The story of the Sister Swap (that's what I'm calling it now) continues!
Zipp and Pipp's responsibilities have undergone the ol' switcheroo, and the hunt is on for the perpetrator.
Catch the full review after the break. Be warned: I swapped in some spoilers.
Last month, Amy Mebberson got to portray the events in Zephyr Heights with a great deal of style and an emphasis on anger. Now we get that same level fo detail with a far greater range of poses and emotions. Mebberson is a true star of these G5 comics. Her style stays true to the show while infusing the characters with a vitality needed to keep them interesting.
This issue gives Sunny, Hitch, and Izzy a greater presence and role in the story, thus we get to see them both reacting to the confusing challenge to their perceptions and memory, a hunt to find Milkway, and their plotting to how to make things right. Thus we get a wide range of emotions and actions to sample, all of which are wonderfully conveyed. My personal favorite being Sunny's smug pride at having lured Milkyway into the open.
Speaking of, Milkyway continues to be an intriguing character as Mebberson depicts an adorable little creature with a hidden agenda. Her tail in particular is a great extension of her personality. She can look utterly innocent one moment and demonically cruel the next without breaking form.
The hunt for this wishing well nymph begins after a brief period of bringing everypony else up to speed. A simple dance comparison is all it takes, though I think it would have been fun to have the ponies recount the events in the movie and ask why Zipp was with them during the escape if they ruined her show. Or how come Pipp is supposed to be a detective using a visor with her sisters colors. Either way, it's clear that their abilities and histories don't match up. This leads to Pipp's confession over Milkway, which causes further friction between the sisters.
It is shame!
Thanks to Hitch's interview, the group gets back on track and seeks out Milkyway, wasting several hours in the process. It's here that we get an insight into Pipp's social media life. She wants Zipp to post an update to assure her fans that she's okay. Even though nothing could be further from the truth. Pipp projects her feelings of helplessness on to her audience, as if they're an extension of her own feelings. That's one aspect of Pipp that I find fascinating. As the younger sister, she doesn't have an immediate claim to the throne and therefore less responsibilities. She's built her own kingdom-within-the-kingdom to create a sense of importance, which has positives and negatives. Being a slave to updates is one of them.
The group finally confronts Milkyway by using the sisters' conflict as bait. Sunny provides the context that nymphs are highly competitive, and Milkyway confirms this by doing everything to inject drama, action, and conflict into the mix. She can't be captured and coerced, nor can she undo the spell until the sisters have learned a lesson. This certainly stands in contrast to altruistic wish-granters like the Fairy Godmother. Milkyway is doing all this for fame and recognition, which makes her blind to potential consequences. I originally thought that she might be a chaos spirit filling in for Discord, but now she's something much more reckless and arguably worse.
So with arguing, assault, and pleading off the table, Zipp and Pipp have but one choice: play this charade out to the very end. Zipp will perform and Pipp will plan. While the standard plot would be that the two sisters do indeed gain an appreciation for one another's lifestyles, I wonder if this story will instead embrace the mismatch and have everything go wild. We'll have to see.
The second issue of an arcing story is often a holding piece. The shock of the first issue is over but we can't yet move towards the resolution. So the options are to make things worse or have the heroes spin their wheels. This issue is a little of both as the Friendship Fellowship make little progress, but also commit to seeing this through to the end wtih disaster waiting nearby.
I think this story is worth it just for the interactions and the unique portrayal of a wishing nymph in Milkyway. Give it a look and we'll see how this progresses next month. I'm Silver Quill. Thanks for reading!
