IDW Comics Review: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #40 & Friends Forever #26 (SPOILERS) · 2:39am Mar 31st, 2016
Been a while since I've had new comics to read and review!
Friendship is Magic #40
The cover of this issue is absolutely adorable: a montage of Filly Twilight raising Baby Spike. There's one bit in particular that is just the most squeetastic thing ever.
Spike just wants to be like his big sister. D'aww. 
The art in this issue is nice and clean. It'd be nice if this artist would take over ALL arting duties on this series. One weird thing, though: while for the most part, the comic is in a reasonably show-accurate style, there is this one bizarre shoujo manga style panel:
Sexy.
Anyway, this issue is about Twilight's first assignment as Celestia's personal student: taking care of baby Spike.
The issue opens with Twilight looking through an old photo album her parents sent her and reminiscing to Rainbow Dash. While looking through it, she tells Rainbow all about how Celestia surprised her on that first day by asking her to help care for the newly hatched Spike. She says she just wants Twilight to look after Spike "while she's busy", conveniently leaving out the obvious:
Princess Celestia is never not busy. Congratulations, Twilight. You just got promoted to unwed underage mother, and you have to take your baby to ALL YOUR CLASSES with you. Yay!
And yes, that's pretty much exactly the allegory this issue sets up with Twilight. It's kind of...jarring, given her incredibly young age. Oh, and there are cameos from Moondancer and Trixie. The pressure of raising Spike causes Twilight's performance in her classes to falter badly as her stress levels rise.
(Incidentally, during Twilight's story, the rest of her friends show up to listen.)
So after a disaster at a fancy Canterlot version of parent-teacher night, Twilight got fed up and threw a tantrum at Spike in her bedroom, calling him a nuisance and accusing him of ruining her life, complete with yet another random CLAMP-style panel of filly Twilight crying.
...and ANOTHER one later of baby Spike comforting her. This artist REALLY likes drawing CLAMP-style panels. 
So anyway, yeah, it's the story of how Twilight raised Spike and gave him his name, and it's a sweet little one-off that has a weird little allegory about teenage motherhood sandwiched in. And a few CLAMP panels for whatever reason. I liked this one!
Friends Forever #26
This issue features the pairing nobody ever saw coming...or wanted.
The Yaks want to forge a trade agreement with the Crystal Empire. Shining Armor and Cadance are all set to go to Yakyakistan as ambassadors. However, an emergency arises which needs all four alicorn princesses. Since Cadance is no longer available for the trip to Yakyakistan, and the Yaks would view a delay as an insult, Celestia decides to send along an alternate...
Blueblood.
Yyyyyyyyyyyeah. Why not just declare war on the Yaks and get it over with. 
Within the first couple of pages of his appearance, he insults train travel, breaks the crystal throne, and blithely insults Cadance (out of earshot) for being an orphan.
Needless to say, Shining Armor instantly hates him almost as much as Rarity does. Almost.
Shining Armor is concerned that Blueblood will offend the Yaks, and is determined to take the lead. However, it ends up being the other way around: Shining Armor offends Prince Rutherford right out of the gate, and Blueblood has to smooth it over.
Shining Armor makes all the same stupid mistakes the Mane Six made, with the same results. Apparently, Shining Armor didn't learn from Twilight's mistakes with the Yaks in Ponyville. Astonishingly, Blueblood did. 
Anyway, this comic makes Blueblood into slightly less of a shallow jerk, and ends with Shining Armor writing a friendship report to Princess Celestia. Not really much else to say about this one.
...I gotta pick both of these ones up.
I liked the flashback with Twilight and Spike. Raising him wasn't just a responsibility for Twilight but a chance to gain a friend as well. And for the second one. I think after that I'm stepping off the Blueblood Hate Train
I guess news travels really slow in Equestria for some reason.
I think the Twilight and Spike one looks cute. Though I do wonder how Twilight learned to balance taking care of Spike and her normal studies.
It is cute yes, though while I can see it that way it is even more cute if you see them as mother and son like I do, Spike wants to be like his mother.
3838231 It really does seem like she's more of a mother than a big sister to him, though in all honesty I think it's some combination of both.
3838265
Yeah I can see that. I'm fine with it either way really, I just lean more towards mother because she literally gave life to him and she raised him.
The friends forever was the writers way to give the fans the finger with making Blueblood actually useful, and I couldn't stop laughing the whole time because of that.
Lots of writers believe that there is more to Blueblood than meets the eye. That's actually my favorite interpretation of him for some reason, although what you describe here doesn't sound all that appealing.
3838211
The problem there is that the amount of work she had to put into raising him meant she had no free time or energy to make any other friends, and her falling behind in class because of this responsibility might have been the origin of her obsessive tendencies and barely sublimated fear of Celestia's assignments later in life.
Honestly, it feels like Celestia forgot how mortals work in that issue, at least in terms of age-appropriate responsibilities.
I haven't read this volume (or any of them), but if I did I don't think I would have even noticed the shojo-manga style in some of the panels because I read manga every single day and am used to it.
3838663 You'e got a pretty good point. Skywriter was doing a piece a while back on how Celestia is the mentor-equivalent of the general who's always fighting the last war. She was too harsh on Cadance because she didn't want her to end up like Luna, so Cadance becomes a bit of a wallflower. Then Celestia wants her next student to be full of confidence so she tells her next student how she's the great and powerful Chosen One to defeat Nightmare Moon, and we all saw how Sunset Shimmer turned out. So Celestia wants to make sure Twilight Sparkle doesn't become too arrogant and independent like Sunset Shimmer was. She can't win at this!
So... they gave Blueblood character...?
3840823 A modicum, yes.
3841074
Hey, considering all the, less than pleasant, fan portrayals of the guy from snob to complete monster, it could easily have been worse. Ironic though, we adore villains and often give them the Draco in Leather Pants which I'm sure annoys many, when they're committed horrific actions, and all Blueblood does is act like a snobbish stuck up jerk, and he's practically demonized. Sorry just, thinking out loud.