IDW MLP Generations #3 · 1:24am Jan 9th, 2022
In the previous issue in this five issue series, we were introduced to our antagonistic trio in the form of the S'monies, ponies created from smooze: Violet Shiver, Shadow Storm and Black Belle. And the issue was more or less them causing havoc throughout the School of Friendship and only just getting around to messing up Ponyville. But the G1 ponies were still nowhere to be seen despite the presence of the witch granddaughters. So, at about the midway point, do we finally see the pieces fall into place? Or has the series wasted too much time to get to the meat of things? Well, let's find out.
We begin with Fluttershy having a kindness class outdoors, which is interrupted by Ocellus and Silverstream making fun of Fluttershy and her animals. This actually causes them to go berserk, and Starlight mentions afterward she's been dealing with complaints for some time now. She decides to get help, but not in the form of Twilight or Spike. In fact, Trixie and Sunburst aren't anywhere to be seen in this series even though they're supposed to have taken up positions within the School of Friendship. No, Starlight goes to Mayor Mare, who is busy trying to sort out the chaos in Ponyville. Yet it's Pinkie Pie who comes up with the solution: Rather than focus on how everything got so messed up, work on getting everyone to be friends again.
Meanwhile in the G1 dimension, Grackle and Dyre celebrate their apparent success. But then they learn about the party and tell the S'monies to go mess it up. To that end, Violet Shimmer gets volunteered to work with Pinkie Pie on decorations. Twilight has come by to take Starlight's place in helping with the decorations, and notices something off about the way Violet Shimmer is decorating. She tells Pinkie to bring the streamers to the woods at night, providing a means by which Zecora (speaking in rhyme once again) can decipher what kind of magic is behind it. Except Zecora's experiments end in failure, and Twilight proposes the risky solution of absorbing the magic herself to study it.
Naturally, the magic corrupts Twilight and Zecora tells Pinkie to run. Ultimately, one of Zecora's potions is able to break the magic's hold on Twilight, and Twilight reveals that it's magic from another world. A world similar but also different to the one she and her friends know. Zecora then tells her to round up some of her friends and come back at midnight, and when the mane six are all gathered, Zecora creates a key to another dimension. This leads the mane six to the G1 world, and the issue ends with them seeing their G1 counterparts on a rainbow.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the issue? It isn't bad, but unfortunately it taking until the very end to even reveal the G1 ponies or crossover into their world means that this series is a failure. It wasted too much time on its set-up, focusing too much on Starlight and the School of Friendship even though they're of little consequence in the grand scheme of things. It almost feels like they were put in there to make up for being completely absent from the "Season 10" comics until the very last minute. If there were more than five issues, this wouldn't be so much of a problem. But waiting so long to get to the actual crossing over between heroes unfortunately turns this comic series in a ratings trap, trying to lure fans in with promises of seeing the G1 ponies but waiting until the fourth of five issues to do anything at all with them. We needed to be having this by the end of the second issue at the latest. Maybe they were hoping to do more and inexplicably were told to cut it down to five issues, but if that was the case the cutting should've been done to the set-up. Pick a better concept than the School of Friendship needing more teachers and don't use Starlight in place of Twilight for so long. Like the show itself, the school works better as side content, as if it were a separate spin-off. It doesn't work so well when you integrate it into the main story.
Well, there you have it. Even if the next two issues featuring actual good team-up moments, they're still coming too late into this series. You don't wait until after the halfway point to get to your teamup, even "Shadow Play" understood this.
