The FIM comics are an innate source of controversy.

Fluttershy's Micro comic was supposed to deliver a moral of ignoring poor-quality criticism that amounts to nothing, only to use a straw character, resolve via poor continuity and a Deus Ex Celestia, and write a moral about how all criticism is meaningless.

Princess Celestia's horrendous behavior in Reflections followed by mocking people who dissect and analyze the medium.

Of course, Ted Anderson's blatant sexist and racist behavior after admitting to plugging in DragonDicks and David McGuire (two well-known anti-bronies, the former an anti-male advocate), along with a disgusting decision by IDW that resulted in me boycotting IDW as a whole for a while.

But after receiving a PM from a friend about the latest controversy in FIM's latest main series arc — The Good, The Bad, and the Ponies — I decided to see what the fuss was about.

Good thing I did, because this arc is, without a doubt, one of the worst. How bad? I'm going to use Wind Chaser's method in his reviews: take specific topics and break them down. This time, the many big flaws.

Too much exposition very early.

This has been a problem with FIM as a whole, but especially seasons one and four. Instead of organically setting up the conflict, the audience is introduced with a series of dialogue that tells the reader what the conflict is about within the first few pages.

Quote

Twilight: A trip to the untamed west! I can't believe we're all going all the way to Canter Creek, this will make an excellent entry in my journal about our travels in Equestria!

Rarity: I hope it's rustically charming…like my book! Though the town in this book is rather primitive. Perhaps we should stop in a larger town for some accouterments?

Pinkie: Accoutre-whatta?

AJ: This ain't no joy ride, y'all. We're headed out this way because my great granduncle Chili Pepper has up and disappeared! The townsfolk have asked my family to come out and get things settled while he's gone. They mention some kind of trouble. Probably a drought. Who has a farm in a desert? Yeesh.

'Shy: What's the name of the farm? What does it say?

AJ: Rancho Bronco. Sounds like some two-bit operation. Ol' Chili Pepper never did have a lick of sense. Granny Smith called him "Two Turns Short of a Pepper Mill…"

'Shy: It must be pretty important to the town to be mentioned on the sign.

AJ: Mentions what? The sand? What could possibly grow here? Not apples, that's for sure. Give me good, healthy topsoil any day.

This is just one example. Personally, this reminds me a lot of Trade Ya! and Rainbow Falls, as the characters bluntly told the audience the conflict very early on. By telling us immediately, you're sucking the investment out of the comic, and it makes the initial pages feel really slow.

And it kept going throughout part one, explaining what was going on at Canter Creek and who was terrorizing the citizens there.

The Mane Six.

The Mane Six are much smarter than what many of the stories lead them out to be, and we see this in so many episodes. Unlike Patrick Star from pre-movie Spongebob, the Mane Six's stupidity is never endearing, but irritating because it's so forced. Whenever they act stupid, it's as if their lack of intelligence gets dripped out from their fur and onto the audience, thus treating the audience as if they're dumber than turkeys.

Part of this problem comes from the constant flanderization of each of the cast.

• Pinkie's zany behavior crosses boundaries into acting really dumb, especially after defying Sheriff Tumbleweed's warning against eating a ghost pepper whole.
   
  Later, when Longhorn and gang return, she was ecstatic!
   
  The next issue, when she tells Twilight to take advantage of the "red tape," Pinkie said, "Red tape? Are we wrapping a present?"
   
  No, no, NO!!
   
  Just by her actions here, her idiocy from Princess Twilight Sparkle, One Bad Apple, Three's a Crowd, and Filli Vanilli is reinforced.
• Applejack gets judgmental on farming, contradicting the lesson she "learned" during Bridal Gossip. (BTW, desert farming does exist.) Even worse is when Twilight keeps harping her broken logic throughout. As a result, she has to resolve on defeating Longhorn "the Earth Pony way," which isn't going to work all the time.
   
  To make that worse, she insults Twilight's magic in Comic #25 and calls her a "weirdo" in #26.
• Twilight and Rarity are also incredibly juvenile. During a very serious conversation introducing Longhorn and his gang of Cattle Rustlers, Twilight used this very imbecilic joke:

  Quote

  
  Twilight: So I guess we could call them a bunch of bull-ies, am I right?

  It doesn't work because Twilight is someone who usually treats conflicts like these with utmost importance. Given her status as alicorn princess, even more so. By making light of the situation and using an out-of-character joke, she basically mocks the viewer for treating the conflict seriously.
   
  When the barn gets engulfed in flames, Twlight and Rarity team up to take out the flames. When Dash urgently asked for help, the response:

  Quote

  
  Twilight (to Rarity): After you!
   
  Rarity: But of course!

  After they take down a water tower and doused most of the flames (as well as Dash, who got in the way), Twi and Rarity brohoofed proudly. An aggressive fire isn't something to play games with no be so nonchalant in your conversation.
   
  I'll continue harping on Twilight a little later.
• Fluttershy's role gets seriously reduced into being a "corrector." When they keep calling the Cattle Rustlers "cows," she corrects them by saying "bulls." Then she helps trigger the ol' fourth-wall joke by correcting Pinkie and Rarity, "I think you mean 'To be continued.'"
   
  Then to make that worse, she gets reduced to being the "cute" pony to distract longhorn's cronies. Don't deny it, Fluttershy is inherently cute and just acts in a way that is cute plenty of the time. But there's more to her than that.

One of the biggest problems with each of the characters is how forced they are. None of their dialogue is organic in any way. Even in many of their worst episodes and most unlikeable states, the characters tended to speak with some kind of flow. (Some exceptions include Look Before You Sleep, EQG/RR, and Rainbow Falls.) Here, it's as if Katie Cook reduced their essences to one note, wrote down the script in one draft, and submitted it for publication. There's no cohesion in their dialogue.

To make it worse, every single one of the Mane Six doesn't contribute to the story at all besides mucking it up and can written out entirely. Hell, even though this two-comic series is supposed to star Applejack, there's very little to do with her at all. Instead, AJ's plugged into the background with Twilight riding in the saddle for her.

Very forced comedy.

Friendship Is Magic prides on using some very intelligent comedy. Here, as none of the dialogue is cohesive, same goes for the issues' unintelligent comedy. Many of the jokes are too corny and ruin the tension in the conflict. Calling out the jokes as being stupid doesn't nullify IDW from being called out for using it. Instead, addressing the forced joke sticks out like a sore thumb for hammering it in.

Some of its worst comes in Part 2. Longhorn has lived in Canter Creek for a while now, and it was their actions that helped chase Chili Pepper out. Therefore, you can make a very good, educated guess that he knows what many of the ponies look like, especially the clerk. Twilight's and Rarity's disguises are extremely transparent, it only takes an idiot to not recognize them. By having Longhorn not notice their disguise (as well as the true clerk, who was bound in plain sight), it reduces the intelligence of the villain as well as the reader.

To make that worse, TG,TB,aTP blatantly rips off The Looney Tunes by using gags and traps that rely a lot on cartoon logic. But Katie Cook completely misunderstood how the Tunes' traps work as a comedy by having the heroines' tricks failing each time. What made the gags worked in Looney Tunes is how the villains suffered from the gags at their own incompetent expenses. The audience hates bad guys, so to see them fall is bemusing. But when the protagonists fail as a result of their own incompetence, yet simultaneously treat Longhorn as a capable threat, the jokes fall flat. As a result, the pacing becomes way too slow, and the reader's time is completely wasted.

The alicorn in the room.

If you like Twilight, you will hate her here. If you hate Twilicorn, you'll hate her even more.

To call Twilight insufferable is being way too kind. It's a complete understatement to call her out of character. She has the moral integrity of Celestia from The Crystal Empire and Magical Mystery Cure, the idiocy from Feeling Pinkie Keen and Games Ponies Play, the hypocrisy from Bridle Gossip, and a shell as hollow and useless as Rainbow Rocks.

If this was an actual episode, it'd overtake Bridle Gossip as her worst to date. By far, Twilight is easily the worst flaw of this arc. To break it down better, it's best to use bullet points.

• Compared to past episodes, Twilight is far more juvenile here. Even when she was really immature, when there's a serious problem at hand, she's very attentive and will do whatever it takes to help. Like I wrote earlier, because of her status as an alicorn princess, she takes things even more seriously, as she admitted in Equestria Girls, PTS, and Castle Mane-ia. But she cracked up so many stupid jokes during a time of urgency, and they completely destroyed the tension.
• As far as her ego is concerned, this sow does a pretty good job having her show off proudly without making her sound so prudish. This comic crossed that line big time when creating her first trap.
   
  From the middle of Part 1:

  Quote

  
  Dash: We'll start by building some barriers around the town. That'll keep them out!
   
  Fluttershy: And setting a trap!
   
  Twilight: A devastatingly clever trap, if I may say so myself.

  And later on:

  Quote

  
  Twilight: Remember how I said my trap was "devastatingly clever"? It is also cleverly named! When the Cattle Rustlers trip the trap, these barrels of gallons of sticky syrup will roll down the hill and crash into them! Then, the feathers will fall on the syrup and they'll look like giant chickens! Chicken. And they spring the trap! The barrels roll! Clever, right?

  A tip: If you have to tell how clever the trap is, chances are your trap's gonna suck.
   
  And, really? Twilight and her friends legitimately believed this would work? Given how vicious the Cattle Rustlers were just prior to this trap, there was no chance in hell of it working.
   
  How the hell this level of incompetence passed through is beyond me.
• Then we have the worst part: her hypocritical ethics. She keeps harping about how they can't use magic on the Cattle Rustlers because they're citizens of Equestria nor can they destroy the notarized forms. But when they decided to trick them, they held the clerk captive and then applied the magic on them after Longhorn destroyed a part of Rancho Bronco after it became a historic landmark.
   
  Oooookaaaaaaaayyy…
   
  Firstly, this is taking the essence of Twilight, scrubbing it off, and replacing her personality completely with a backwards version of her. Ever since the pilot, she'll break away from the norms if she believes she's doing the right thing. Episodes like The Ticket Master, Boast Busters, Winter Wrap Up, Equestria Games, and Twilight's Kingdom are just some examples for better or worse. Instead, Twilight willingly let others suffer at the hands of Longhorn's terrorism.
   
  Why?
   

  Quote

  
  Twilight: "Because the law said so."

  BULLSHIT!
   
  A town is in great danger and has every right to defend itself. The second Longhorn assaulted the sheriff and Applejack, Twilight had every right to defend her friends and the town by keeping them at bay and creating a jail cell for them. (This I'll get to later.) If we're going by simple morality, the real Twilight would act and punish the Cattle Rustlers long before it became a historic site.
   
  Even if she couldn't here, she became a commander-in-chief after Luna and Celestia were horsenapped. When she witnessed Longhorn committing arson on a farm simply to scare Canter Creek, she could've sent a letter to the Royal Guard and round them up. Instead, Twilight treats the law very strictly and, because it's so backwards, the guilty are more protected than the innocent.
   
  Secondly, when Twilight's character couldn't get any worse, she had absolutely no problem tying up the clerk and impersonating them. This is impersonation of legal authority and kidnapping, and both are very serious crimes. If she had any regards for the law (both the written and moral, as she thoroughly claimed), then Twilight and her friends would not've kidnapped Equestrian authority of Equestria, be proud of it (sans Fluttershy), and blatantly pull disgusting tricks on Longhorn, who legally prepared to acquire Rancho Bronco because it was considered abandoned.
   
  Twilight's moral character is completely disregarded throughout TG,TB,aTP. It's completely immoral of her and the crown that she claims to respect to never use her magic when her friends are held hostage or assaulted, but only do so when a historic site was vandalized. But if Twilight had any credibility, she would've stuck with her "I-can't-do-magic-blah-blah-blah" throughout. By completely disregarding the law in order to one-up Longhorn and then use magic at the end, she had no moral character, and the continuity that Cook already broke was broken even more.
   
  Thirdly, her point of not using magic on Equestria citizens is a complete disregard of continuity. Several times, she's used magic on Equestrian citizens since becoming a princess, like freezing her friends in Castle Mane-ia, reversing the spell in Bats!, and turning her friends into breezies in It Ain't Easy Being Breezies.
   
  Next, why the fuck didn't Twilight build a jail in the first place? It would've been a nonviolent solution to the Cattle Rustlers' reign of terror. Instead of all those stupid plans, they should've asked the sheriff or clerk if they could use some empty land for a jail, even if temporary until a Royal Guard shows up to arrest them. That way, they don't have to use any of their stupid plans to try to outwit them.
   
  Lastly, this entire sub-conflict is an indirect ripoff of one of FIM's early classics:
   
  
   
  (Link to the artist's poster.)
   
  But there are two huge differences.
   
  a. Twilight is constricted as a result of the tradition, and she screwed up really badly when she defied the tradition and tried to use her magic on Sweet Apple Acres. Because she screwed up, she had to find another method, and she was able to succeed in a role that fits her mentally and intellectually.
   
  b. WWU's comedy was her errors, but Morrow still treated the whole situation seriously and with respect. In TG,TB,aTP, Cook constantly plays her situation as a joke and basically laughs at the viewer for thinking of the idea. They know Twilight's magic can solve the problems, but the disregard of continuity forced the plot to chug until the finish line. If Twilight used it, it would've been over by the twelfth or sixteenth page of Part 1!

Like what Silver-Quill wrote in his critical review of the arc on EQD, no sane world would protect Longhorn from being able to claim properties because he committed several huge crimes: robbing, destruction of property, vandalism, arson, and assault. Any sane world would've had the police arrest him a long time ago. Instead, they're protected. If this was how Equestrian law truly worked, I'd never want to live here.

Twilight was absolutely useless in this entire arc and only made things worse simply by being there; because she did nothing as Longhorn and his gang terrorized Canter Creek, she's just as responsible for the damage. If there was an ability to remove Twilight by popular vote, I'd no doubt vote against her and implore every citizen to kick her out.

Sure, the arc ends on an anticlimax, but that was the least of its problems. I'd rather have a good arc or episode with an anticlimax (Return of Harmony) over a really terrible arc or episode with a decent climax (Reflections).

Fortunately, Spike isn't in here (with Twilight explaining he was at a convention in Las Pegasus) and instead has to take part of a pretty good, if eventually dated, Dashcon reference.

Runaway Chili!

The hanging subplot in this two-part arc is Chili Pepper. As a result of the Cattle Settlers terrorizing Canter Creek, Chili Pepper ran off, and it was AJ's responsibility for taking care of it until he came back.

But he never came back. In fact, after that revelation, Chili's mysterious absence hung over the whole story, and it gets more haunting when Rancho Bronco is basically left abandoned for several months despite growing some pretty good crops. But where it gets the most damning is how it became a historic landmark.

Now that it serves the public, Rancho Bronco is no longer Chili Pepper's home. What if he comes back and realizes he no longer owns the home that helped built the town in the first place? He'll have no home to go to unless he buys new land or leaves Canter Creek once again.

It would've been somewhat satisfying if Chili Pepper made any sort of contact with Applejack, the clerk, or the sheriff during the arc. Instead, his mentions reduce more and more as the plot steers away from keeping Rancho Bronco busy to not allowing Longhorn to buy it. With the subplot left unresolved, the audience is left to wonder what happened to him.

Conclusions.

On EQD, Silver-Quill wrote this in his concluding statement of The Good, The Bad, and The Ponies:

Quote

I enjoy the IDW comics. This is not a declaration that the series is not worth reading or that one should stop because of this singular comic arc. Yet I urge people to understand one thing: a good story flows from established characters and allowing them to react to events in a believable way. This comic treats our heroines as malleable personas, giving little mind to how they would react and instead dictating terms. What we have is a story filled with inconsistencies and contradictions, with the justification that everything worked out in the end. But a good tale is like a long journey. If the travel is unreasonably painful, reaching the destination is not a moment of triumph but rather a sense of relief that it is all over.

This describes the quality of the arc perfectly. From the get-go, it was a pain to read. When the exposition is very blunt in the first few pages, then you risk making the reader bored because the details for the conflict are out in the open. But if it couldn't get any worse, it really could. The Mane Six sans Twilight were flanderized, one-dimensional caricatures, and their forced dialogue reduces them even more and makes them all totally pointless. If you cut out all of the Mane Six, chances are you would have a more fluent arc plot-wise, but the dialogue is still in question.

Yet if it couldn't suck any worse, Twilight was a complete IDIOT! By harping a "law" that completely contradicts continuity and only protects the guilty, she and her crown show their incompetence and complete disregard over her terrorized citizens. As a result of her own inaction, she's just as responsible for the Rustlers' destruction. Even as recently as during the fourth season, she'll go against the rules out of the belief that the restrictions only hurt the people she cared for. Instead, she sticks to rules that an in-character Twilight would rip to shreds. This isn't Twilight Sparkle in this arc. It's a completely different character in disguise.

There are too many sloppy writing choices. The plot is one contradiction after another. The excuses, resolutions, humor, and overall characterizations are thoroughly lazy. Nothing went right. This arc is completely irredeemable. If this was an actual episode, it'd take over Rainbow Falls as the worst written. Combined with the nasty implications, there's a chance of it overtaking Dragon Quest or even Bridle Gossip as the second-worst episode overall.

For the comics themselves, here's my previous bottom three.

1. Reflections Arc
2. Fluttershy Micro
3. Rainbow Dash Micro

(But you can make a really good case Dash's is worse than Fluttershy's because the dialogue is unreadable.)

The Good… bumps the Dash micro off the list. Without a doubt, the recent arc is in the bottom three.

But how bad is The Good, The Bad, and The Ponies? You can argue it's as bad as Reflections…if not worse.