Oh yes, clearly a comic for little kids... |
Short answer: yes. Issue #3 was easily the darkest of the series so far, especially when we see just how Queen Chrysalis and her army sustain themselves. A race of lovable cat-like beings is used simply as food for the changelings — and they certainly don't look in a good way afterwards. Even more chilling is the scene where Chrysalis herself, fed up with the fillynapped CMC's insistence that love and friendship conquer all, brings in one of the kitties and shows them the answer to Scootaloo's nervous question: "Uh... what are you going to do with that?" It's hidden from us, but even so we can be fairly sure it isn't pretty.
Twilight, this is how you learn while having adventures |
Other moments to savour include the continuing Chrysalis/CMC panto act, Dash's terror of yet another Pinkie song, that same pink pony's "I'm sorry" cake and goodie bags and Applejack and Rarity doing a spot of log-rolling. Best of all is the way in which the instalment is bookended by Spike as the proprietor of an old-time cinema, accompanied by Angel — who finally makes use of the false moustache onna stick we saw him buying from the moustache stand way back near the beginning of issue #1. This segment also has a lovely tribute to the early days of screen cartoons, with some very olde-style ponies being shown in sepia-toned flashback.
You'll just have to imagine the piano accompaniment, okay? |
Price's artwork is again exceptional, and I'm absolutely in love with his style for our ponies. It's a good job the second story arc is being handled by an artist of equal brilliance (Amy Mebberson) since Price is going to be an awfully hard act to follow. The first two issues of the comic were lettered by Robbie Robbins, but this time around these duties have been transferred to Neil Uyetake. I don't know why the change was made, but it doesn't cause any difficulties. My vague impression is that Uyetake's lettering is a little spikier than Robbins', but that works rather well for the edgier feel to the new issue.
Rarity never ceases to amaze... and this time, I mean that in a good way |
IDW has come up with another piece of brilliance: issue #3 of MLP:FiM may be the best issue so far. It's almost impossible to fault it, unless you consider that it's getting a bit too dark for the little kids who were presumably (at least originally) supposed to make up some portion of its readership. Should IDW manage to keep to its release schedule (haha, I know) the next comic to appear will be the first instalment in the Micro-series at the end of February — but whatever that brings, I shall be counting down the days until the first Wednesday in March, to see how the main comic rounds off its first story arc. Issue #3 is fabulous.
9.5/10
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