Welcome to Sire’s Hollow! …I mean, welcome back to my quest to draw a new pony comic for each new episode of season 8! Since last time, I’ve been experimenting with the art style and how I draw ponies a bit. Time will tell how well it holds up, but I like the results right now at least. For some reason I thought it a good idea to draw 6 panels in 2 days. It was… tiring, but hopefully this makes up for last week.

This week’s comic is based on The Parent Map. After seeing glimpses of it in passing since the season 5 finale, it was great to finally get to know more about where Starlight and Sunburst actually grew up, as well as who raised them. It’s also good to know that Starlight didn’t kill her parents in her youthful rebellion! (or at least… she didn’t kill her dad… hmm…) I can see why those two aren’t too thrilled to be returning to their parents and dealing with their parental quirks… but for the comic, I thought about it some more, and realized they kinda already have to deal with that thanks to somepony else in their lives. I guess it’s just a matter where something seems more annoying coming from your parents than coming from a friend (such as how Rainbow Dash hates it when her parents praise her for doing nothing, but when Scootaloo does it, it’s fine), but I thought the connection was funny. Good to see Twilight keeping these former screw-ups on the right track!

Two weeks ago, when I complained about the Cutie Map summoning ponies pretty much at random, a helpful time traveler told me to look out for this episode, without giving me any details as to avoid time paradoxes. And, sure enough, now SUNBURST has been summoned by the map. I’ll let it slide this time since the problem was directly related to him and Starlight, the latter of whom has been summoned previously, but if the map’s gonna start calling on ponies who don’t even live anywhere near it, then that kinda opens up a huge can of worms. First of all, Sunburst only knew what the glowing marks meant because of his time in the castle in the season 7 finale. Second, the Crystal Empire and Ponyville really aren’t that close to each other, and you have to go to the physical map in order to figure out where your mission is. Basically, Sunburst had to go on a grand adventure to a far-off place just so he could go on a grand adventure to a far-off place! I seriously considered making the comic about Sunburst’s journey to Ponyville (and things going wrong similar to Pinkie’s journey to Yakyakistan in Party Pooped), but that’d require a LOT of panels for the joke to work, and I feel like what I drew here is probably funnier anyway. Still, I’ve got my eye on you, map.

Hope you all stay safe and sound, and figure out your futures! Looking forward to the next episode!

Starlight Glimmer, Sunburst, Princess Twilight Sparkle, and My Little Pony belong to Hasbro and DHX.