Comic Review - Main Series #31 · 5:35pm Jun 10th, 2015
We continue the story arc of "Everyone Is Stupid And/Or An Asshole" with issue 31. Let's get it over with.
Twilight laments to Fluttershy that Ponyville Days isn't ready, the town isn't talking to each other, and Princess Celestia is expecting a grand event.
Fluttershy notes no one is angry with Twilight, perhaps she can appeal to ponies to help on their own. Twilight heads down to talk to Applejack and basically guilt trips her into turning the farm into a Bed and Breakfast for visitors, reminding her of the hospitality she showed Twilight when she came to Ponyville. Then we spend an entire page where Rarity refuses to help for no real reason. "Who would have thought Applejack would be easier to reason with than Rarity?" After the last issue, not me. It's almost as if this is badly written. They then go to Rainbow Dash, who is fed up with the nonsense and just wants to sit it out. Somehow, Twilight implies this means Bulk Biceps will take command of the weather team, and Rainbow leaps in to help. Twilight then gets Pinkie to agree to hosting historic walking tours of the town. Spike asks if she has such time to write such tour plans. "I wrote one ages ago. Just for fun." "Of course you did." Okay, point for a good joke.
We then spend a whole two pages on 18 panels, each one of a Ponyville citizen agreeing to Twilight's request of them. Why does this sequence need two pages? The only reason is to pad out the comic an extra page because they are indeed padded. Why else would you give Cranky and Matilda each their own panel, or the spa ponies or the Cakes? And why is Gummy here? Okay, it's funny in the midst of the smiling ponies to just see him staring blankly with no text, but then you think about why he's in this part. Did Twilight really ask him to help pitch in with something? I'm not even fully sure Gummy has a pulse. They do the same joke with Angel, who just has a skull and crossbones thought bubble. Again, did Twilight actually ask Angel to help out? Did she ask the other pets? Was Tank assigned duties, or Winona?
Well, everyone is helping - except Rarity. We get a good joke here where Spike bangs on Rarity's door pining for her to help them, only for Rarity to walk up next to Twilight and ask what's going on. Rarity finally agrees when Twilight guilt trips her, and shows off stacks of fabric she can use. Twilight is so happy she hugs Rarity and makes it hard for her to breathe.
The next day, Twilight is happy everyone is working on their own stations, even if they're not talking to each other. She also reminds Pinkie of specific history tour stops, and I caught a cute Back To The Future reference with a clock tower that stopped working when it was hit by lightning. And then another full page of padding where Twilight checks in on everypony to make sure they're fine, and they universally are. To the comic's credit, another cute joke where the first train of visitors arrives, and Filthy Rich and Twilight are trampled in a cloud of dust. Filthy sees a mark in the sky of Twilight's cutie mark, and Twilight recognizes it as a distress signal from Spike. Wait, wait, huh? How? How the hell does Spike make a giant cutie mark signal to alert Twilight? Does he have a flashlight that he directs onto a cloud like a Twilight Sparkle Batsignal? ...Okay, I'll let this plot hole slide because that explanation works for me.
Twilight bumps into Rainbow Dash, who can't move fast enough to keep the dust clouds in the sky clear. That is not how dust clouds work, writer! Naturally, everyone comes up to Twilight to tell her things are not going as planned. Not because of disagreements or arguments, they're just too swamped with tourists that they can't handle it. Also, the Back To The Future reference is made much more transparent when Pinkie says the clock tower was damaged by two pony time travellers. The first time was funny, doing it the second time to make it explicit makes you look desperate for jokes. Also, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon refuse to be in a play organized by the CMC, pretty dumb of Twilight to expect that to work out.
Then... a two-page spread of nothing but a stressed-out Twilight staring into our souls as everypony crowds around her whining. Two. Pages! WHY!? Why do we need this level of detail for such a thing? This is ridiculous. How many trees died to print these comics that are so padded they're like a sofa warehouse!?
Twilight snaps and admits she can't handle this on her own. Oh, good, we're just ripping off the Rainbow Rocks aesop. Twilight can't organize them alone, they have to work together. That makes no sense! Everypony was given specific duties to handle and they were overwhelmed by the customer load exceeding what they could do. Working together will not fix that, if Rarity and Fluttershy leave their posts to help Applejack, who takes over their posts? It's like saying five ticket vendors at five separate entrances to a sports stadium are seeing people in too slowly and telling them to use teamwork to go faster - logistics doesn't work like that! But in the magical world of bad writing, no, this works, and the ponies group together to help each other.
The problem here is not teamwork - Twilight over-organized the event, putting together too much for visitors to do without considering if the staff could handle the workload. She needs to close down certain events and redirect the freed-up labour to help the critical events. That's what she's doing and that makes sense. But no, we have to shoehorn in a teamwork aesop to get the citizens to make up. Hooray. As everyone else goes off, the CMC bury the hatchet with DT and SS for one day to do a play together. And just like that, this comic does more to make Diamond Tiara likeable in one panel than an entire issue could. Rarity runs off without a word, and Twilight and Spike write her off. But of course, she was going to Sweet Apple Acres to help Applejack, using her awful materials no one wanted outfits of to make tents to host all the visitors. Celestia arrives for a cameo and congratulates Twilight on a great celebration.
The day comes to an end with the announcement of the commemorative plaque, and everypony tenses up because that's what caused all this chaos. Twilight calls Applejack and Rarity on-stage and presents them each their plaque - respectively, for First Residential Building and First Commercial Building of Ponyville. Everypony agrees it's a simple solution that makes them both happy. And now you know what Twilight was so forcibly written out of the first issue, because indeed she would have solved the problem in about five minutes.
This issue sucks. I'll give it a few points for a good joke here and there, and compared to the first part there's much less character derailment, since we focus on the ponies reconciling instead of the argument. The art is okay, the faces and heads are still weird but it's alright, nothing jumped out at me like "oh, that looks terrible." The writing is bad though, the morals are shoehorned in and don't make sense.
Where the issue falls apart entirely is the pacing. This issue is BORING. Nothing happens! It is so obviously padded that you could use it as a pillow, so many scenes are stretched out longer than they need to be and a lot of content could be compressed down to save pages, which could have been used to tell a stronger story than what we got. I realize now this could have worked fine as one issue, dial the character derailment back, tighten up the pacing, and we could have a decent one-issue here. Or, have the second part focus on reconciliation in time for Ponyville Days, instead of focusing on Ponyville Days and hastily getting to the reconciliation in the last four pages.
In summary - our return to the main series off of Fiendship is Magic is a very rocky one.
What a disappointment, it's like IDW isn't even trying anymore.
3137551 Unfortunately, I don't think they have been recently, to me they've become just like LJN.