My Little Pony: Friends Forever #25 Review

Friends Forever cracks 25 issues! How does this milestone comic read? Let’s take a look.

Here’s the official description from IDW:

Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash have shared dialogue together numerous times throughout the five seasons, but they’ve rarely had any extended time together. So, a story starring the two is especially welcome. In concept, they make an excellent buddy-cop duo. Twilight is the rational thinker while Rainbow is the rash brawler. The plot here provides an interesting twist as it forces Rainbow to be grounded literally. This installment is definitely a fun read. It has a lot of untapped potential sadly, but is still worth checking out.

Barbara Kesel returns to MLP for this issue. The pacing is quite excellent. We have the intriguing opening, with Rainbow Dash’s wings literally missing from her back. Then we have Twilight getting involved and the two venturing out to re-acquire them. It’s a great story on paper, and for the most part it succeeds. The main problem however is that it introduces this trio of interesting antagonists. Their motivations were intriguing, (but because of the single issue format there wasn’t much time to develop those) and obviously the fact they were able steal Dash’s wings makes them too much of a formidable threat to be basically thrown away by the end. It’s a shame this wasn’t a two-part story, because these characters were full of wasted potential. Another thing is that while there were scenes with Dash learning to work without her wings, it’s not made into as big of a deal as one would imagine. It would have been great to really see Dash learn how to be an Earth pony over the course of a few issues.

Despite these things, the story overall is fun to read. Twilight’s portrayal was good for the most part. (The mind-into-body spell was excellent, and perhaps the issue’s biggest highlight.) After battling Tirek in a Dragon Ball Z-like fight in the show, it’s kinda hard to see her getting captured by a net here however. The art by Brenda Hickey is excellent throughout. The characters look great, and the expressions on them are fantastic. Coloring  by Heather Breckel is as usual just about perfect. The main cover by Tony Fleecs nicely sets the tone and establishes a sense of urgency. The subscription variant by Brenda is beautifully drawn. While the core plot isn’t as evident, just the wonderful look of it is enough to pick it up.

Overall, Twilight & Rainbow’s adventure was fun to read through. There’s unfortunately a lot of untapped potential. The villains in particular had some unique, unexplored motivations. This is one of those cases where the one-shot nature hurts the story. Still, any MLP fan will enjoy reading.