IDW Friends Forever #11 Review

With 2014 ending and still no word about the end of the hiatus, the comics faced the unprecedented challenge of holding the fandom and satisfying its craving for pony content while Hasbro was busy weighing its options in the wake of parting ways with Discovery over The Hub. The main series opted for a two parter touted under the premise of giving Applejack some love, but left fans feeling disappointed with the route it took, meanwhile the Friends Forever series was recovering from the dud that was Friends Forever #10. Opting for a team up with Rainbow Dash and Spitfire, at a time when Spitfire's most recent speaking appearance had been the disastorus "Rainbow Falls", was this issue able to keep the IDW comics in line while the main series began its slow but steady downward spiral that it has perhaps only now shaken off? Well, let's find out.

Let's get the elephant in the room taken care of first, this issue marks the debut of Jay Fosgitt as an artist, and Heather Breckel as a colorer, both of whom have gone on to be very bad at their professions. Fosgitt claimed he had no idea about FiM prior to being hired by IDW, though why he didn't think to maybe do a Google search is beyond me. But this was the only time where that excuse held any water. Since then, however, he has stuck to this questionable art style, even as it's clear that no one likes it! I could buy this art style if it were a story from the perspective of say the Cake Twins, but that's not the case here.

Anyway, onto the story. Rainbow Dash is delivering mail in place of the usual delivery pony, when she gets a letter addressed to herself from Spitfire, asking her to come to Cloudsdale for a top secret mission. She flies off, leaving Scootaloo to do her job, and meets Spitfire, who reveals the top secret job is something the other Wonderbolts can't know about, teaching a group of young flight campers. And it turns out that Spitfire is bad with kids, at least when it comes to teaching them. She freezes up completely, and all her knowledge about flying goes right out the window. It does feel a bit odd for her to have this problem, as I'm sure The Wonderbolts have had plenty of young fans asking for advice, but at the same time there's nothing that indicates Spitfire has ever had to deal with that situation.

Rainbow Dash has no trouble with the kids, then after class is done for the day she and Spitfire go for a fly and have a chat. Turns out Spitfire's teaching method is the "Drill Sergnant McNasty" routine, and she does with The Wonderbolts specifically because it makes her feel in control and she knows they can take it. She can't do that with kids without damaging their confidence, but Rainbow Dash stupidly encourages her to be confident and get tough, then acts surprised when Spitfire decides to take that bad advice and show up the next day in her drill sergnant persona, thus causing the kids to all burst into tears. Rainbow apologizes for telling Spitfire to get tough, and Spitfire apologizes for accepting that bad advice. Rainbow then gets another idea and flies off.

The next day, Spitfire is waiting for Rainbow to show up. She does, and with her she brings bad news, a tornado is heading straight for the school! Spitfire immediately takes action, encouraging the kids to take cover while she goes to rope off the tornado and rob it of its circulation! in the process, Rainbow encourages the kids to watch, and they are all impressed by what they see as Rainbow explains what Spitfire is doing. Later, after stopping the tornado, Spitfire deduces that Rainbow whipped it up herself, and Rainbow acknowledges this fact! I'm sorry, but regardless of intention that's child endangerment! That would be like starting a fire because a sports coach or teacher can lead better in an emergency! And this never gets brought up again, even though Rainbow is lucky her tornado didn't blow off course and strike a populated area, and that Spitfire was up to the task of stopping it before it could strike the school!

Anyhow, it works, and the kids all line up to learn from Spitfire, while Rainbow agrees to teach the technical aspects of flying. Spitfire thanks Rainbow for her help, and then Rainbow goes back to see Scootaloo, apologizing for leaving her as she claims that even your idols can have flaws.

And that's the story, so what do I think of the issue? Well, Fosgitt's terrible artwork aside (the adult characters shouldn't look like kids, especially when the kids look like kids and it becomes hard to tell them apart), this issue is alright. I can buy Spitfire being a little uncomfortable teaching children, but I don't see why she couldn't just make up an excuse and send another Wonderbolt to take her place like say Soarin or Fleetfoot. It is interesting to learn that Spitfire didn't originally want to be captain, because she felt being a leader was boring, but she rose to the top anyway as she realized that leading is important and the best of teams need someone to guide them and set down rules, not sure if character development is the right word for that though. Rainbow Dash and Spitfire play off each other well here, but the bit with the tornado is never addressed even though it was a pretty reckless decision on Rainbow's part! To say nothing of her telling Spitfire to get tough on the kids, or Spitfire to go straight into the persona she knew the kids couldn't handle. With better artwork, this issue would probably be worth more, it's better than what came before it but it wasn't really the best way to pick up after Friends Forever #10 dropped the ball. Don't go over $5 on this one.