IDW's My Little Pony: FIENDship is Magic #1 · 8:08pm May 13th, 2016
So someone at IDW got an idea.
"Hey," they said, "people really like the villains in My Little Pony. They've got all these ideas about how they got started and what happened to them after they were defeated. Why don't we use the power that we totally have to decide what's canon in the show to write a stupid, boring series that will ruin them forever?"
And so... a thing was done. I know I've been taking my time on this one. If you know what's ahead, you know why. Because we're about to dip our hooves into the darkness... the darkness that is...
The Crystal Palace throne room is talking to itself again... ah, one moment, sorry. We open in the Crystal Palace throne room, and for whatever reason, Twilight and Cadance are having a conversation, but not actually in the panel. Small complaint, but there's really nothing interesting enough about the throne room or the fact that Twilight and Cadance are in it that you have to show it by itself for a panel before revealing them.
Cadance is asking Twilight to open the path to the Scary Door, and Twilight agrees because "this is important".
Twilight, that's... that's not true. You had Spike with you before. It was... kind of a big deal, actually. He saved the Empire and all? I mean sure you told him to wait at the top of the stairs, but he was still with you, and he did follow you down.
So they start down the stairs, and Cadance exposits that—
—excuse me, Mr. Whitley? I SAID EXCUSE ME, MR. WHITLEY? I CAN'T HEAR MYSELF OVER YOUR FORESHADOWING, COULD YOU PLEASE TURN IT DOWN A LITTLE? THANK YOU!
Right, now, where was I? Oh, yes. Cadance explains that Sombra had a lot of valuable historical material destroyed, and she wants to find out if there's anything left, so they unsealed this stairway because... it... leads outside? Why would you think this would be where you need to go? So they arrive at—
This is not where this staircase led before and you know it. How in the world did you get here? If you had to use a different spell, how did you know what spell to use?
I'm pretty sure it's not okay to want to model anything in your own castle after Sombra's. And I suspect the only thing you'll get out of Sombra's diary is bad fanfiction. Probably an alternate universe where he's the Element of Magic.
"Sombra… it was the only word I could remember when they found me. The Crystal Guard said I was alone out in the wastes just north of the empire. They asked where my family was, but I couldn't tell them. No matter what they asked, the only thing I would say to them was this one word. So they made it my name. And that is how I, the King of All Monsters, named myself."
From here a flashback takes over and...
Oh good it's true he can only say one word. So now we know the whole, dark truth. Sombra... is a Pokémon.
He literally knew nothing of the world, and had to learn all the things other ponies his age already knew, at which he claims to have been a fast learner. However, the other orphans refused to associate with him because he was "weird"—because he wasn't a crystal pony, because he was a blank flank, and because even after learning to speak, he spoke exclusively in the third person. Orphans can be so mean.
Then the one non-racist orphan, a filly named Radiant Hope, reached out to him.
In actuality, Hope was a twenty-three year old mare with dwarfism and dissociative identity disorder, but the crystal ponies hadn't yet discovered electroshock therapy, so they just kept her in the orphanage.
Sombra and Hope participated in typical "weird kid" behavior while all the other orphans continued to sneer at them and kind of distantly be assholes. They played actually non-weird kid games involving imaginary dragons, and possibly also imaginary dungeons, or at least an imaginary tower. They saved up jewels like change to buy crystal corn.
Then Hope started telling Sombra about the Crystal Faire, which is obviously where everything went wrong. Sombra was fascinated with the Crystal Heart, and Hope suggested they go see it.
Sombra, startled by the reflection of himself as... er, himself, backed up into "Princess Amore", a non-alicorn princess. That's... good to know. She told the two that the Crystal Heart's reflection shows what's in a pony's heart, which is super convenient. Hope thought that meant it shows the future, but Hope was slightly unhinged, and said she saw herself as a princess.
Amore asked what Sombra saw, and he got evasive, telling her he just saw his shadow. Amore clearly didn't buy it, and told him that whatever he saw, it was within his power to change.
Hm. That's a good message. I wonder whether he... oh. Right.
Four days later...
Hope's entry caused Sombra to become a Ren and Stimpy character, and they got ready to go to the Faire. However, Sombra suddenly realized he couldn't move his legs.
A doctor was brought in, but couldn't find anything wrong with him. Over the course of the day, he looked sicker and sicker. Hope stayed by his side, falling asleep after he did.
The next few years of his life are summed up as "this happened every single year".
By this point, he's not looking so good. Also, I wanted to comment on the fact that he has an Attack on Titan poster when it's probably a few hundred years before the invention of the television? I just thought you should know that. Then completely out of nowhere this happens.
So he became a giant shadowmonster because he really wanted to go to a party. Yeah, good, no, that's a great origin story.
Hope managed to return him to his previous pony shape, and got her cutie mark, which was the Caduceus, the staff of Hermes, symbolic of trade, diplomacy, trickery, and theft.
...yes, okay, I'm being pedantic, but only because nobody else bothers to check. The Caduceus is used in modern times as a medical symbol, probably because it looks better than the Rod of Asclepius, and maybe also because there's some overlap between the meanings. For instance, Hermes helped to deliver the dead to the underworld—okay, bad example.
Anyway, it turns out Hope had the ability to heal any ailment. This quickly attracted some attention. She came to show Sombra a letter with the seals of Celestia and Luna, and he freaked out. He ran out into the frozen wastes until he collapsed. And then a pointy photonegative voice started talking to him.
...have you ever had one of those moments where you just don't know how to interpret what you're seeing? I believe I need a minute. Here, watch one of my terrible PMVs. It has nothing to do with the comic, it's just to distract you while I organize my thoughts.
Now that you're done with that... it's time for the Top Ten Jokes About This Reveal!
10. "Search your feelings, you know it to be true."
9. "He's a real chip off the old geode."
8. "I know Rock/Dark typing isn't great, but there are uses for it."
7. "Just a heads up, dragons are our natural predators. I don't know if that will be relevant in the future, but it's just a good thing to keep in mind."
6. "You also have a twin brother, but we haven't spoken to him since he ran off with some farm pony."
5. Somewhere, a dressmaker is weeping.
4. "Tell me about my other relatives... the whole family spire."
3. And I thought my last family reunion was rocky!
2. "I'm sorry, I've been taking my family for granite." (Courtesy of RK_Striker_JK_5!)
And my number one joke about this scene...
"A rock is my mom?!"
The crystal told him (that is never a good way to start a sentence) that he was an umbrum, a shadow pony. The crystal ponies feared the Umbra, so they created a weapon to use against them, the Crystal Heart, and sealed them away. They sent Sombra... how, and why they sent an amnesiac child instead of a competent adult, is not explained... as a means to free them, and they sealed away his magic so he wouldn't die, because it makes him vulnerable to the Heart.
Yeah, great job there. If it weren't for an insane crystal pony with a miraculous healing ability just happening to befriend him, he'd already have been dead and you'd have been out of luck.
Now that he knew the truth, the crystal unlocked his magic, turning his horn into the even-more-phallic-than-usual thing seen on the show. He immediately ditched his pony body, becoming the smoke monster from Lost—I mean from the season 3 opener. The crystal informed him that before the umbra could be freed, Sombra would have to destroy the Crystal Heart.
Sombra objected that he would lose his only friend, and his mother informed him that if he didn't remove the Heart before the next Crystal Faire, it would destroy him. I mean, you know... unless he left the Crystal Empire... or something... the Heart doesn't have unlimited range, does it? I mean, I know the state of the Empire is reflected across Equestria or whatever, but if you can create a magical nuke that covers the whole continent and wipes out a specific group of monsters, then there's really no excuse for anything ever being a threat to national security again.
So Sombra instantly caved and went to swipe the heart, but as he was stuffing it into a bag, Princess Amore showed up. She said she came because someone needed her help. Sombra, demonstrating that he really had no idea what the heck he was doing, protested that he didn't need her help.
"Then why did you believe I was talking about you?"
Uh, because you were talking to him, and he was the only one here? Why do these wise protector archetypes always trot out that smug bit of circular rhetoric?
She openly admitted that she knew all along that the Crystal Heart was killing him, and never explained the situation because... look, we can infer that she's somehow related to Celestia, let's just leave it at that. He was convinced that she wanted to hurt him for some reason, can't imagine why, and cut her off with a blast of magic.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with the question Sombra is asking the princess he just murdered.
Apparently, Hope arrived just in time to see what he did, and was horrified. She said that she would use a little healing spell to fix it. What distresses me most about that statement is that in Equestria, reversing petrification doesn't even seem to be that hard, so I can't really make any jokes about it.
She then told Sombra to run before the guards came after him and hurt him, which he found appropriately amusing.
Couldn't bring yourself to... you just shattered her into a million pieces! If she was still alive after being petrified, she's certainly not now! You even took the time to taunt Hope about it! How in any realm is this not considered destroying her?!
Hope ran off to plead with Celestia and Luna, leaving all that other stuff to happen. Sombra narrates:
"I enslaved the crystal ponies to raise my umbrum army, but now time runs short. I know I am no match for them, but they will not save these crystal ponies. I will make them pay with a thousand years of suffering. And Radiant Hope, she'll suffer the worst. She betrayed me to save this 'home' of hers. I've developed a new spell just for her. How bitter will her victory taste when she has no home left?"
That's the last page of the diary. Come to think of it, that really wasn't a diary. A diary is, as the name implies, supposed to record day-to-day events. That was more of an autobiography.
And only now do Cadance and Twilight decide that this place is a little bit creepy, and they should get out as quickly as possible. And so the comic ends as... oh.
No, no no no, no thank you, we don't need any, goodbye. We'll call you when we get to that issue, but for now, just stay dead. This was really not a good place to start if you're trying to convince us that this Fiendship thing was a good idea.
There are so many interesting things you could have done with giving Sombra a backstory, and this simply was not one of them. You could argue that there's some merit in the transition from a helpless victim to a mighty oppressor, except that Sombra never does come off as the latter; he never really acts like he has a choice in the matter, in the end of this issue he's talking about how he knows he has no chance to win, and in the show he barely has any presence at all. Plus, the story built up this idea that he was terrified of his destiny, but when the time came, he literally charged headlong into it, and ignored the ample opportunities he had to find an out.
And then... there's the Umbrum. There are a lot of problems with the idea of the Umbrum. They really only exist to give Sombra a cheap bridge to the dark side. They're shadow monsters from another world. Sound familiar? I'd go so far as to say their presence in this comic is a real Nightmare. Lack of originality aside, they also continue an unfortunate trend from the Nightmare Rarity arc. This marks the second time a major villain has been revealed not to have really been a pony at all—and, in the main continuity of the show up through season 4, there were only two major villains who were originally ponies.
It may or may not be clear exactly why that's a problem, but I will come back to it, soon, and a lot. There are a lot of individual pieces to this puzzle, and I'm afraid I might not be done talking about them until I'm done with IDW altogether, but I hope I'll have clarified at least a portion of it by the time I've finished Fiendship.
As for the other characters... I'm kind of ambivalent about Princess Amore, really, about everything she was and did. Radiant Hope was... decent-ish? She was quirky, let's put it that way. I can't help but feel they would have both been better used in a different story.
Overall, Sombra's origin is just a failure, not unlike himself. But next time, we'll be moving on to the origin of a true conqueror, and a true monster...
Yeah. This one doesn't sell Sombra''s origin as any way tragic. More inevitable and, "Get on with it!"
Fortunately, I'm pretty sure the comics aren't canon for the show.
I thought the Chrysalis one was... tolerable. Not really interesting as a story in and of itself, but having Chrysalis born from a magic tree actually makes a bit of a parallel to the Elements of Harmony that someone could play up in a fic. Tirek was dully cliche, the Sirens were a bit nonsensical but harmless, and Sombra and Nightmare Moon were hot garbage. A lot of this was for reasons you seem to be starting to go into here, about making it so none of the pony villains are the 'real villains' in ways that would be stupid even if that giving up of agency wasn't problematic in itself.
That's what I thought when I read that, too, since it's not just one word, it's also his name.
This never made sense to me. I guess they sealed them in the crystal. But if there are multiple shadow ponies in there why are they talking in the singular?
Which directly contradicts the way the dialogue in that episode indicates it was Celestia and Luna sealing him that turned him into a shadow creature.
As near as I can tell, it has to do with the American Marine Medical Corps. You see, the person who designed their flag was trying to create a general non-combatant flag that could be used for any such groups, not just the medic, and remembered that the Greeks used to signify this with a flag indicating a ship was a merchant rather than fighting vessel, so he picked the Cadaceus. Then lots of other people started borrowing the symbol for their medical stuff because it looked cool and they didn't do any research. That's why you primarily see the Asclepius/Cadaceus mix up in American hospitals (I'm sure a few other places have made that mistake independently, but it really is more common in the USA).