It has been a while since I reviewed one of the micro-series comics. The last time I talked about the micro-series, I praised the comic team of Ted Anderson and Ben Bates on a stellar job with the Cutie Mark Crusaders spotlight. This time around, I have something different to say about Rob Anderson and Agnes Garbowska’s entry.

Let’s talk about the artwork this time around by Agnes Garbowska. Sad to say, I am not a fan of it. It is not like the art is necessarily bad, I mean I am glad to see visible inking as always, but the coloring of the characters seem a bit off to me. Maybe it is the purplish shading of some characters, like with Angel Bunny in the above panel, or the penciling of the facial expressions feeling restrained. In any other case I would prefer this over, say, Tony Fleecs’ art, but here I would actually prefer Fleecs to Garbowska. It feels a little too childish.

Speaking of childish, the story this time around centers around Spike wanting a pet that he orders through his Daring Do comic. [Writer’s note: Looking forward to the bookworm story with Daring Do.] Unlike May the Best Pet Win where Rainbow Dash wants a pet, just because, Spike’s desire to have a pet is relatable after he had to give back Pee-Wee. He orders the sea beasts through the pony express and realizes that after a couple of hours, they barely grew. A day passes and when Twilight and Fluttershy go to a pet show, Spike gets the idea to speed up the growth process by using a super growth recipe and ends up skipping over some instructions. As result, the sea beasts grow out of control.

It was at this point where I realized the problem with this comic as well as the main problem with the micro-series in general, terrible pacing and a lack of conflict. Every conflict goes way too fast for the reader to be engaged. The amount of time that goes by within the comic is only a matter of hours compared to Rarity’s issue which spanned over an entire week. In addition, the conflict isn’t engaging enough to warrant a read. Say what you will about Rainbow Dash’s issue, but at least something was at stake with the cloud gremlins causing havoc. Here, it tries to combine the plots of “Just For Sidekicks” and “Spike at Your Service” together with Spike raising pets of his own with excitable tendencies and ends up failing at both.

This comic was a bore to read. The colors were tiring, the conflict was lacking and the pacing was too fast to actually hold an interest. It is sad to say that not even the micro-comics are kind to Spike’s character.