IDW Publishing 2020
Written by James Asmus & Ian Flynn
Illustrated by Tony Fleecs & Jack Lawrence
Coloured by Tony Fleecs & Luis Antonio Delgado
Colour Flats by Lauren Perry
Lettered by Jake M. Wood & Neil Uyetake
When Queen Chrysalis casts a spell looking for more changelings, she accidentally interferes with a malfunctioning Spacebridge! What’s this mean for our favorite fillies? There are suddenly a bunch of Autobots and Decepticons in Equestria! And as the dust settles, Rarity and Arcee find themselves teaming up against a hostile Decepticon force…
I saw this was coming out and I had every intention of skipping this. I mean I am not a fan of either of these franchises, however, curiosity got the better of me and I read the first issue. Surprisingly I enjoyed this a lot more than I was expecting to. Visually it feels like a Saturday Morning cartoon and since they both have been cartoon series it works extremely well. So as the end result we get two stories that tie together and are told by two different teams but you’d never know. IDW and James in particular do something extremely worthy of getting this issue alone and reading the first page will show you exactly why.
I like the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented beautifully. The premise of how they come together is well conceived and executed and makes sense which only serves to strengthen the story on the whole. The character development is interesting and I say this because I know absolutely nothing about My Little Pony and the characters. So to see them all interact is well done all around it’s nice to see that someone can make them appeal to everyone. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the events we see how well everything works together to create the books ebb & flow.
I am thoroughly enjoying this not only for the sheer absurdity and audaciousness of it but because it’s so well done. Yes it’s an 80’s cartoon team-up and it’s over the moon good in that fashion but it’s also a very credible story in its own right. Laugh, scoff and whatnot but you secretly know that this is something you are picking up for the same reasons I did. Can’t wait to hear thoughts on it!
The interiors here are fantastic! The linework is phenomenal and the way it actually looks like they could Cel’s is superbly rendered. There is some stellar attention to detail going on within the panels and the Autobot or Decepticon stamps we see are amazingly well detailed. It's just a fun thing to see and to see the work with this level of quality makes it what it is. I am a huge fan of the way we see the panels filled, whether with backgrounds or effects it doesn’t matter as it all does the same thing. We see depth perception, a sense of scale and see the overall sense of size and scope to the book. The utilisation of hte pages layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkable eye for storytelling. The colour work is extraordinary! The bright solid colours and the effects that have this beautiful gradation are so perfectly done. There are hues and tones within the colours utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work and it takes that animated feel to a higher level.
Don’t think for a moment that I am only talking about or referring to one group of creators here. If you didn’t know there two sets and two stories you’d never know the difference and because it does have both sets and it is as seamlessly connected and brilliantly illustrated throughout just shows how much sheer talent is involved in this. Every single person on this book should be damn proud of themselves for the quality and level of craftsmanship we see here!