to the chromosomes as well: If you're born with a K chromosome, you're a centaur. If you get an N, you're a gargoyle. That's how biology works in the Mysterious Wasteland of Quasihumanoids.
The Siren one was just dumb. Especially the timey-wimey bit at the end. Just throwing them a millennium forward? Really? No historical siren funtimes? I am disappoint.
The Nightmare Moon one... I didn't like the implication of Luna not knowing how to dreamwalk before—it makes her doing so kind of creepy, not a duty but a relic of a cruel era—but I do like the idea that she must do it because she rendered the previous dream tenders extinct. That's an interesting wrinkle.
Still, wasn't she supposed to be imprisoned in the moon, not on it?
And Chrysalis was awesome from start almost to finish. Almost. Herp derp I'll open the door after hearing all about how Chryssy deluded and deceived everyone she ever met. Because no one who ever wanted to read a book was ever evil ever.
Sirens one was horrible. Even before the whole Dragon Dicks thing, Ted Anderson was the worst of the comic writers. Show, please don't hire him. Not just because he makes buddies and gives cameos to people who made a name directly attacking a hefty portion of your fanbase, but because he is a hack writer.
And once more, Cook/Price/Breckel are confirmed for the best thing to happen to MLP since Lauren Faust.
I agree with you on most of everything here except for the Tirek one, which I would give more a 3.5/5. It had really nice art and some really nifty stuff in it, but I remember finishing it and going "...Wait, that's it?" It just kind of... ended, without really forming a complete plot as, say, Queen Chrysalis's comic managed to. And it didn't actually explain very much, imo - it just kind of presented new ideas and then didn't really do much with them.
But you've kind of covered all this, so I'm assuming it bothered me more than it did you.
The leader of the Nyx is named Gaiman, a reference to writer Neil Gaiman. One of his most famous works is a comic series called "The Sandman," which chronicles the seven Endless, anthropomorphic personifications of universal concepts, and specifically focuses on Morpheus, the King of Dreams. Presumably "Morpheus" was too heavy-handed for the comic and would invite Matrix jokes.
EDIT - And derp, it was the one who helped NMM whose name you didn't get. :p My best guess is musician Doran Edwards, who had a song "Weird Dreams."
i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/831/729/3c2.gif
Did someone order
The Bowie Bulge?
Agreed.
Same for all the others, really. Those poor poor sirens and their disappointing backstory. Random theory, the entire issue was narrated offscreen by Sonata and she doesn't really remember what actually happened so she made up most of the details.
#1 Major minus on making Sombra worse. The show implied a brilliant and evil unicorn master of the dark arts. We got a brainwashed teenager Shadow Pony(TM)(so edgy). Once you get down to it, this is Past Sins Bad End.
#2
FTFY
Word of God says "gargoyle". The flying red guys are Cloud Imps.
#3 Given the clock themed getup and the Journal of the Sisters giving him unlimited time travel, I'm assuming he didn't invent anything musical, just ontological paradoxed it from the future.
#4
Celestia has anti-bad-dream protections set to max in that shot. The real iffy thing about Celestia in there is the bit where she counters NMM's manipulations, which looks a bit like a mass brainwashing spell in its own right, and somewhat the fact that she seemed to know about the Nyx ahead of time and anticipated their subjugation to Nightmare.
The presentation is like this was the first night, but there isn't anything concrete to really indicate that. We don't know how long Nim was wandering the Moon before finding the dream castle. No, the real attack on the chronology is the mention of dreaming about Wonderbolts. The defense is a line about dreams transcending time.
Well, obviously. NMM didn't know this was even a thing. Patches the plot hole of "why was Luna upset about ponies sleeping if she has the dream gig?"
#5 Was fantastic, yes. There's a list of issues mostly with the parts that are not flashbacks (though the part where Celestia put the holes in all of the changelings is a bit... odd) but overall great.
3065102
Interesting bit: if you really pay attention, that whole part was just for the sake of a dramatic exit. They take down the chains that didn't do anything in the first place because the door opens in. The real thing that was keeping them in was the Pinkie suit (check the end of issue 4) and they take it away at the beginning of the comic.
3065098
It's not the worst comic I've ever seen, but it was definitely not good.
While there were certainly good parts about the Sombra one, I really didn't like how everything that went wrong was due to the princess there passively—but knowingly—deceiving him continuously and torturing him on a yearly basis. I'm not saying that an inevitable consequence of that was that he would become an oppressive overlord, but I have trouble seeing how it was supposed to lead to good things, or how it could be construed as the right thing to do. And it's not like giving Sombra full information of his background, perhaps inviting what they sought to avoid, was the alternative; they just needed to get him far enough away from the Crystal Heart, one day a year, that he's not incapacitated and in agony.
I didn't know Sombra was an Umbran Witch.
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Also, young Scorpan is adorable and I want to hug him.
Do you minding spoiling this? I don't read the comics, but I'm interested in this.
3065136
I had assumed:
They were referring to Colleen Doran since she and Neil Gaiman have done a lot of good work together, but I couldn't understand why they named a nebbishy, gullible, and fairly unpleasant character after one of the smartest and most talented people to ever put together a comic book. It's one of the reasons I didn't care for the issue much.
Mike
3065570
It's kind of like... Okay, if this were the 80s, it would be "bugs and toxic waste". It was kind of like that, but with magic. And also Star Swirl the Bearded.
Started out good, got worse, got worse again, got better, got better again. I'm not sure if there's anything that can be taken from that. Other than "don't ever buy the middle book of a five-comic series about My Little Pony villains".