My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #30 Review

Ponyville is in a civil war in the latest issue My Little Pony! How does Part 1 fare? Let’s take a look.

Here’s the official description from IDW:

‘Ponyville Days,’ Part 1. A massive event celebrating Ponyville’s founding is nearing but an argument between friends splits the town into two argumentative factions!

Ponyville is always an interesting place. While crazy things are seemingly always happening, there’s also an order. It’s technically peaceful, just a place where a lot of bad guys target. (Like Tokyo with giant monsters!) This particular issue starts a new arc regarding who is technically the originator in Ponyville. It’s an interesting topic, and depending how you look at it, it becomes both insanely fun and insanely ridiculous since Rarity and Rainbow Dash both basically betray Applejack. After all these years, this issue makes it seem like their friendship is pretty unstable. Despite that, this is definitely one of the more entertaining comics

Honestly, I’m not sure if writer Christina Rice is meaning for this to be taken seriously or for a good laugh. Personally I think she succeeds at making it seem like both. It goes to outlandish concepts, such as team Applejack hurling pies at team Rarity. (Then again, since something like this happened in the episode “The Last Roundup,” it isn’t so far off.) The dialogue is a lot of fun, even if the town quickly deteriorates into unrealistic insane-ness. By the end of the issue Rarity and Applejack are almost worst enemies. Yes, even best friends will quarrel, but this goes pretty far. Twilight has some great dialogue in the climax, and you could feel her dread of what happens in the cliffhanger ending.

The art by Agnes Garbowska takes some pages to get used to. It’s not bad, but perhaps a little too simplistic with the figures and faces.The main cover by Agnes is solid, though again some of the faces and figures look a bit off. Also, a passing glace at it makes it seem like Applejack is about to attack Granny Smith. The RI by Yasmin Sheikh features a lovely rendition of Twilight, but a rather awful-looking Spike. Maybe I’m missing some kind of reference, but he looks terrible. The subscription variant by Paul Abtruse is a unique, nice piece of the ponies at the beach…but where’s Applejack? It’s incredibly bizarre that she’s not on it.

Overall, this was definitely an interesting issue. On one hand, the concept is ridiculous and the characters becoming worst enemies so fast seemed rather off. On the other hand, the dialogue and story moves at such an incredibly fun pace. I haven’t had this much fun with a comic in awhile. A crazy, but fun issue would be the words to describe “Ponyville Days” Part One.