Comic Review - Main Series #47 · 1:30pm Nov 7th, 2016
Time to end this comic and hope it will end the same way the election will tomorrow - with the jerkass businessman with no experience getting put in his place and the dubious but qualified career politician prevails.
We open on Filthy Rich being sworn in as mayor, with Starlight lampshading she's not sure what to call Mayor Mare now and asking if the first part is actually her name. He gives a generic victory speech punctuated by another building collapsing, and him insisting it was a planned demolition. The next morning Fluttershy is woken up by construction workers outside setting up to begin the new stadium Rich promised. She protests the location and the worker tells her to take it up with Rich. Meanwhile Rarity looks through her mail and spits out her tea; she storms into the mayor's office, angry at her business taxes being tripled. Rich justifies this by saying he had to raise taxes to do all the things he promised, but it's a temporary measure and they'll be lowered again as soon as he can. Rarity spits she realizes now what his promises are worth.
Applejack and Apple Bloom go to the opening of the rebuilt playground, and Apple Bloom approaches Diamond Tiara to play on the swings. DT admits she's sad her dad has been too busy to spend time with her, and he promised he'd be less busy after the campaign ended. He likes to make promises, but sucks at keeping them. The playground equipment breaks apart and Applejack confronts Rich on the crappy construction; he admits he went with the lowest bidder to try and keep costs down. The Mane Six and Starlight convene to discuss the chaos going on, and Twilight decides to go see Ms. Mare.
The group finds MM fishing and enjoying her retirement, and she's perfectly happy here. In a cute bit the Mane Six all voice their complaints save for Rainbow, who smirks and holds up her hooves since she's doing fine. They explain the budget is empty but taxes are higher than ever, and those mysterious building collapses are still going on. MM says no one pony can fix the city, and it's not like things were perfect under her, and even if she could, the voters elected Filthy Rich. Twilight asks if she could just be an adviser; MM says she does miss it sometimes, but she likes retirement and refuses. As they leave, MM whispers an apology.
At a town meeting Rich is bombarded with fruit and complaints. Huddling from the barrage, he shouts he'll promise anything to make them happy. That's what a mayor does, right? "No, it is not!" MM comes in and approaches the stage, saying that mayors can't promise bad things won't happen, but they can try to fix things when they do. The town begs her to come back but she again says the election was final. Then a rumbling and the source of the building collapses is revealed... a tatzlworm. Well, didn't expect that. Remember way back in my Friends Forever 14 review, when I said the fire snail reveal was an ass pull since fire snails are not established canon? This is just a step above that - at least it's a being established in canon, but where was the hints to it? And why is it here?
MM asks Fluttershy about the habits of tatzlworms, and she says loud vibrations scare them off. Then the construction company should have kept them away from Ponyville, dontcha think? Long story short the Mayor uses dynamite from the construction crew to scare the worm off, Filthy Rich says he wants to resign, and the two walk off.
Yeah, issue sucks. It seemed to be going in the right directions - Filthy Rich having the bad habit of promising ponies things to make them happy even if he can't deliver on them is a good character arc for him, and my anticipated reveal of his construction companies causing the collapses could have worked with that. Instead his character arc is glossed over and not resolved. Mayor Mare gets no development at all, she likes retirement but comes back for the good of Ponyville. A bit of lip service to her dedicating herself to public service for the town's sake instead of her own would be nice. And as said above, the tatzlworm reveal is just bullshit.
A very lackluster issue and a poor two-parter overall.
Either way these next four years will be terrible. The third parties also need to use this election as a sign that they need to pick better qualified candidates. Gary Johnson had a chance before he showed he had no idea about any foreign leaders and went for the ultra conservative view on immigration reform that cost him Latino voters. And Jill Stein, not only did she have no political experience, but her platform was far too out there in terms of ideas, thinking green jobs would just sprout up over night and that you can close down half the military without consequence. The Democrats will come out of this election wondering how they nearly lost the White House and a chance to control the Senate, and hopefully they'll wisen up and bar Hillary from running again in 2020 (if she wins re-election there is no hope for our country), meanwhile the Republicans better take a good long look at themselves, because Trump is just the end result of their decades of taking the ideas of Nixon and Reagan too far and neglecting any voting group that isn't white males (but they probably won't because the Democrats stupidly picked Hillary over Sanders, Warren, or Biden, any one of which was far more trustworthy to the voters).
As for this issue, I like how they pin the blame on Filthy Rich for everything he does wrong, but they never once point out the fact that many of the ponies complaining are the same ones who stupidly voted for him without asking how he was going to do what he said he was going to do. You know, because the voters are NEVER responsible for not asking questions and holding their politicans to better standards.
Really, why did this two parter have to exisit? It will become dated so fast once this election ends, and it'll only look harsher in hindsight if Donald Trump manages to win (at this point he's the underdog but especially considering his supporters I fear something will happen that will cause the polls to shut down before Hillary's supporters and the independents can get in). These past two issues could've and should've gone to stretching out "Ponies of Dark Water".
4288741 one of the few times I'm glad the political system is a clusterfuck, as it far too often prevents any big change from happening, which in this case is a good thing, as neither candidates should be trusted to make any real change, although the same could be said about politicians in general.
4294890 As the saying goes "Politicans are like diapers, both need to be changed often and for the same reasons."