Foreword, I'm writing this as an adult fan so I don't know how kids would react to this comic, but I personally feel the storyline they're building is a little to much for the land of Equestria. While I loved most of the previous "dark stories" like The Return of Queen Chrysalis, Nightmare Rarity and Reflections, this one feels distinctly less whimsical and fun, which I think makes the darker aspects more apparent.
The story is a direct sequel to the excellent "Legends of Magic" spin-off series, which I think is My Little Pony at its best, with great adventure, humor, characters and world-building, but this series lacks most of that so far. The issue starts with our heroes, Stygian and Princess Luna trapped in a nightmare where they're forced to watch the Pony of Shadows torture a young Princess Celestia, in his words, forging her into a weapon that can "break entire worlds". Apparently he tried the same thing with a young Princess Luna, but it failed so he left her to die, cold and alone.
The nightmare however, turned out to be real and Stygian and Luna teamed up to travel to another universe to save Celestia. However, at this point, Celestia has been reduced to nothing but the "pet" of a new character named Princess Eris, who threatened to destroy the world by giving ponies eternal nightmares so they may never sleep again.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that some of the plot threads made me genuinely uncomforable. While death, murder, slavery and warfare have all been touched in the comics past, it was always with a fantastical, whimsical bent that made it not as bad as it seemed. Here however, while it's all done with magic, what's done is what's done. Like "Legends of Magic", the story does dress some of the concepts up in more child-friendly language (for example, they don't say the Pony of Shadows "killed" Luna, but that he left her in a state where "she couldn't survive") but it does little.
Of course, this is just issue 1 so the story may get better in issues to come, but this wasn't the best of introductions. Aside from my complaints above, the rest of the comic is pretty good. The art is done by Tony Fleecs, whose usually my least favorite comic artist at IDW, but his work here was actually pretty good! Most of his more irksome hallmarks seem to be gone, like posing ponies against stock-looking backgrounds and and an inability to draw faces (just see "Ponies of Dark Water" and "Annual 2013" for examples! Yuck!). The backgrounds are pretty detailed and they're filled with tons of references of past comics (although the comics are getting a bit too self-indulgent for my liking), even if some of the references don't make sense. Why is Cleopatrot in the club of evil ponies when she was born several thousand years before them? Sure ponies can live longer than humans, but not THAT long. Ah well.
In short, the comic (along with "Legends of Magic") build most of MLPs "Cosmic Mythos" (along with Accord, FiM #25 and Reflections) in a unique and interesting way that's not a rehash of Marvel of DCs cosmic mythos. The mythos is fun, but I feel like they're going to far with what they're doing. While it's far, far, FAR from the worst comic arc ("Ponies of Dark Water" takes that cake by being insulting, condescending, stupid and insensitive to several real-world topics), I wouldn't put it with the best.
If you're looking for a good adventure arc that can get pretty dark but stays true to the spirit of My Little Pony, I'd say go with "Legends of Magic". It's 12 issues with an Annual that's just pure fun with a fantastic conclusion. If you want a good adventure arc that never really gets dark and is fun all the way, I'd recommend Friendship is Magic volume 4. It's two story arcs, the first involving a pirate adventure and the second an exploration of literature and pop-culture worlds, but they're both just so good. They explore completely new locations with new villains to defeat and always keep up the humorous, whimsical, light-hearted nature of the show, even surpassing it in some regards.
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![My Little Pony: Nightmare Knights #1 by [Jeremy Whitley, Tony Fleecs]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/W/IMAGERENDERING_521856-T1/images/I/516125WwoQL._SY346_.jpg)
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