NEW IDW has announced G5 comics

[Leave a Whisper]

Aww, Blackbelle is what I called my favourite plushie. Cute to see MLP using the name. But I admit I'm not sure what any of this has to do with G1?

Also "granddaughters of Hydia" when's this meant to be set, then? :o That'd seem to indicate it's fairly far into the future, but then how do the G1 ponies come into it...? *confused* Why not just use Reeka and Draggle and have done with it. Well, I'm sure it'll make sense in context.

(How reliable are IDW's solicitations, does anyone know? I'm only really familiar with Boom Comics and their solitications weren't always reliable... sometimes they'd be perfect synopses and other times the actual story was completely different to what had been soliticited.. Just wondering so I know how much stock to put into these Generations solicitations. )

You expect Hasbro to conform to any sort of plot consistency?    I'm also not seeing either of these alleged granddaughters.

[ThermalMoon]

Grackle and Dyre, the young granddaughters of the evil witch Hydia, have set out to destroy all of pony-dom! And even worse-their plan might be working! Friendship begins to fall apart as their lackeys Black Belle, Shadow Storm, and Violet Shiver wreak havoc in Ponyville!

Granddaughters? I always assumed what was left of the gloom clan were just Hydia, Reeka, and Draggle. With their relatives having their souls attached to the paintings and living there, possibly as ghosts. But I suppose that's just speculation. Anyways, I'm curious to see where they go with this direction. I'm going to guess Hydia is pretty old in this G1 future, at least, I'm certain its the future. Concept six aside, I don't think Reeka or Draggle will play much of a role, probably more as background characters than anything. Plus I don't see any mention of them.

Oh, and I saw in the MLP FiM wiki that the G1 Smooze may be coming back. I'm not sure if it's true or not, but if it is, I think it may be too early to be bringing it back. The Smooze appeared in the MLP: Movie (1986) and didn't return for the TV series in MLP N' Friends. I'm not saying it shouldn't or it couldn't, I just think it's too soon to bring it in for this crossover. But that's just my opinion, I'm still interested to see where they go with this.

[Leave a Whisper]

Grackle and Dyre, the young granddaughters of the evil witch Hydia, have set out to destroy all of pony-dom! And even worse-their plan might be working! Friendship begins to fall apart as their lackeys Black Belle, Shadow Storm, and Violet Shiver wreak havoc in Ponyville!

Granddaughters? I always assumed what was left of the gloom clan were just Hydia, Reeka, and Draggle. With their relatives having their souls attached to the paintings and living there, possibly as ghosts. But I suppose that's just speculation. Anyways, I'm curious to see where they go with this direction. I'm going to guess Hydia is pretty old in this G1 future, at least, I'm certain its the future. Concept six aside, I don't think Reeka or Draggle will play much of a role, probably more as background characters than anything. Plus I don't see any mention of them.

Oh, and I saw in the MLP FiM wiki that the G1 Smooze may be coming back. I'm not sure if it's true or not, but if it is, I think it may be too early to be bringing it back. The Smooze appeared in the MLP: Movie (1986) and didn't return for the TV series in MLP N' Friends. I'm not saying it shouldn't or it couldn't, I just think it's too soon to bring it in for this crossover. But that's just my opinion, I'm still interested to see where they go with this.

You can't have a family tree that um...infamous without popping out kids.  And their cousins were definitely alive during the song.

[Dragonflitter]

My question is... are they Reeka's kids, or Draggle's? o.0

[Leave a Whisper]

My question is... are they Reeka's kids, or Draggle's? o.0

Perhaps one of each?

[Ragamuffin]

My question is... are they Reeka's kids, or Draggle's? o.0

Perhaps one of each?

I was wondering if they were their kids, but then again, Hydia always insisted that she wasn't their mom, right? Or was it just to not *call* her mom?

[Carrehz]

Yeah Hydia was definitely their mum, she just didn't want to be called that :p

I was wondering whose kids they were, too. I'm betting one for each sister.

Still think it's weird they're going this route, it seems so needlessly complicated. Why not just use Reeka and Draggle themselves? So weird.

[Leave a Whisper]

Yeah Hydia was definitely their mum, she just didn't want to be called that :p

I was wondering whose kids they were, too. I'm betting one for each sister.

Still think it's weird they're going this route, it seems so needlessly complicated. Why not just use Reeka and Draggle themselves? So weird.

Maybe they're too old? Who knows.

[Firehooves]

Oh boy....

This is interesting...

I wonder how they will bring the generations together, as well as how they will portray the g1ponies

[Taffeta]

Yeah Hydia was definitely their mum, she just didn't want to be called that :p

I was wondering whose kids they were, too. I'm betting one for each sister.

Still think it's weird they're going this route, it seems so needlessly complicated. Why not just use Reeka and Draggle themselves? So weird.

Maybe they're too old? Who knows.

It probably depends how long the time span is...or if they're doing a weird time skip thing...or whatever.

I don't pretend I'm keeping up with the details of the plot, but if it's going to use a random mishmash of G1 ponies who mostly existed before the movie happened, it's hard to understand why Draggle and Reeka wouldn't be involved. Unless they're going to go down the dark path of them being smoozed to death or something. But if the G1 ponies have come through a timeskip, that might be different.

TBH I don't think this is going to be about G1 in the slightest though. They'll push the names and images in there to try and cash in on the popularity of the retro, since G4 is a dead fish now and they'll keep beating every drop out of it they can because they can't think up anything else (G5 is kind of proof of that, it's very blah compared to FIM).

That being the case, it probably doesn't matter if there's any continuity to the original witches. A single line aside to 'explain' that they're related is probably as much attention as it will get. I mean, there are also some ponies involved in the villainy too here, right?

 It's a shame they didn't use the original G1 cast that were in the movie, that might mean something...but I guess it's also true that it's not really aimed at people who grew up with G1.

[Leave a Whisper]

Yeah Hydia was definitely their mum, she just didn't want to be called that :p

I was wondering whose kids they were, too. I'm betting one for each sister.

Still think it's weird they're going this route, it seems so needlessly complicated. Why not just use Reeka and Draggle themselves? So weird.

Maybe they're too old? Who knows.

It probably depends how long the time span is...or if they're doing a weird time skip thing...or whatever.

I don't pretend I'm keeping up with the details of the plot, but if it's going to use a random mishmash of G1 ponies who mostly existed before the movie happened, it's hard to understand why Draggle and Reeka wouldn't be involved. Unless they're going to go down the dark path of them being smoozed to death or something. But if the G1 ponies have come through a timeskip, that might be different.

TBH I don't think this is going to be about G1 in the slightest though. They'll push the names and images in there to try and cash in on the popularity of the retro, since G4 is a dead fish now and they'll keep beating every drop out of it they can because they can't think up anything else (G5 is kind of proof of that, it's very blah compared to FIM).

That being the case, it probably doesn't matter if there's any continuity to the original witches. A single line aside to 'explain' that they're related is probably as much attention as it will get. I mean, there are also some ponies involved in the villainy too here, right?

 It's a shame they didn't use the original G1 cast that were in the movie, that might mean something...but I guess it's also true that it's not really aimed at people who grew up with G1.

I dunno. They sounded pretty lively after being dumped into the volcano.  Lol. But I agree 100% that they should have used the movie ponies.

[Carrehz]

I just find it weird, it's meant to be a G1 crossover thing and then they make up a bunch of new characters instead of using the established cast? They didn't do this with the Transformers crossover comic, right? I saw some panels from that and it looked like the usual cast, no new guys. :/ Like, I'm not asking for a strict adherence to the G1 cartoons here, I don't mind keeping things flexible, but what is the point of doing a cross-gen thing if you're just going to be using stuff loosely based on G1?? I don't get it.

[Taffeta]

I just find it weird, it's meant to be a G1 crossover thing and then they make up a bunch of new characters instead of using the established cast? They didn't do this with the Transformers crossover comic, right? I saw some panels from that and it looked like the usual cast, no new guys. :/ Like, I'm not asking for a strict adherence to the G1 cartoons here, I don't mind keeping things flexible, but what is the point of doing a cross-gen thing if you're just going to be using stuff loosely based on G1?? I don't get it.

It is possible the writers for this are the same as the original G4 comic. Therefore they're writing what they are comfortable with. But just as someone who grew up with G1 - I feel like if you're referencing something that happened in G1, with G1 characters and such, use the right ones? Use the actual witches and the actual ponies?

Let's not forget though that age-wise, the kids who grew up with G1 are not going to be the target demographic. The target audience probably don't know or don't care that much about those details. So maybe it's just not important, or maybe it's this eternal obsession we see in media at the moment to take something original and add a new 'twist' to it. Like writing professional fanfiction? I feel there's a fair bit of that around with all the rehashed remakes we've seen in recent years.

I don't actually like the movie, and I don't really care for the characterisation of the original ponies involved in it, as, aside Wind Whistler, I prefer the UK comic iterations of all of them. BUT...am I right in thinking that all the concept six can now be bought as retro ponies? So could that be a factor? Firefly, Surprise, Posey, Twilight,  Sparkler...Applejack. Yes, they can. Whereas...that's not true for most of the characters in the movie? Could that be a factor in choosing these?

Even if that is the case, though, I'm more bothered by the repackaging of G1 into the forced framework of G4 (ie by using the concept 6 in a story they don't belong in) than I am the comic using a G1 concept. It doesn't matter how you dress it up, it's still trampling over people's childhoods :/

[Carrehz]

I don't care so much which ponies they use... If they're going with the movie setting then it'd probably make the most sense to use Wind Whistler, Morning Glory etc, but the concept ponies, sure, okay, why not. I could see the Basic Fun toys playing a part here too, that definitely seems plausible.. I don't *think* any of the ponies in the movie, have been remade by Basic Fun (yet?). Though tbh I think they're less bothered about which toy is on the shop shelves, and more concerned with which ponies the G4 crowd will ~recognize~

but that aside, it's all these new chars I don't *get*. Like I said, maybe it'll make perfect sense when we've actually read the story, I don't know, but just going off the info we have now... why make up *new* witches? What difference does it make?? It just seems needlessly overcomplicated... If they just wanted to use the general idea, and no specific characters etc from the movie, then why market it as a G1/G4 crossover in the first place...? I just find it all weird.

[Ragamuffin]

I don't care so much which ponies they use... If they're going with the movie setting then it'd probably make the most sense to use Wind Whistler, Morning Glory etc, but the concept ponies, sure, okay, why not. I could see the Basic Fun toys playing a part here too, that definitely seems plausible.. I don't *think* any of the ponies in the movie, have been remade by Basic Fun (yet?). Though tbh I think they're less bothered about which toy is on the shop shelves, and more concerned with which ponies the G4 crowd will ~recognize~

but that aside, it's all these new chars I don't *get*. Like I said, maybe it'll make perfect sense when we've actually read the story, I don't know, but just going off the info we have now... why make up *new* witches? What difference does it make?? It just seems needlessly overcomplicated... If they just wanted to use the general idea, and no specific characters etc from the movie, then why market it as a G1/G4 crossover in the first place...? I just find it all weird.

Gusty, Fizzy, and Sweet Stuff come to mind. But Wind Whistler, Baby Lickety Split, Rosedust, Spike, Shady... Megan... nope...

Maybe they'll bring back Tirek and Grogar and the Smooze, too, but only their G4 versions. For really no reason other than it's the crossover and you have to cram as many references as possible... (but only the ones that G4 fans will know)?