IDW Comics - Story Discussion (Spoilers)

Will you consider Season 10 canon?

@PonyPon
 
This, pretty much.
 
The comic staff has consistently shown that they cannot be trusted with a story having any kind of tension or, heaven forbid, a villain. Claiming the next step of the series to be held to a higher “canon status” ain’t gonna change that.

Having Season 10 be in the comics is a mistake, IMO.
 
The comics gave us such terrible stories as Reflections, Siege of the Crystal Empire, and Cosmos.

@Hakirayleigh  
It reeks of desperate marketing and is almost insultingly presumptuous.

@kleptomage  
We know Hasbro squeezes our desires out, but of course I would prefer the show and not this with the comic writers shame stories.

My pardon if this is the wrong thread for this comment, but according to DriveThruRPG, which also sells comics, they’re dropping all of their IDW titles at the end of December. How bad is news like this for IDW and the MLP comics? Their sales seem to be dropping more and more; it used to be that the local comic shops couldn’t even keep MLP:FiM in stock. Now I see them having a backlog extending for several months on the shelves. Heck, not even Pencils’ stuff is selling locally and he’s a great artist.
 
Does this mean that IDW is going out of business?

@Background Pony #DDE9  
The lastest pony comics (Occelus story and the Holiday special) couldn’t break the 7K and 6K marks, respectively. The reasons for this decline have been largely discussed but nobody at IDW has shown any signs of concern.

@Anonycat  
It’s still decent money on the margins they’re operating under.

@Philweasel  
IDW staffer explained some years ago that each issue needs to sell over 5K issues just to avoid going to red. As you can see, they haven’t been making much of a profit for a long time.

@Anonycat  
I understand that the whole American comics business is doing very poorly.

We can only wait how Season 10 will turn out.
 
Season 10 will turn into the new canon, which could be a good thing or a bad thing.

@[Ω]
 
It’s gonna take more than the end of the series for those comics to become relevant.

@Poison Trail  
The comics have been focusing on the Students, but those issues haven’t been selling well.

One thing that I really wished for the comics is for their arcs to be a bit more longer, to take their time to tell what is need to be necessary, more detail and such.
 
Unfortunately, the comics are basically short stories, limited to two or four issues maximum, after that, they jump into other plots. This limits their writing, which provokes anti-climatic endings if the plot involves action or epic stories.

@[Ω]  
That or stories full of padding to make them last two or three issues instead of just one or two.

@Anonycat  
Or just full of repetition with no difference in them.

@Background Pony #5352  
Or being used as an excuse for the writers and artists to introduce and shill their own characters at the story and protagonist’s expenses. Fortunately, eventually Hasbro and IDW decided to step in and put some restrictions to this, even if it happened a bit too late.

@Anonycat  
The question is: Who is restricted? I guess Radiant Hope, Miss Pommel, Suri Polomare, Babs Seed (hasn’t appeared at all since FF37 which is why I’m putting her here), all Season 9 characters, the Season 9 villains, the Reflections counterparts, anyone created by someone no longer working for IDW, and any new characters IDW creates unless approved.

@Anonycat  
@Wiimeiser  
I hope the season 10 comic turns to be a “soft reboot”, and erases things from the past like Wiimeiser mentioned, and keeping with the lore of the show, instead of what was part of the comics only.

@Background Pony #DDE9  
Comics seems to be a pretty bizarre business for DTRPG to be involved in.
 
@Anonycat  
I believe they said that if they sold 5k an issue they would run forever, not that 5k was a bare-minimum break-even point.

@cheezedoodle  

 
This is from that era where the comic used to sell around 20K each issue.

@Anonycat  
God bless those 5k bronies out there still buying the comics :p

@[Ω]  
Someone has to, I guess.

So the first “episode” of season 10 for the comics, will involve Twilight sending Applejack, Tempest Shadow, Zecora, and Rockhoof to go on a mission to Zecora’s home country, where they discover more about her and the Zebras, and also learn about kelpies

@icey wicey 1517  
Actual kelpies, or their kelpies?