Writer: Katie Cook

Artist: Andy Price

Covers: Andy Price, Amy Mebberson, Sara Richard

Publisher: IDW Publishing

The curse of the narrator strikes in this issue, as Zecora is tasked with describing the key events of the story. If you follow the TV series, you may be able to guess it revolves around an external force affecting our heroines. Zecora’s character was too often one of the poorest written in the TV series, and this issue does little to improve her in comic form. To accommodate narration, the story has constant breaks from the traditional panel flow, but these end up doing more to hurt the art then help it.

Price is able to consistently capture the tone of the show through surprisingly complex facial expressions, and naive yet charming backgrounds, doesn’t get to play to his strengths as much as usual. Zecora’s presence breaks the confident flow of Price’s regular style, by giving us some frustratingly minimalist pages. On the upside the break from usual form does also give us some particularly striking illustrative pieces from time to time. I think that having the story told from the usual perspective would have been superior.

Writing: 2/5

The story presented here is one that any fan of the show would have seen played out a handful of times already in episodes like Magical Mystery Cure. I mention the TV series because the comics themselves have in the past been able to tell stories as good if not better than that of the show. This was in part thanks to the lack of constraints associated with the TV series such as character arcs.

Art: 2/5

Price displays some particularly strong illustrative pieces throughout, but the minimalist nature of some of his work do more to harm the overall quality than to improve it.

Overall: 2/5

A fairly average issue in my opinion. It’s lacking humor, consistent art quality, and character dynamics. All of these being a staple to the series in the past. The abstract juxtapositions between both pacing and art style make for a frustrating read.