
With the release of IDW's My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #1, The Outhouse celebrates Pony Day!
Today marks an important day in comic book history. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #1 hits comic book stores today, and it may be the first real opportunity comics have had to expand their audience in a very long time.
No, seriously.
The phenomenon of bronies, adult males who are obsessed with a cartoon about talking ponies made for prepubescent girls, has resulted in one of the strongest fandoms the world has ever seen. Attendance at the last Bronycon grew by a factor of eight from the previous year. The brony community is huge on the web, and comic sites have been overrun with pony news since even before the comic was announced. As a comparison, the subreddit for comic books, /r/comicbooks, has 48,574 subscribes, while /r/mylittlepony has 48,824. That's right, the Reddit fan community of bronies is slightly larger than the community for the entirety of comics fandom.
Preorders for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #1 are more than 100,000 copies, beating all but the best selling comic books.
Ponies. Are. Serious. Business.
There could be 100,000 or so people in comic shops today who may never have purchased a comic before. People who are not ashamed to openly display their love of something clearly designed for children, despite all logic and common sense telling us that such a thing should be unbearably embarrassing for anyone over the age of 11.
They would make the perfect comic book fans.
And here at The Outhouse, we love to jump on bandwagons. That's why we're officially declaring today Pony Day on our site, and, to celebrate, this reporter will be known, for one day only, by my official pony name: Midnight Bedazzler.
Of course, none of this would be possible without the love for ponies that has been exemplified by one of our very own staff writers, and one of the biggest fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic ever - Zechs.
Zechs, I would just like to say that, as webmaster of The Outhouse, a fellow reporter, and yes, as a friend... I am proud of you. I'm proud of your unwavering devotion to ponies, since before it became the cool thing to be into, even in the face of the ridicule of your peers. Real men love ponies, and today, Zechs, you are a man.
And years from now, when you are slowly transforming into a snake, you can hiss, "a man, yessssssss, I was oncsssssse a maaannnnnnnn."
To our new pony overlords who may be visiting the site for the first time, here is just a small sampling of all the classic articles The Outhouse has written about ponies:
Of course, we'll have a review of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #1 up later today as well. Until then...
Welcome to The Outhouse, bronies... hope you survive the experience.
Written or Contributed by Jude Terror
READ THIS ARTICLE ON THE FRONT PAGE, HUMANS!