Comic Review - Friends Forever #24 · 6:24am Jan 7th, 2016
Rarity and Gilda... I've seen odder pairings from this series so far, let's take a look.
Art by Jay Fosgitt, ho boy. Story by Georgia Bell? Doesn't sound familiar, let's go check the Wiki... oh, wow. She's only done one comic before, Friends Forever #8 which I didn't read. Makes me nervous but I'll give her a shot.
We open on Rarity's boutique, a customer is asking her to modify a piece of merchandise for a sport called "boffyball." Rarity's heard of it but doesn't much care about it, they don't play it in Equestria and sports isn't much her thing anyway. Rarity pulls a giant "Spangling Gun" and pulls on a welder's mask to get to work, herding the customer out of the shop. This is an odd joke, it could work for Pinkie Pie but not Rarity, having such a ridiculously oversized thing for sewing.
Then Gilda arrives, saying it's been a while. Rarity gives the obligatory continuity nod to The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone, and the two have a small spat because of course Rarity's dresses aren't to Gilda's tastes. Gilda gets tsundere and cute asking for Rarity's help, if she wants to, whatever. Gilda reveals she's come to ask Rarity to design the boffyball uniforms for Griffonstone's team. Rarity is dazzled by the prospect of designing uniforms everyone across the world will see, and in an amusing bit Gilda asks if she needs a minute to finish it up. The next day they meet up at the train station, and of course Rarity brings a mountain of suitcases with her.
At Griffonstone, things are still pretty crap, and Gilda says the kingdom has become obsessed with boffyball, building a huge stadium for it. With all the FIFA stuff that went on last year I'm not sure if this is meant to be a jab at second and third-world countries spending millions on World Cup stadiums, or if it's just coincidence. We see the boffyball team and here's a major problem - Greta is here. And she looks absolutely nothing like Greta did in the show. Okay, I guess you could say that it's another Greta, except A - Gilda talks like it's her friend from before, and B - if they are different, why give them the same name? It's called One Steve Limit, look it up. The griffon team of course fit the traditional stereotypes of fat, cool jerk, and nerd.
Rarity makes a remark that reveals she doesn't know what boffyball is, and Gilda exposits the rules for her and us. It's sort of like a combination of soccer and football, played with creatures called boffypuffs as the ball. And we get a cute little nod to Harry Potter here with a Fluttershy slideshow referenced, "Fancy Creatures and Where They Hang Out." They also clarify here that the puffs are considered part of the team, so animal abuse is a-okay! Coach Klaus arrives and has high expectations of Rarity to bust out some awesome uniforms, and insults the team a bit, surprising Rarity.
Rarity is making notes during practice and one griffon, Firegem, keeps screwing up and getting chewed out by the coach for it. Rarity speaks to him and says maybe this isn't his game, and he agrees, but the team needs seven players and everyone else qualified for the job had to drop out for some reason. Practice ends and Firegem is sentenced to five laps, with everyone else watching so they can see what a loser looks like. Rarity tells Gilda she has to talk to the coach about this, and she's "taken the Twilight Sparkle approach" and made a list of reasons why. Gilda ignores the list and admits the whole team agrees, but the coach not only started the team, but also got the boffyball rules changed to allow flyers to compete. Who are they to challenge him? Rarity says she's a friend who knows how to treat others with respect, and Gilda grumbles some more.
Gilda goes to see Klaus in his office, but before she can spit it out, he appoints her assistant coach since she's the best player on the team and he knows the team could benefit from her help. Gilda accepts and of course chickens out of a confrontation. Firegem is modelling for Rarity when Gilda comes in and screams at him to go to practice. Gilda breaks it down for Rarity that the team has worked hard to try and go to the championships, and she's not gonna let Firegem ruin it for all of them; Rarity of course is just upset Gilda is now on the coach's side. Suddenly, "Greta" runs up that another player is sick and now they're down a team member. Gilda demands they find a new one and says everyone loves boffyball, just find a fan and toss a jersey on them! Rarity says she knows exactly who to call.
It's game day and in a twist (I expected intro-pony to show up), Rarity has donned a jersey to play. Gilda is concerned, but the coach says she's got four limbs and a uniform, good enough for him. Also a good line from Rarity, "I make this sport look good." The game begins and Firegem gets regularly crushed, and the coach advises them to use him as a distraction, but Gilda objects. Rarity encourages Gilda to stand up to him, telling her that even if you admire someone, you don't need to be just like them. Gilda tells the coach she wants what's best for the team, but what's best is for them to work as a team, all of them, and the coach's way won't do that.
Klaus is outraged and bursts into the air, screaming for her to just play. However, the referee throws him out: flying is an immediate disqualification, and Klaus should know, he helped get flyers into the game. Klaus is sent packing, leaving Gilda in charge. Gilda quickly assigns roles and tells them to just keep sending the ball her way, which is entirely contradictory to the teamwork idea but okay. In an amusing bit it still doesn't work, and the griffons are losing bad, embarrassing after all the money spent on the stadium. Firegem suggests a risky play that never works, but this time it does, and Rarity gets hit in the head to score a point. Game over, Yaks 53, Griffons 1.
And then we get a cameo that steals the comic.
"Griffon team scored a point? But yaks wanted total victory. Yak win not perfect! YAKS SMASH!"
And that, Nick Confalone, writer for Party Pooped, is how you make the yaks funny assholes instead of just assholes. The yaks trash the stadium and Rarity offers to call a clean-up crew, but Gilda shrugs she doubts the griffons will need the stadium for a while, anyway. In the locker room Rarity had finished the rather underwhelming uniforms. Gilda says she had a talk with Klaus, they made up and he and Firegem are working out their differences by... Klaus mowing the grass as Firegem wears a dragon costume and blows bubbles in his face.
The griffons split, leaving Rarity to haul her trunks down to the train station to go home. "Humph. Go team." We have a short narration of a Princess Celestia letter, which hasn't been a thing since like, 2013, odd choice. The comic ends with Rarity beholding her customer's shredded boffyball jersey, ostensibly from the riot, and she shows off her new knowledge of the sport, adding she may try out for a team next year, or perhaps just get tickets, as she looks as a photo of the griffon team including her.
This issue... it's not bad. I wasn't blown away, but it works.
Compared to the last time we saw Rarity in Friends Forever, with the Cakes, she is much more in-character here, and brought something to the story other than just her knowledge of fashion. When she told Gilda that her idolizing Klaus doesn't mean she can't stand up to him is when I got the hook of this pairing, because Rarity for sure knows what it's like to do that, and it's a good lesson for Gilda to learn. Gilda herself was cool, not as snarky or funny as I remember but she worked. Overall it was an odd twosome, but the writer made it work.
Beyond that, Firegem was eh, Klaus was eh, and the other griffons were pretty much just there to be extras. Speaking of, Jay's art is okay for this issue. When I looked back his typical weird proportions were there, but all the griffons in this issue have cartoonishly exagerrated body types, from the fat Greta to the huge and muscular Klaus, so Jay's art worked for that. The yaks were okay, the mentioned cameo stole the show with a great joke, the worldbuilding with boffyball was neat, and there was some decent humor, though nothing laugh-out-loud.
Overall, it does just what Friends Forever should do - team up unlikely characters to teach each other some lessons in a fun and lighthearted way.
I love that this comic is at least as good as people expected.
I still want Fosgitt taken off pony comics forever. He's got no business doing pony with his Duck Tales style. Let him go do Duck Tales for Disney if he wants to do Duck Tales so bad.
This issue was overall meh. Also, IDW shows an alarming display of Not Knowing How Things Work--as someone mentioned in my blog post on the same issue, Georgia Bell was never shown the art for the comic until it was too late to do anything about it, and she was extremely upset about it. Especially as she went to the trouble of inserting the two named griffons from the episode--Greta and Grandpa Gruff--into her script for the comic, and Fosgitt didn't even bother to research them, which is how we ended up with Fatso and Generic Old Griffon instead of Greta and Gruff.
And I won't launch into my usual rant about Bobby Curnow. He just needs to go away.
3669975
Yup. Hates the fandom and yet is still allowed to make comics to sell to said fandom. WTH?
3670114 This is getting out of hand. IDW needs to fire everyone who's allowing for these people to stay. Get people who actually give two bits about doing a good job. Even the target audience deserves better quality than a bunch of writers who clearly don't bother to do their research.
3670243
Or transfer them to a different line like Mars Attacks, TMNT, etc. A line they'd actually quasi-care about.
3669975 I agree, Fosgitt should be fired, especially after that Clipart thingy in FF #22 (if I were in charge, he'd have gotten the pink slip
) I'd say, to quote someone on some arcade that I liked (which I disagreed with), this is probably just a perfect example of yokels ruining what could have been a pretty good idea (and was at first, the MLP comic series). And I believe IDW's become the LJN of comic book companies...I feel so bad for Georgia Ball and hope that things will go well for her in the future. 