Hello & welcome back to Trotting Through The Snow, and today, we come to our second review of the season as we look at the 2015 Holiday Special from IDW. And yes I know, that Linkara recently reviewed this but I had planned on reviewing long before I knew about his review.
Cover
The cover is a parody of Christmas Vacation and much like Linkara, I too have never seen it but a little detail that I picked up on, looking at the cover is that all of the presents are for Rarity. Oh, Spike.
Staff
Something that Linkara didn't mention is that this comic had 4 different artists and it's a neat idea.
Katie Cook - Writer/Artist
Cook, who wrote a lot of pony comics before this tackled all three of the stories in this anthology comic and did the art for the wraparound story that ties the comic together and I'm sorry to say that this is my least favorite of the art in the comic as Twily just looks off.
Brenda Hickey - Artist
Hickey covered the art for The Flying Reindeer and this was actually some of my favorite art as it came closest to looking like the show.
Agnes Garbowska - Artist
Garbowska did the art for the Nutcracker parody and well, it's not bad and looks great but there is nothing to stand out in this story.
Andy Price - Artist
Price brings the best art in the comic for last with his parody of The Night Before Christmas. It has a very Little Golden Book feel to it.
The Plot
FYI, as this is an anthology comic, I will not be looking at the characters. With that outta the way, let's begin. We open the comic at the Canterlot train station as we see Twilight and Spike waiting for the next train to arrive but it's a pretty bad snowstorm and Spike thinks that they should have listened to Twily's mom and stayed at her folks' house. But Twi Twi wants to remain optimistic that they'll make it back to Ponyville in time for Pinkie's Hearth's Warming Eve Party.
Spike says that they should go back Twilight's parents' house but the snow has other plans but this doesn't deter Twilight as she had brought a book along to read, Lord of The Reins but it appears as though, she left at her parents' and her dad got caught up in reading it. Me, I'm more of a Harry Trotter person.
Twilight goes into panic mode but Spike soon notices that the coffee stand nearby has a book stand and Twilight goes crashing into them but is dismayed, when she sees at they are Little Filly's books. Spike picks one up and playing on the relationship that is almost brother/sister like between these two, Spike says that he doesn't know our first story and that he's cranky, hungry, and tired, and wants Twi to pamper him. So, that leads to our first story....
The Flying Reindeer
In this first story, Rainbow Dash is a reindeer that has a special talent for flying but is shunned by the other reindeer because flying is weird and mockery is led by reindeer versions of Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. Yeah, it's meant to be a parody of Rudolph but here's the kicker, flying is cool. Yeah, so was Rudolph's red nose but that made more sense as something that kids would make fun of but flying, I just don't see it. All of the other reindeer leave Rainbow out of their reindeer games, which in what is admittedly, a rather funny joke turns out to be pony versions of classic board games such as Mare-opoly. Just then Princess Luna comes crashing in and here we find out that Luna wrote this story.
OOOKAY, that raises a lot of questions such as does this story make it a self-insert for Luna? And secondly, it seems like this story has been around as long as our version of Rudolph. Sooo, did Luna purposefully make the reindeer look like ponies we know or is it just Twilight imaging them as those characters. Which is made, a bit more confusing by the fact that the book that Twi and Spike are reading in the comic is a picture book.
It could possibly be a case that this book is a newer version of this classic story but... but...
Back to the story, at hand. We see that Luna is delivering fruitcakes throughout Equestira but she hurt her wing as a geese flew into her. Ah, the Sully problem also happens in Equestira. And Luna throws a fruitcake at the goose that hurt her but Rainbow catches and scolds her for trying to hurt a harmless animal. Luna gets an idea as she was under the impression that reindeer couldn't fly. And Luna wants to get moving but she is hurt pretty badly. And in quick thinking, she tricks Rainbow into doing her job for her and the reindeer that made fun of Rainbow before want to get close to her now because she knows a princess but she sees right through this and realizes that they'll make fun of her again as soon as Luna leaves. Luna says that flying is an honor and straps the harness of her cart to Rainbow.
Uh... WHAT WAS THAT?
Yeah, that really didn't feel like a parody of Rudolph nor did it feel like MLP. Look, I'm not saying that every MLP story has to have a moral but the humor in this story felt so far removed from MLP, that I was left scratching my head.
Twilight and Spike liked it. Well, I'm glad that they some enjoyment out of it as the barista pony, Cuppa Joe offers them cookies and they read another book and Spike picked out most likely because the cover had a character that looked like Rarity.
So, this leads to our second story...
The Toy and The Mouse.
Which, you can figure by that title is the MLP take on The Nutcracker. It opens with the traditional narration of once there was a beautiful pony, who was given a special doll for Hearth's Warming Eve by her uncle. However, her younger sister, here played by Sweetie Belle broke it. There is a funny bit of narration, where the narrator says that her uncle fixed it almost immediately and Rares just asks...
Well, why didn't you say so?
That night, she fell asleep and the doll became a real prince and just then The Mouse King showed up but Rarity quits as she hates mice and storms off in a fit. Have Opalescence take care of The Mouse King. Problem solved. Yeah, not a fan of that abrupt ending. But I did like Linkara's take, that is where Twilight and Spike stopped because as we see in the next panel, they fell asleep while reading this book.
I liked this one more than The Flying Reindeer but I'm not a fan of how it ends.
Back at the train station, we see that Cuppa Joe has set up a little Holiday party for the three of them. Spike asks about his family and he says that all he has is his pet goldfish, Puddles and that he won't mind Cuppa Joe staying at the station. We cut to Puddles crying in his fishbowl.
This brings us to our last story as Joe reads Spike and Twilight, his favorite.
'Twas The Night of Hearth's Warming Eve
Yeah, there's not too much that I can say on this one. It's exactly as it sounds but replace Papa with Big Mac and here, he finds out that AJ and Applebloom had built a miniature version of Sweet Apple Acres for Smarty Pants. There are some interesting ideas with this story such as the fact that it's told in rhyme. Which I'm sure was hard to do and that the fact that this story is presented more like a storybook a la Little Golden Books is a nice touch. And the artwork brings a lot to the table. It's perhaps the most gorgeous looking of the stories but it's also perhaps the thinnest in terms of content and after the last story, that's saying something.
Back at the train station, we see five figures arrive and it's the rest of the Mane Six. We find out from Flutters (who didn't get to star in any of these stories. BOO!), that they they got ahold of Twily's mom to see if she was okay and that's when they decided, or Pinkie rather decided that they should bring the party to Twilight. She even broke in Cuppa Joe's house to bring Puddles with her and the comic ends with a gift exchange.
My Final Thoughts
This isn't the greatest in terms of holiday comics or even holiday related material from MLP but after the atrocity that was the Equestira Girls Holiday Special, this was a breath of fresh air. The stories are hit and miss. Check it out, if you are interested. Join me next time as we close out, Trotting Through The Snow by looking at...
A Hearth's Warming Tail
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