IDW Comics Revisited - Main Series #16 · 3:00am Oct 2nd, 2020
So the bookworm arc didn't start out very good, but Friends Forever was off to a somewhat rocky start with subpar art and a story that got hijacked by an OC. So maybe there was still a way to turn this arc around as the Friends Forever series seemed ready to kick off in high style with a DiscordxCMC issue. But did the arc here in the main series turn it all around? Well, let's find out.
We begin in the void from the end of the last issue, and Rarity and Rainbow Dash are trading blows over who is to blame for them being stuck there. Twilight chews them and Pinkie Pie out for not sticking to the stories or not remembering them, but after a little while the others tell Twilight to get up off her high horse and start using her imagination a little. They then decide that the best way to stop the book worm is to create their own story from scratch (somehow) in order to lure the book worm out of hiding.
Pinkie Pie takes the lead with a sort of mix between The Hobit, Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons that has her as a wizard leading an army to battle against zombies. After a lot of walking and a little action that goes nowhere, Twilight isn't able to use her imagination to come up with a solution, so Rainbow Dash takes over. After some vague superhero references it transitions to a Star Trek reference as the book worm is finally lured out after being in hibernation, or so it seems.
Meanwhile, the story book villains have (unsurprisingly) taken over Ponyville with no resistance. Scootaloo and Apple Bloom taunt the baddies about their sisters, inadvertently giving the evil queen the idea to take the Elements of Harmony to use for a crown. And what are Applejack, Fluttershy and Daring Do doing in the mean time? Nothing. That's right, our heroes are just cowering in the library instead of fighting because Applejack and Fluttershy believe they need the Elements of Harmony to stop the bad guys. Even Spike is just hiding out. Their only solution is to draw up a comic to alert Twilight and the others as to what's going on back in Ponyville, making their entire purpose pointless from a narrative standpoint.
Rarity takes charge of the story as she warps it into a noir parody similar to what we'd get in "Rarity Investigates" in Season 5 and that definitely did it better. Here, it just feels like so much else in this two parter, sacrificing substance for style. But somehow this works, the book worm finally emerges from its cocoon as it is now much bigger. And then all of a sudden the book worm that no one cared about is given a character. He's doing what he's doing because he's upset that there's no story where the worm is the hero. That's it. And Twilight and the others are forced to make up a story about him being the hero to get him to undo everything, hitting a reset button complete with an aesop about how a little bit of imagination is important. Yet it doesn't seem like this is something anyone's gonna bother to remember or even needed to learn.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the issue? The side plot of Applejack and Fluttershy with Spike and Daring Do is pointless, nothing is accomplished and it makes the entire point of the villains from the books pointless as well when they're only a threat because the heroes do nothing (heck, only the evil queen gets any time to do anything at all). And for the rest of the cast, while the dynamic thankfully doesn't include them all being unsympathetic and whiny, it doesn't really do much for them when they just move from story to story with little real provocation. The book worm suddenly becoming a character and becoming the hero is out of left field, only serving to basically hit the reset button to make this entire arc pointless. Was this arc really necessary? I don't even get what they were trying to accomplish here, even stuff like the Nightmare Forces arc or "Neigh Anything" I can understand the intentions behind (even if the execution came up short), but what was the point of this one even back in the day? Up to this point we'd had Queen Chrysalis coming back and kidnapping the CMC, Princess Luna having to face her past as one of the mane six was abducted, Big Macintosh being the star of his own story as we got to hear his inner thoughts, Shining Armor and Cadence telling the story of how they met and fell in love and pony pirates. Did they just run out of ideas here? This arc should've been scrapped all together, especially considering the next arc was so big and had so much potential, and could've easily filled the gap left by the two comics in this arc that weren't even good place holders. Just like its immediate predecessor, give this one a hard pass unless you're absolutely curious as to how bad it really is.
Whew, and there you have it. Unless you're a more recent fan and have never heard of it, you all know what's coming next folks. So come back tomorrow for what will be the biggest re-review yet, a look back at Main Series #17-#20 a.k.a "Reflections"!
We're very close to the comic that began with the best arc of MLP (Comics)
Yeah, this one I don't remember much of.
I think the biggest impact that came out of it are a few Kaa and Scootaloo pics/stories.