COMICS, PART 2: Ted Anderson, Brenda Hickey · 8:44am Nov 22nd, 2016
Ted Anderson has the most writing credits of the IDW pool, yet I still can't figure out what his style is. He's got some bad stories, some good stories, a lot of stories in the vague limbo of "I guess it was okay" which weren't very memorable. If I had to rank them, I'd probably first recommend the ones with nicer artwork. Perhaps this means he leaves some of his scripts up to interpretation by the artist, and the better artists are the ones who can take advantage of this? I really wish I could tell you. He's just too inconsistent.
But if I focus on his better stories, I notice that he likes to ask questions about the characters. This works well in the Friends Forever series, where the relationship between two characters forms the story itself. Similar to how Price/Cook have a strong preference for AJ+Rarity, and really understand how to use them, I'd guess Anderson is a fan of Spike and Twilight. There's a nice one (Main Series #40) about younger Twilight having to raise baby Spike while being new to Celestia's school. That's an concept I'm surprised we've never seen in the show, so I'm glad someone wanted to do it. It has the nice touch of suggesting that baby Spike is the very same reason Twilight had difficulty making friends as a filly.
Pairing them with other characters, he looks for what they can learn from each other through their similarities and differences. What can Spike learn from Celestia (Friends Forever #3)? They each have a relationship with Twilight, get left out of adventures, and between them they can form a new student-teacher relationship. What can Spike learn from Zecora (Friends Forever #21)? They both are biologically different from the ponies in town, though Zecora is also physically distant while Spike spends all his time around them.
A quick diversion here. I learned something about writing Zecora, but it's not just Anderson's fault. All of the comic writers try to give Zecora some attention, but writing her rhyming dialogue feels so weird and jarring. Same for fanfics, even if the writer is good at poetry and rhyming. It breaks my immersion every time, because I feel like I have to read the lines out loud to hear the rhymes and beats. In the show it's already spoken by the actress, so it's just a cute gimmick you can notice or ignore. You don't have to change the way you're watching when Zecora appears.
Maybe it's just me, but Zecora in a comic feels even more dissonant than in prose. Perhaps because reading it out loud, with the beats and rhythm, makes me more aware of the passage of time in a still panel. Normally, timeflow in comics is vague and subjective to the reader, yet formed unconsciously in the mind, and placing a «clock» on it breaks that reader involvement! Well, this is just my theory, assuming others react the same way.
Ingeniously, Katie Cook solved the problem by using Zecora as the narrator for a Little Golden Books parody. It's adorable, and in context it's the text you're more likely to read out loud anyway. It's not «within» the panels and the timeflow, just hovering over and beyond it.
OKAY back to the review. Anderson is fond of these moments where the characters learn something new about each other, but they don't feel as powerful as they could. I think the problem here is that he treats the revelation as the end-goal itself, or as a side story that happens as a bonus while another conflict is happening. I've seen many fanfics fall into this same trap, so I can sympathize with Anderson having trouble here. The stronger character-building episodes of the show would use this development to untangle the conflict itself, showing that friendship solves problems and creates possibilities. Otherwise it just becomes the trite moral lesson, "don't judge a book by its cover."
The closest he gets to building towards that is the one where Twilight warps herself inside Big Mac's mind to learn how he copes with stress (Friends Forever #17). She meets the talkative homunculi making up his personality, like in that Pixar movie. It went the extra unexpected step of having Inner-Mac turn it around by having them all barge into HER mind to see what's inside. By examining herself, Twilight learns the lesson that she can apply to her own life, instead of just having a pony heart-to-heart then THE END. It's not quite show-level quality yet, but I think this writer has his heart in the right place.
I was very surprised when I read his Rarity & Maud Pie story (Friends Forever #29). This issue taught me two heavy lessons.
1. Writers often miss out on Rarity's potential.
2. Fanfic writers don't know how to use Maud. None of em.
I've written before on how I think Rarity gets misused, even in the show. The episodes focused so heavily on her dress-making career, we've lost her romantic adventurous side. What happened to the pony who dreamt about finding her prince and climbing to the top? I suppose the reasoning is now she's developed into someone more grounded, with a realistic struggle of expanding a small business.... but come on! Why be mundane in a utopian fantasy land of magical ponies? That would be like turning Twilight Sparkle into royalty who sits in her castle all day and complains about not going anywhere fun.... oh... 
The one exception was the episode "Rarity Investigates", and I loved it for more than just a parody. It makes sense that Rarity would dress up and play her role, turning the adventure into her outlet for melodrama...
Fabulous! 
Of course Rarity would be at a gemstone convention to socialize and catch up on trends and discoveries, not just locked away in her studio every day. Of course she's carrying around a chic adventuring outfit, just in case. And of course she leads the charge for Maud's spelunking adventure, because she's not simply the fragile pretty-girl who whines about getting her mane dusty or her hooves covered in snow. Right? RIGHT??
So she encourages Maud to rise to the challenge, because that's what Rarity does, helping her friends shine to their full potential.
Why is it the fandom latched on to all the wrong things about Maud from her introductory episode? She's not funny because of ROCK PUNS, or her ROCK POETRY, or her PET ROCK. She's expressionless, and everything she does or says around the others turns out completely awkward. Cough. She has autism. Yet it wasn't 20 minutes of nonstop cringe humor, because in every scene she was contrasted with Pinkie Pie! And at the end, that relationship was the important connection for everyone to sympathize with her.
Anderson's pairing here is brilliant, because Rarity can be social and subtle in all the ways Maud isn't. And she's more grounded than Pinkie Pie, who has trouble noticing what's going on around her. Maud isn't stupid, she's just bad with socializing. Maud isn't void of emotions, she just can't communicate them well. She's a character with strengths and weaknesses, not just a rock-flavored gimmick. And her weaknesses are hilarious when she has the right foil.
I laughed so much at these interactions. And laughs have been rare in the IDW MLP comics. This is the only issue I can recall that was genuinely funny. Not just a chuckle from a silly drawing or a pop culture reference. Ted Anderson gets so many points just for that.
The theme's not so subtle, since it's basically spelled out in a conversation halfway through, but I can't help but love the big reveal moment. Rarity reads Maud's diary and sees the other side of the story from Maud's mind's eye, each moment redrawn with Maud being as expressive as she thinks she is. As a full-page collage, it works in a way that couldn't be the same in animation or prose. It's a powerful moment, made timeless by allowing the reader's eye to wander around as long as needed, taking in the information in whatever order you choose. It's charming and funny all at the same time, since it may be the last time you'll ever see Maud making funny faces.
I had so much fun with this story, that I had to reread it multiple times. Only after the 3rd time did I stop smiling and realize it shares many of Anderson's common flaws. Why does this cheating antagonist merely surrender at the end without a fight? Why did the character-building moment have nothing to do with the solution to the adventure? Why does Rarity start writing in her diary only 3 panels after putting it down? Blahblahblah...
Alright, so there's many ways his writing could've been improved. But I don't care, it was still super enjoyable and even taught me lessons about writing these characters. It was worth it. Just for this one issue of the comics, I'm glad Ted Anderson was on board. I'll forgive him for his weaker comics.
I've mostly been using screenshots from the comics drawn by Brenda Hickey. I don't know if I have much to say, she's great and her art speaks for itself. Not quite as diverse and detailed as Andy Price, but she has a strong grasp of cartoony expressions. They're not excessive, nor wacky and exaggerated for the sake of looking cRaZy (Sibsy got too self-indulgent when storyboarding show episodes 
), but just enough to communicate everything needed in a scene. The bold outlines probably ensures that she doesn't bog down the characters with over-detailed linework.
Unlike some other artists, she can draw things other than ponies too. You'd be surprised.... well, I'll get to those later. She's great at using different angles and perspectives, so you feel like you're peering into the world of Equestria. Not just talking pony heads, but where they stand in relation to each other. This is why her expression work is crucial, because they need to communicate even when not the focus of a close-up shot.
I don't need to pick apart her art. I look forward to all her issues.
This is my last chance to be optimistic. I'm delaying the pessimistic comic reviews as long as I can. 
Sounds like:
I'm gonna hafta come up with a spirited defense of Jay Fosgitt sometime in the near future...
Mike
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who was.... oh right, that guy!
spoiler: he's not the one I hate.
Fosgitt's not the best, but not as bad as everyone claims.
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I have:
A fondness for the sort of "big-foot" style he uses. It reminds me of comics like Pogo or Barney Google ("with the goo-goo-googly eyes" as they used to say).
Mike