NEW IDW has announced G5 comics

[Leave a Whisper]

No...it just exposes that they don't know the first thing about G1 and don't have any viable source material to use as their reference. If they did proper research on the characters they wanted to draw, then they'd probably get the colours right, whatever style they used.

It usually annoys me when collectors put random words into the search engine and just believe whatever answer it spits out, but this...is on a whole new level.

I don't even know what to think.
(But go mad on the customs anyway xD)

Would those customs be titled Screen Error Morning Glory? 

Abbreviated to Scrorny.

Scrorny!

[Carrehz]

Dang, you're right, looks like they DID use that wonky screengrab as a ref! I was racking my brains trying to figure out where the heck the colours could've come from, since everyone else is pretty much the right colours and I couldn't recall Morning Glory ever going purple.. that cap must've come from a bad/low quality TV grab or something, I'm pretty sure her colours are consistent in the series.

Although, going off how they drew her wings, it looks like they DID look up more than one ref pic so... weird. Maybe someone else coloured it. Her colours aren't that off in the screenshot either... It's just odd since CC and Glory are drawn pretty much exactly how they appear in RaMC:

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

right down to the ribbon colours, and then there's purple MG and it's just... *shakes head*

[Wildshadow]

Oh geeze 

I'm surprised they didn't some how add Starlite running on the rainbow.

I'm glad I wasn't expecting to enjoy this comic. Now I'm only for the Volcano and any signs of Surprise, even if they mess her up.

[tailrustedtealeaf]

I'm afraid now that they're just going to color morning glory wrong when she appears in the actual comic! That feels like a pretty dire error. They have to provide cover artists with some sort of colors, right?

[Leave a Whisper]

I'd love a new pony in those colors. Reminds me of Twist. Maybe G5 will finally see a resurgence of flutter ponies? Make the wings translucent and colorful like sun catchers.

[Carrehz]

I'll admit, I'm not entirely sure how comic covers work these days, with all the variant covers and such. Some of the ones I've seen (not for MLP specifically but in general) definitely seem to have been a case of "We gave the artists free reign" idk if they'd have been regulating colours... but yeah you'd have thought someone would have pointed it out. :p I'm still curious as to why it's Morning Glory at all since the solicitation said it was *Rosedust* in the story? Not that there's anything wrong with them having both but I dunno, it just seems weird.

(Well.... actually I'd prefer they keep away from MG since she's my favourite and I don't want them to mess her up, but.. you know what I mean. )

I hope they get it right for the comic itself, at least. Heck maybe they could fix the cover before it goes to print if they realize it's messed up in time, somehow I feel like they probably won't bother to though x) I really wouldn't nitpick if it was just a slight colour error but come on... would it really have killed them to do more than 0.2 seconds of research on this? ;;

[Taffeta]

I can completely believe they did 0.2 seconds of research on it. This is the world we live in now. I swear, if people did more than 0.2 seconds of research on their pony finds and collections, I'd probably be able to retire. I'd certainly have a party. It's the fault of google. The instant answer is better than the one that takes time, and this is kind of the proof of it.

Also, I don't think they really think our generation will notice, or care, about this as an entity. And there's no real recognition or respect for G1 as a thing in the whole construction of this. They're just tools to try and construct their own version of the narrative. It's not really like they've seriously tried (from what we've seen so far) to build a cohesive cast or narrative for this collab.

Instead of having a selection of specific ponies and sticking to it and illustrating them in the way they have the M6, they've been all over the place.

[Leave a Whisper]

I can completely believe they did 0.2 seconds of research on it. This is the world we live in now. I swear, if people did more than 0.2 seconds of research on their pony finds and collections, I'd probably be able to retire. I'd certainly have a party. It's the fault of google. The instant answer is better than the one that takes time, and this is kind of the proof of it.

Also, I don't think they really think our generation will notice, or care, about this as an entity. And there's no real recognition or respect for G1 as a thing in the whole construction of this. They're just tools to try and construct their own version of the narrative. It's not really like they've seriously tried (from what we've seen so far) to build a cohesive cast or narrative for this collab.

Instead of having a selection of specific ponies and sticking to it and illustrating them in the way they have the M6, they've been all over the place.

I've a feeling this little "project" will go out with barely a whimper anyway. It certainly didn't come in with a bang.

[Wildshadow]

The next issue is another big snooze fest.... VERY predictable and all the modern things in the dialog of the daughters is ANNOYING.

I only like Violet Shiver because I love winter/snow/ice stuff...

Spoiler

To me it feels like they never watched The End of Flutter Valley with the dialog happening when they are reading the letter they got from one of the mom's. but maybe I'm wrong. it was hard to concentrate reading the whole transaction with that letter.... 

I fear I already know what's going to happen in the next issue 

[Dragonflitter]

My spoiler-y review!

Issue 1:

Spoiler

Okay so I always jokingly say some artists can draw people really well and some artists can draw animals really well, but rarely can one draw both. That certainly seems to be the case here, because the human characters look very well done and in proportion, but the ponies are not drawn well at all. Their heads are too big and their legs are short and stumpy, when is unlike the normal G4 style. There's some shots of the ponies sitting down where their legs just look like twigs they're sitting on!

I do like the designs of the two witches, though their characters aren't standing out to me so far. I like the page where they're preparing a spooky spell and then at the end of the page it turns out they were just making a pizza. That got a laugh out of me.

Trying to figure out the plot as we go, from the witches' dialog, but it's not easy... It seems like the "Gloom Volcano" exists in some sort of pocket dimension? Maybe? I can't think of a reason why they would start looking for ponies in "any dimension" unless that is the case. But it's not well explained. Why are the girls looking to enact revenge on ponies from any dimension, anyway, and not the dimension of ponies that actually banished them...? (Which I assume is the G1 ponies?)

Anyway, so the two teen witches have been stuck in this pocket dimension inside a volcano their whole lives, because they say the ponies banished their moms there after their grandma "played a prank on the ponies." Is this a reference to the G1 movie? Or something else altogether? Who knows?

The moms have left on some business at the start of the comic, so the girls are "home alone" as it were. They established that their magic doesn't work outside the volcano so they can't leave it. But then they send their little opposum henchmen out to get ingredients to make smooze, and somehow the smooze lets them do whatever they want, basically, which includes leaving the volcano, turning into ponies, and going to the G4 dimension.

The page where Trench the Opposum goes on the adventure to find the smooze ingredients is pretty funny! I laughed at 'rage frogs'

So we end issue 1 with the two girls (and Trench? That surprised me) dropping in on the G4 ponies in pony disguise, to pretend to be new teachers for the overcrowded school. I'm not that upset with the lack of G1 characters in the first issue. I know it can take some time to develop a story, and they had to take time to establish the witch characters and their history up to this point.

But yeah I do have a lot of questions. Are these really supposed to be the witches from the G1 movie? Or are these the daughters of some sort of alternate dimension version of them? The dialog about looking for ponies in "any dimension" establishes that this is a "multiverse" type of story, rather than the G4 ponies being the descendants of the G1 ponies.

I wanted to give the writers the benefit of the doubt, but it really seems like they don't know the G1 part of things that well, especially since Draggle seemed like such a sympathetic character, both in the movie and the G1 cartoon, and they don't indicate that in any way at all here in the comic. They could have done something similar, and made one of the witch daughters more sympathetic and one more mean? Or they could have had one of the teens teasing the other about how her mom isn't a 'real witch' because she was so weak-willed?

Anyway, this comic is nothing special, but I'd say it's on par with a lot of the other MLP comics. Just a little fun story for kids, nothing amazing but nothing horrible either. On to Issue 2!

Issue 2:

Spoiler

I still think it's really weird that a non-talking animal became a talking pony. Like, imagine if Angel the Bunny turned into a pony and started talking? ...wait okay they actually happened in one episode so I guess it's okay... 

I have to say the designs of the teen witches and Trench as ponies really annoy me... I felt the same about Tempest's design in the G4 movie. It seems like all the OC "edgy, cool" ponysonas that people make online. "Oooo my pony has a mohawk and scars and a crazy horn!" "Well my pony's eyes have black sclera!" Like, why do the witches in pony form have black spots on the face and white ice markings on the hooves?

And the biggest thing is that the designs don't tie into anything? In the last issue we established that one of the witches has fire magic. Why don't either of their pony designs have fire elements? If one of the witches has a lightning bolt-shaped unicorn horn in pony form, why doesn't she have lightning magic powers? Why doesn't the opposum-turned-pony have a trashcan for a cutie mark? These are basic design elements that even a novice designer would think of!

OH! Wait, never mind, I just got to page 8 of issue 2 and I see I made a mistake. These three ponies are not the witches and Trench in disguise!  I kinda assumed they were. But no, these are... I guess... smooze constructs? Which was never a thing in the original movie but oh well, in this comic we're going with the idea that the smooze can basically do whatever the witches want it to do.

So anyway it seems like the 3 "edgy" smooze ponies are at the School of Friendship while the witches and Trench are still stuck in the volcano. Trench gets a bath while we have one of the witches read another letter from their moms, which was frankly a really funny scene.

There's a SMALL reference to Draggle being the more sympathetic witch when one of the teen's says "I can tell your mom wrote this because mine would have been a lot meaner."

(If you think it's weird that I keep calling them "the teen witches" it's because I can't remember their names and I'm reading these two issues right now as I write this. I think their names are mentioned once each? If that much? One is named Dyre and I don't know the other's name. Trench is easy to remember because they say his name like every other page. Plus he's adorable.)

Okay but then we have a scene with the new Mane 6 (Sandbar and the non-ponies) gushing about how awesome the new teachers are and it made me laugh. Sandbar put random markings on his hooves in art class, to be like the new teachers, and Yona made cookies that shout "A CURSE UPON YOU!" in Haunted Home-Ec class and I just laughed so much. That is actually an attempt at good writing! Making fun of the standard story tropes and clever add-ons that still make sense in the pony universe!

So we end the issue with the three S'monies (Smooze + ponies... yeah, just go with it...) causing mayhem in Ponyville and disrupting community and friendship. A very standard G4 plot. (Oh no friendship is being ruined in Ponyville!....again!) And still no G1 ponies. I could understand not having them in Issue 1 as we establish the new characters, but they really should have been introduced by now. There's only 5 issues of this comic, right? Or 6? I'm starting to wonder if the "OP's" (Original Ponies, I know, I'm funny right? ) will just appear at the end to set things right and save the day?

Sigh. I'm sad. This story had a lot of potential but it's disappointing... Instead of having these "S'monies" we could spend more time with the teen witches and actually establish their characters more and learn their backstories so that we actually care about them (or at least find them interesting). I might not have enjoyed Tempest's design in the G4 movie but at least her character was well established and we cared about what happened to her.

[Taffeta]

Thanks for the detailed review, Dragonflitter

Spoiler

Upstaged by an opossum. Ouch.

On the End of Flutter Valley, @Wildshadow - that was quite dull, boring and neverending as a plot anyway. Probably a bad choice to use as a basis.

For the most part the witches and the smooze (and even Megan, honestly) didn't have much presence in the UK comic, not even around the time the movie was out. But I do remember there was one MLP&Friends issue which for some reason went into the whole idea of the smooze and ponies being attacked from it, including Majesty, who among others was knocked out by it. The weird thing about this story for me was that it was some time after the movie had left cinemas - I'm talking years - and it was just so...out of sync with the comic in general?

The description of this makes me feel the same.

Spoiler

The lack of G1 is kind of predictable, it's not really a crossover story but a G4 story which may have a G1 cameo at the end or at some point. Even using the smooze and the witches doesn't count if it doesn't fit.

I like S'monies though. Nicely done.

[tailrustedtealeaf]

Forgot to say the second issue came out the other day. Love your review, Dragonflitter!

Total snooze fest all around. It's weird seeing the new ponies drawn freshly but the mane 6 + Starlight being drawn to mimic stock images. I can point out some instances of tracing or heavily referencing popular google image results, but for some reason the new ponies don't get this treatment?

[Wildshadow]

My spoiler-y review!

Issue 1:

Spoiler

Okay so I always jokingly say some artists can draw people really well and some artists can draw animals really well, but rarely can one draw both. That certainly seems to be the case here, because the human characters look very well done and in proportion, but the ponies are not drawn well at all. Their heads are too big and their legs are short and stumpy, when is unlike the normal G4 style. There's some shots of the ponies sitting down where their legs just look like twigs they're sitting on!

I do like the designs of the two witches, though their characters aren't standing out to me so far. I like the page where they're preparing a spooky spell and then at the end of the page it turns out they were just making a pizza. That got a laugh out of me.

Trying to figure out the plot as we go, from the witches' dialog, but it's not easy... It seems like the "Gloom Volcano" exists in some sort of pocket dimension? Maybe? I can't think of a reason why they would start looking for ponies in "any dimension" unless that is the case. But it's not well explained. Why are the girls looking to enact revenge on ponies from any dimension, anyway, and not the dimension of ponies that actually banished them...? (Which I assume is the G1 ponies?)

Anyway, so the two teen witches have been stuck in this pocket dimension inside a volcano their whole lives, because they say the ponies banished their moms there after their grandma "played a prank on the ponies." Is this a reference to the G1 movie? Or something else altogether? Who knows?

The moms have left on some business at the start of the comic, so the girls are "home alone" as it were. They established that their magic doesn't work outside the volcano so they can't leave it. But then they send their little opposum henchmen out to get ingredients to make smooze, and somehow the smooze lets them do whatever they want, basically, which includes leaving the volcano, turning into ponies, and going to the G4 dimension.

The page where Trench the Opposum goes on the adventure to find the smooze ingredients is pretty funny! I laughed at 'rage frogs'

So we end issue 1 with the two girls (and Trench? That surprised me) dropping in on the G4 ponies in pony disguise, to pretend to be new teachers for the overcrowded school. I'm not that upset with the lack of G1 characters in the first issue. I know it can take some time to develop a story, and they had to take time to establish the witch characters and their history up to this point.

But yeah I do have a lot of questions. Are these really supposed to be the witches from the G1 movie? Or are these the daughters of some sort of alternate dimension version of them? The dialog about looking for ponies in "any dimension" establishes that this is a "multiverse" type of story, rather than the G4 ponies being the descendants of the G1 ponies.

I wanted to give the writers the benefit of the doubt, but it really seems like they don't know the G1 part of things that well, especially since Draggle seemed like such a sympathetic character, both in the movie and the G1 cartoon, and they don't indicate that in any way at all here in the comic. They could have done something similar, and made one of the witch daughters more sympathetic and one more mean? Or they could have had one of the teens teasing the other about how her mom isn't a 'real witch' because she was so weak-willed?

Anyway, this comic is nothing special, but I'd say it's on par with a lot of the other MLP comics. Just a little fun story for kids, nothing amazing but nothing horrible either. On to Issue 2!

Issue 2:

Spoiler

I still think it's really weird that a non-talking animal became a talking pony. Like, imagine if Angel the Bunny turned into a pony and started talking? ...wait okay they actually happened in one episode so I guess it's okay... 

I have to say the designs of the teen witches and Trench as ponies really annoy me... I felt the same about Tempest's design in the G4 movie. It seems like all the OC "edgy, cool" ponysonas that people make online. "Oooo my pony has a mohawk and scars and a crazy horn!" "Well my pony's eyes have black sclera!" Like, why do the witches in pony form have black spots on the face and white ice markings on the hooves?

And the biggest thing is that the designs don't tie into anything? In the last issue we established that one of the witches has fire magic. Why don't either of their pony designs have fire elements? If one of the witches has a lightning bolt-shaped unicorn horn in pony form, why doesn't she have lightning magic powers? Why doesn't the opposum-turned-pony have a trashcan for a cutie mark? These are basic design elements that even a novice designer would think of!

OH! Wait, never mind, I just got to page 8 of issue 2 and I see I made a mistake. These three ponies are not the witches and Trench in disguise!  I kinda assumed they were. But no, these are... I guess... smooze constructs? Which was never a thing in the original movie but oh well, in this comic we're going with the idea that the smooze can basically do whatever the witches want it to do.

So anyway it seems like the 3 "edgy" smooze ponies are at the School of Friendship while the witches and Trench are still stuck in the volcano. Trench gets a bath while we have one of the witches read another letter from their moms, which was frankly a really funny scene.

There's a SMALL reference to Draggle being the more sympathetic witch when one of the teen's says "I can tell your mom wrote this because mine would have been a lot meaner."

(If you think it's weird that I keep calling them "the teen witches" it's because I can't remember their names and I'm reading these two issues right now as I write this. I think their names are mentioned once each? If that much? One is named Dyre and I don't know the other's name. Trench is easy to remember because they say his name like every other page. Plus he's adorable.)

Okay but then we have a scene with the new Mane 6 (Sandbar and the non-ponies) gushing about how awesome the new teachers are and it made me laugh. Sandbar put random markings on his hooves in art class, to be like the new teachers, and Yona made cookies that shout "A CURSE UPON YOU!" in Haunted Home-Ec class and I just laughed so much. That is actually an attempt at good writing! Making fun of the standard story tropes and clever add-ons that still make sense in the pony universe!

So we end the issue with the three S'monies (Smooze + ponies... yeah, just go with it...) causing mayhem in Ponyville and disrupting community and friendship. A very standard G4 plot. (Oh no friendship is being ruined in Ponyville!....again!) And still no G1 ponies. I could understand not having them in Issue 1 as we establish the new characters, but they really should have been introduced by now. There's only 5 issues of this comic, right? Or 6? I'm starting to wonder if the "OP's" (Original Ponies, I know, I'm funny right? ) will just appear at the end to set things right and save the day?

Sigh. I'm sad. This story had a lot of potential but it's disappointing... Instead of having these "S'monies" we could spend more time with the teen witches and actually establish their characters more and learn their backstories so that we actually care about them (or at least find them interesting). I might not have enjoyed Tempest's design in the G4 movie but at least her character was well established and we cared about what happened to her.

Spoiler

I thought Trench was a rat, never thought of him as a opossum  but I guess I can now see it.  I don't like Trench, he's uninteresting and such to me. I guess since I find the daughters annoying, it trickles down to him?

I was going to say more but I'm too passionate about the G1 show and come off strong. 

On the End of Flutter Valley, @Wildshadow - that was quite dull, boring and neverending as a plot anyway. Probably a bad choice to use as a basis.

Spoiler

True but the witches are in it and as to why I mentioned it...

[Taffeta]

@Wildshadow - I meant as their basis, not yours Sorry

[Leave a Whisper]

This sounds like a mess, and not even in the surreal alice in wonderland or crack fic way. At least there's an entertaining possum.