Comic Review - Friends Forever #28 · 5:30am May 28th, 2016
Luna and the CMC? How can this go wrong? ...Jeremy Whitley, Jay Fosgitt, Heather Breckel. Well if you wanted to actually screw up this concept, that's about the best chance you could give it.
We open with Luna running to see Celestia. Apparently Celestia has been negotiating a treaty between the griffons and the yaks, but the talks went south and now they're going to war. Um, okay. I'm gonna jot this down under "plots the comic writers have ideas for but never actually explore." Celestia now has to cancel some sleepover party Canterlot was holding for foals while she goes to intervene and salvage negotiations. Luna says she'd happily take Celestia's place at the peace talks if she was up to it, and in a hilariously badly drawn expression of realization, Celestia realizes the obvious.
Luna protests in an argument that does not need a full page to encompass it, but Celestia insists foals love her. They meet the crowd and sure enough they all mention they love Luna more than Celestia. I find it interesting that Celestia has no problem with this favortism but okay. Twilight is skeptical of Luna handling this, but Luna assures he she can, her confidence boosted by the adoration. Among themselves in the crowd, the CMC mention Luna looks nervous, and surmise she's probably never been to a sleepover since she's usually out and active during the night. We also get a neat nod to their individual eps with Luna with Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom talking about them, and Scootaloo brushing if off because she doesn't want to talk about it. The Crusaders tell Luna they'll help her handle things, and first up is crafts.
Two page spread of the foals playing while Luna looms over them in what is probably supposed to not be creepy but it is. They then play an odd game where they... walk on a tightrope? Luna asks what's next, and the CMC tell her to read the group a story. Apparently the three OC ponies that were in the tightrope game that I didn't mention are characters, now. There's two bully ponies and a lone friendly pony. The two make fun of the pony for his cutie mark, which is... a skull... okay yeah that's just weird. Luna returns with a book to find the lone pony, Thestra, has run off, and goes to find him since the castle is dangerous.
The CMC follow Luna as she searches, reasoning that it seems to be a cutie mark problem, which is their schtick now. They find the pony but Luna's RCV makes him cry, so the CMC calm him down. The pony explains he got his cutie mark only last week, and has been mocked for it. Suddenly, it's a monster... a mirrorca, a whale made of magical reflective mirrors. Huh? Thestra has an idea to defeat it and...
He turns the cast into skeletons.
Apparently his special magic can make a pony's body save for the skeleton invisible.
...I'll save this for the ending.
With the orca's skin gone Luna blasts it and everyone celebrates as Thestra turns them back to normal. And the comic ends with Jeremy rather blatantly recycling the ending of Friends Forever #20 that he also wrote, with Luna narrating about how she didn't think she was fit to be looked up to, but friendship is magic, blah blah blah, obvious moral.
This issue sucks.
Once again Friends Forever fails at what should be its focus - examining the dynamics of characters in new ways. We've seen Luna meet with the CMC one-on-one, but never as a group. And the potential is totally wasted. The CMC do nothing in this comic but advise Luna on what to do, and it's very out-of-character for Luna to suddenly be so bad at handling kids when she's a dreamwalker known for fighting nightmares, and all three CMC-Luna episodes have happened by this point. The idea of the CMC coming together to help Luna solve a problem she can't handle on her own is fine, but this comic barely utilizes it.
The second half of the comic shifts focus to Thestra, and goes downhill for it. We don't care about Thestra, we care about the CMC and Luna. And, sorry to say, yeah, he is weird and creepy. The bullies who mocked him are by no means in the right to do that, but the kid's talent is turning ponies in skeletons! That is freaky! It's like your eight year old neighbor complaining his classmates make fun of him for drawing, and then he shows you his sketchbook and they're like, drawings of people being killed and tortured. We further get no resolution on the bullies, so while Thestra may feel better about his cutie mark and talent, there's no reason to believe the bullying will stop.
Beyond that the issue is just dull. The sleepover backdrop serves no purpose but to make Luna uncomfortable, which at said above is inconsistent with her character. The Celestia-griffon-yak thing seems a perfectly interesting comic in its own right, but it's just used as a plot device to get rid of Celestia. And why, it's not like this story couldn't have been done without writing her away, it felt no need to do that for Twilight or Cadance. Nothing really happens until the Thestra stuff, we're just watching the group hang out with few attempts at humor.
Additionally, Jay Fosgitt's art is particularly lazy here. It seems in every page that Luna's body is just one long curve from mane to flank with no distinct neck or torso, and many characters assume too-human poses.
Congratulations, IDW. You finally did a Luna comic I didn't like. That takes an impressive (lack of) talent.
No mention of how Skeleluna looked like an undead ostrich? Because Skeleluna looked like an undead ostrich.
Total agreement re: the sucktivism of this comic. Minor correction: pretty sure Thestra's a filly, not a colt. As if it matters.
Why do the writers keep using Friends Forever as a dumping ground for their poorly made OCs that no one cares about? People don't like bad OCs in a comic series that isn't supposed to focus on them. If they really want to do that so badly (and why they would want to is beyond me) they should make a seperate series of comics.