Pony Comic Book Thread-IDW is Party Canon

So, a new #1 is out. I feel like this deserves it's own thread.

Overall thoughts: It's a alright beginning. I like the artwork. It's expressive. And the characters don't seem out of character. It didn't blow me away, but it's a solid start.

Detailed spoliers below:

Now picturing Izzy with three phones strapped to her horn.

---Dave

Well, someone got a hold of some covers for issues #5 and 6 and put them up on Derpibooru. Which means we get our first look at a certain character.

BIG spoilers. Do not look if you want to be surprised.

With issue #2's release, reveal and story I feel that G5 is hitching it's wagon to G4's horse too soon.

I know something like this would need explaining eventually, but I feel bringing in remnants of G4 before G5 really had a chance to grow into it's horseshoes just says G5 won't be good enough.

Wished they borrowed a play from "Star Trek: the Next Generation"s playbook: A quick establishing that the New Generation IS connected to the previous one in the first episode (Admiral McCoy/ Mane 6 dolls Sunny, Hitch, and Sprout played with) then just let the new crew stand on their own and make their mark before saddling-up the original crew.

To be fair, it's the IDW comics hitching it's wagon to G4. They probably need all the help they can get. Plus, just from the setup of the movie, they kind of NEED to address what happened in between G4 and G5, SOMEHOW.

I mean, if ST: TNG started out with the Federation completely dismantled and all the planets being at war with each other, I think TNG would HAVE to explain what happened between TOS and TNG, too. TNG would have been a VERY different show, if it had been set up the way G5 has been.

Plus...I just think this is a interesting idea. It's got my attention, I'll say that much.

Now, maybe this generation SHOULDN'T have been connected to G4 at all, and just been designed as it's own thing. That's a fair criticism, I think. But, with the way they set things up, there's no way to avoid explaining what happened...unless you want to really get the existing fanbase mad at you. Fan's are ALREADY complaining about "Twilight Failing". If they NEVER explained what happened, fans would NEVER shut up about it. And the longer they wait to explain, the more fans will build this up until NOTHING they come up with will satisfy them. They kind of wrote themselves into a corner, here.

I like the theory that Hasbro is letting IDW own the G4 ball so the rest of G5 can happily ignore it going forward. Make Your Mark got to ignore G4 and just be a comfy G5 story, so this may be what we can expect.

I do hope IDW is allowed to tell pure G5 stories eventually, because they should be good at it. They're nailing the look of G5 in 2D, and they're adapting to the new characters pretty quickly. There is very little wrong with these comics aside from the G4 fatigue.

Well, surprise news time! We're getting more G4 comics!

In a VERY strange way...

IDW what the hug.

This is a bad idea but I support it just because it's so darn weird.

I had a Madame Alexander doll of Amy as a kid but I could never get into Little Women the book. (I asked for the Amy doll because she was pretty, I have no idea what her personality was like.) I do think it's cool that a semi-autobiographical book by a female author was such a hit. But it just wasn't my thing.

Does anyone else think IDW has this aura of desperation now? Maybe due to losing the Transformers comic. Like, I dunno, it feels less like they're celebrating G4 and more like they're scared to move on from it.

It's possible IDW's scared to move on from G4. I have NO idea how well the G5 comic is selling compared to the G4 comic. It's possible they're using this to test if ANY G4 comic would sell better than the G5 comic.

IDW in general has had...known issues behind the scenes. Different people have been speculating for YEARS that IDW could collapse at any moment. It hasn't happened yet. But, IDW has shown more interest in getting their OWN original projects turned into cartoons and TV shows than continuing on with their licensed books. It's possible MLP will go to a different company sooner rather than later.

Mind, we're only 3 issues in. It's early days for the comic. And we haven't gotten a truly BAD issue of the comic yet. It COULD pick up readers once the series proper starts up in September.

It's also possible that it's not IDW that's getting cold feet about G5...it MIGHT be Hasbro. They DO keep releasing various G4-related products. Like that line of perfumes, or that new board game that features the G4 cast.


It's possible Hasbro isn't seeing as much of a profit off of G5 yet and is getting a little nervous about it.

As far as my experience with Little Women...I'll admit, I had to read the Wikipedia article for the book to remember any of it. I'm not sure if we ever read it for English classs or not. I might have seen the movie version years ago, but I didn't remember most of it. I'm assuming they'll just...stop at some point, because if they adapt ALL of it...geez, this is going to get depressing.

Unless this is a full-on zany parody of the book, which it might be. We'll see. There might be some fun at poking fun at a old book.

I had an English class that tried to read it, but we gave up on it and tried watching a movie version instead, and then we gave up on that too. We were never tested on it. The teacher agreed it was time to give up and move on. It was too boring.

I don't think it's Hasbro. From what I've heard, Hasbro very emphatically wanted the G5 movie to be a "standalone." Like the writers would suggest more explicit G4 nods and Hasbro said "no" every time.

That might seem contradictory with the "mythical Princess Twilight Sparkle" aspect, but if you replaced the "Princess Twilight" stuff in the movie with, like, new OC "Princess Sunny Wings", nothing would change. It's not a story ABOUT Twilight or her friends, it's a story about new characters doing new things.

By contrast the G5 comic book was immediately like "REMEMBER DISCORD? HERE HE IS WITH AN INFODUMP ABOUT THE MANE SIX!" And I would be more forgiving of this if it was issue #50, like it was a special one-off thing. But issue #2?? Before ANY of the new main characters have had a spotlight issue.

You can read Hasbro's quarterly reports online, they're quite interesting. Basically, G4 had been languishing since around the time of the G4 movie (although it did get a bump in sales from that), bringing in diminishing returns. (Which is why Hasbro decided to reboot it, presumably.) So far, G5 has been doing great.



So, the corporate write ups can be kind of exhausting to read, but the important part is "greater than 100% growth over last year" and "double-digit growth in licensed products." (That's a 2021 report so "last year" would have been 2020.)

The thing is, Hasbro's main audience is children. IDW is a comic book company, and due to the stupid comic distribution system it's difficult to get comics into the hands of kids. You basically have to rely on adult comic-readers buying comics for their kids. But that's a much smaller audience.

A bit of a tangent, but in the 80s the UK had a G1 MLP comic that not only came out every two weeks for nine years, but it was so popular that the same company started A SECOND MLP COMIC that ran concurrently, because there was just that much of a demand for pony comics. Of course comics in general sold better in the 80s. But also, the UK G1 comics were available wherever magazines were sold, which meant it was easier for kids to see and purchase them.

The New Generation movie was definitely a hit. I don't want to take away from that. It feels like everyone who gave A New Generation a chance at least liked it.

I just don't know how much of that initial surge of interest has died down while waiting for the actual show to start on Netflix. It's been a YEAR between that movie the actual start of the show proper. People were...lukewarm on the Make Your Mark special (some people seemed...VERY critical), so that doesn't help. Tell Your Tale and the IDW comic have actually been pretty solid, but I'm not sure how many fans are really giving them a chance. I'm just not sure how much the G5 hype has cooled down over the past year.

And...I hate to say it this way, but I'm not sure if "greater than 100% growth" from 2020 is really anything to brag about. For one, 2020 was...2020, there was a VERY 2020-like quality to 2020. Also, the only MLP content throughout 2020 was a bunch of clipshows that never actually aired in the US, the IDW comic...and Pony Life. OF COURSE you're going to sell more toys when you actually are doing things to PROMOTE those toys. And using a series that...isn't Pony Life. (Somehow, Tell Your Tale is working for me in a way Pony Life NEVER did. Maybe that's just me...but I don't think it's just me. TYT knows how to work in it's boundaries, Pony Life always struggled to escaped them and mostly failed. At least Pony Life MIGHT have taught them how to do it right, I guess.)

And, I don't know. Hasbro does keep agreeing to all these G4 products, instead of insisting that everyone who wants a MLP license focus on G5. Maybe different factions within the company are arguing with each other, but SOMEONE keeps green-lighting G4 products. It's not JUST IDW. These companies licensing out MLP aren't interested in G5 yet...they want G4 which sold well in the past.

Mind you, some of this stuff might have been stuff that got stuck in the "backlog" as it were, due to 2020, and is only now finally getting made. It's possible these things are just the last gasp of G4 leftover from 2020, before G5 premiered.

But, I'll agree with the comic distribution system having something to do with IDW's focus on G4 because of the older audience. That's probably who's buying these comics. I can't blame IDW for playing to the audience they have instead of trying to court a audience that may never show up. It CAN be hard to even find a Comic Book Store, nevermind one that gets in "kid's comics".

There's also the price to consider. $4 a pop is NOT a impulse buy for most people. At least not for maybe 5 minutes of entertainment. "Floppies" are maybe the WORST value-per-dollar of any entertainment medium. I love comics, I always will, but the price is a MAJOR barrier to entry for most people.

And, yeah, the UK comic probably did sell pretty well. And I've seen a few issues. Majesty is a fun character, kind of a proto-Celestia insofar as she is a leader with a bit of a mischievous side. From what I've seen...I think IDW's work, warts and all, is better. But, I can understand really liking these comics. And I haven't seen everything. According to a wiki, it lasted 223 issues of the main series, and 51 issues of a side series. AND some of these included a little toy prize along with the issue. This is a impressive run. Something really clicked.


But...IDW's comics also sold pretty well, too. For most of IDW's run, there was a second series running right alongside it. Whether it was the original Micro Series, or the long lasting Friends Forever, or the fairly solid Nightmare Knights, IDW had a fair bit of sales success with their own G4 comics, which also ran for about 9 years. And...that might be part of the reason they didn't want to give G4 up. Sure. Personally, I still like the idea of the Discord story. I think there' s a lot of interesting potential there. Only having issues 1, 2, 6, 9 and 10 BE that story is probably a bad idea. But, I like Discord showing up.

And...I can't blame IDW for not wanting to do too many character spotlights when we really haven't gotten THAT much with the characters yet. Before the comics came out, we had the movie...and that's it. I doubt IDW even got to see Tell Your Tale, nevermind Make Your Mark. I can't blame IDW for not wanting to have these characters be "out of character" BEFORE the show even premieres. This is partly Hasbro's fault for doing things so...backward this generation. So IDW almost HAD to do something adventure-focused for a few issues anyway.

Is IDW desperate? Maybe? But, I don't think Discord showing up has anything to do with it. "Where is immortal character X" is just a natural question to ask after the New Generation movie. (And we COULD have gotten Spike, or the Alicorns, or even just a VERY old Cutie Mark Crusader or Cake Twins). And even this "Little Fillies" comic...that's someone's passion project. This is just too WEIRD to be marketable. This is someone pitching this idea over and over again and finally getting the go-ahead because IDW wanted SOMETHING G4 related, but not TOO G4 related that could contradict what the Netflix show is doing. No one is going "You know what's selling like hotcakes nowaday? 19th Century Literature!". I think IDW DID want a G4 comic, but just didn't want to do ANYTHING post-G4 because the G5 show's coming out soon, and we might get some new backstory.

If IDW is desperate, I think it's more IDW being in a strange place, financially. And losing a lot of high-selling licenses. (I don't think Canto is selling as much as Transformers did, maybe I'm wrong, but...)


So...maybe my overall point is...maybe it's not Hasbro getting cold feet. But, it MIGHT be other companies that Hasbro is working with who don't have faith in G5 yet? Maybe they want the characters everyone recognizes rather than the new guys?

Or maybe it is mostly IDW. I'll admit, Make Your Mark and Tell Your Tale isn't bringing up G4 NEARLY as much. But...I think we'll have to see how the Netflix show plays out before we can cast too much judgement. IDW might be taking more cues from Hasbro than we think...or maybe they're completely out of the loop again. (One thing does seem to point to that). We'll see.

Spoilers for future comics ahead. We get to see a new character, and the fan-artists seem to love her.

IDW's going to release a BUNCH of new pony comics in the next few months.

The biggest news for me is another Classics Illustrated title. This time for the Wizard of Oz.


Okay, so we have 4 of the Mane 6. But who will Twilight and Rainbow Dash be? Twilight I could see as either Glinda or the Wizard (Trixie would be another good candidate for the Wizard). Which leaves Dash as....a flying monkey captain?

I quite enjoyed the last one, so I'm kind of looking forward to that. What is with IDW and picking stories that feature DEATH so prominently, though? Poor Chrysalis is going to end up a puddle by the end...of course she started out as a evil puddle if we count that FIENDship issue as canon, so I guess that's kind of poetic.

Also, do they follow the book or the movie? ....Yeah, okay, it's going to be the movie. Still, it'd be nice if they added a few things from the original book. Though, they probably can't use "ruby horseshoes" since that's trademarked by the movie proper. We'll probably get "silver horseshoes" with a wink and a nod to the ruby version. But, I wouldn't mind if the little china-glass village from the book showed up.

But, in addition to that mini-series and the main book, we're getting MORE. There's a G5 Camp Bighoof miniseires. And we're getting a couple more one shots, a Bridlewoodstock one, a 40th Anniversary one, and a "Endless Summer" one. And that's not counting the oversized one-shot reprints focusing on different characters, like Twilight and Pinkie.

IDW is...definitely upping their pony output, for some reason. It almost makes me more suspicious, like they're only putting all this out to wring out as much money as they can out of the license before they lose it. IDW does tend to do that. (See: All the Transformers crossovers and oversized reprints we got before IDW lost the license.) But...that could just be paranoia talking. Maybe it's all selling really well. *shrug*

I do think this is an attempt to go out with a bang. It may not even be about the license. IDW as a whole is a sinking ship, and it's going to drag down books that individually might be selling fine.

There also may not be a known time limit on it. They may not know they need to get out all their remaining stuff by [DATE], but they have nothing left to lose so they might as well go nuts while they still can.

Or maybe they do have a turnaround plan that's as aggressive as they like to say it is. This sorta doesn't sound like more of the stuff we've been getting just with a more rapid release schedule. It sounds more energetic.

Misty is coming to the IDW comic! This is NOT a drill!



Also, we'll get the return of Violette Rainbow and Skye from issue 14!

And IMMEDIATELY after I go off about the comic possibly ending in the Endless Summer thread....we get this!


Given how Misty's on the cover, yeah, IDW isn't losing the license. They're just renumbering the book, and re-starting with a new #1. I was completely wrong. (Assuming this is legit, and not fan-art, it does come from 4chan. But, for now, I'll assume it's real) Looks like it might shift to a more Tell Your Tale focus, too. Though, I'm not sure it'll make much difference, given the variety of artstyles we get in the comics.

The sales must have been lower than the G4 book, if they felt the need to re-number, but I'm guessing IDW will be keeping the book around for the foreseeable future.

Honestly, this book needed a relaunch with a new #1. And as much as TYT's artstyle is... still an acquired taste... at least it could give these artists a consistent reference point.


I am fully on board with this.

Solicitations are out today and I was sorta-right and sorta-wrong about the comic.

We're not getting a new ongoing, but we ARE getting a..."Kenbucky Roller Derby" miniseries.

So, I guess G5 is moving to a series of mini-series model? Maybe? I've been wrong a lot in this thread, so we'll see what happens.

Also...another Classic Reimagined story!

And they're doing Romeo and Juliet...oh no! Poor Pinkie and Cheese. I guess I COULD see Pinkie's family not approving of Cheese, though.

I'm guessing they'll ACTUALLY fake their own deaths and run off to...Las Pegasus or something, heist-movie style. Or..it's all a big surprise party for their families.

I've been enjoying these, so I say bring it on! Why do they keep choosing stories with death in them, though?!

This one seems to be a one-shot. Interesting change. We might be getting more of these, but shorter? That's probably fine.