Ponytails of Terror #1: Seduction of the Innocent

MLP: PtoT #1: Seduction of the Innocent

My friend (henceforth to be referred to as "Kitty") and I present in what we hope to be a series of monthly MLP/EC Comics inspired comic covers. The idea, first thought of back in April, came from me both, wanting another installment of Fiendship is Magic mini-series with Discord, and also at that time a book I was reading detailing the early history of comics.

The book is The Ten-Cent Plague; written by David Hajdu, it focuses at lot on Ed Gaines co-editor of EC comics and how he and the rest of the industry dealt with backlash against comics in the 50's. Also in the book Hajdu details the work of Fredric Wertham a psychiatrist who falsified and fabricated data on the relationship between comic books and juvenile delinquency in his works, one of the first of which is a novel entitled "Seduction of the Innocent".

And so my train of thought led me to plotting this comic cover out here. I love villains (even reformed ones like Discord here) and I'd love to see IDW publish more comics focusing on them from time to time. When Kitty and I kept having ideas for other covers we decided it be best to make our own little line, so here's hoping to see more Ponytails of Terror in the future.

That outta, the way acknowledgements!

Made within Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop (I did the work in Illustrator and Kitty did the Photoshoping)

Layout design based on EC comics covers.

Title logo "borrowed" from IDW's website

Fonts Used: Action Man, Blessed Day, Century Gothic, Chivo, Cutie Pop, Evogria, Lycanthrope, and Zombie Holocaust (edited)

Ryleigh sketched by Kitty. She'll hopefully be doing most of the sketching from now on. She's obviously much better at it than I. Also we're seriously looking for a pony-name for Ryleigh. She's my OC from a RP Kitty and I are in; her magic there is based on umbrakinesis (Shadow Control) {insert Mary Sue jokes here} so feel free to suggest names. If we like one we'll use it and credit you or if people just like the non-pony sounding name of Ryleigh we may just stick with that, let us know.

The Panda was sketched by me based off of the panda from the board game Takenoko.

Princess Big Mac was also sketched by the Kitty. You can thank M.A. Larson and Peter New for the idea as well as for some of the design inspiration. Oh and hey Season 5 episode 13 made that canon (Remember I said this first issue was drafted back in April 2015!)

The background is my recreation of the stage from the Rainbow Rocks: Life is a Runway music video.

Derpy was also sketched by me. A special thanks to for all his sketch studies of pony positions which helped me pose Derpy [Link], as well as the show for the scrunchy-face face. Her outfit is based off of the one in the same Life is a Runway short also ponified by katuhira_rinmi [Link] which helped me determine how to also ponify it.

And lastly, Discord was sketched by me using the show and Lauren Faust's original sketches [Link] with his facial expression based off of when he was corrupting Rainbow Dash in The Return of Harmony Part 1.

Two quick asides: Re-watching that I had forgotten how terrifying Discord can be when he has a plan; Two if you look closely at Lauren Faust bottom two Discord sketches his right and left limbs aren't determined by his body positioning but by the left and right of the stage (the paper he's drawn on). This is probably just a small layout error since these are sketches but how cool is the idea that his limbs might have been dictated by the 4th wall rather than internal physics.

Any and all sensible questions and comments welcomed.

TLDR: Pony horror-comic cover, more to hopefully come soon. Kitty, we need your schedule to open up more.

P.S. So not approved by the Comics Code Authority!