😭

Going the Jim Lee Superman route, eh?

@Background Pony #DD99  
Well, in part 1, you don’t really see much of corrupted Rainbow Dash, just the sonic rainbooms she keeps making.

Why is Rainbow Dash on every cover just in the background?

Evil is eternal.

@Vortaxonus  
Based on another cover, I think it’s possible the CMC will get help from either Zecora or Luna.

Okay, let’s change the subject a tad bit and say what conceivably reasonable way for the cutie mark crusaders to defeat the mane six, and what could make them (the mane six) from turning evil all of a sudden.

Loving that look Fluttershy has going on. The eyes, the body language.

@IfFoundReturnToRarity  
Which was so rare an occurrence of the others actually being relevant that its constantly brought up like a miracle by people. And they had to Outright steal all of twilight’s abilities to do it too.

With a backdrop straight from a Roger Dean album cover? Sure, why not?

@IfFoundReturnToRarity  
Except in the Season 6 premiere.

Kinda reminds me of the Garlic Jr. filler saga. (Black Water Mist, anyone?)

@Background Pony #A3AB  
That may be the case where she does gravitate towards taking charge in situations where it needs be, but 90% of the time when she does that in the series, she really overshadows everyone, to a point where it’s questionable what the other ponies are even doing there, aside from taking up space. And it looks like that’s probably what’s going to happen here too.
 
 
@Background Pony #2ADD  
Very good way of putting it, I agree. Good example with Leonardo, I didn’t think of that. Ninja Turtles still feels like a cast of 4 main characters, Twilight however tends to push things into “The Twilight Sparkle Show” territory at times.

@Background Pony #A3AB  
The problem is that she’s not just a Battle commander she shamelessly tends to leave the others behind or have them worfed into oblivion so she can do everything herself (See issue 4, the Cattle rustler arc, Or how the S4 finale, S5 finale and the S3 opener had the other 5 as cameos while twilight went on a solo adventure).
 
 
let me put it this way: You can be a leader without becoming a black hole who everything revolves around. Leonardo from Teenage mutant ninja turtles isn’t treated like ninja jesus who utterly makes his brothers irrellevent in the 2012 show, He’s a leader simply because he can think on his feet: He’s inferior to Raph in fighting, to Donnie in anything technical or science related, and… well okay, Mikey’s kind of inferior, but he’s the comedy relief.
 
Twilight on the other hand is portrayed as the leader because basically “Anything the others can do, twilight can and will do better” most of the time.

@IfFoundReturnToRarity  
Because while they might not naturally be a group of warriors, they sometimes do things that warriors would do, and the show is clear in showing that whenever they’re in one of those crises, they kind of stall and get little done without Twilight to point them in the right direction (such as in S1E02 and S4E01/S4E02). Twilight also naturally gravitates towards the leadership role among her friends, such as in S2E01/S2E02, S3E01/S3E02, S5E01/S5E02, and numerous lower key episodes.
 
I mean, she doesn’t have to necessarily overshadow the others just because she’s the leader (she certainly didn’t in the season 5 opener), but having someone else be the leader when Twilight was available would be like asking Pinkie Pie to put together costumes they needed instead of Rarity just because people wanted some variety in what the mane six do.

@Background Pony #A3AB  
There’s a difference between “Being a leader” and “Being the center of everything”. And even still, this isn’t some band of warriors, they’re a group of friends, why do they need a leader?

@Background Pony #086E  
The only time that Twilight has ever showed trouble with manipulating large numbers of objects is at the beginning of Magic Duel. However, that was on multiple living creatures that might make it more difficult, since we’ve seen her manipulating hundreds of objects at once when she repaired the dam in TMMDW, far exceeding Rarity’s feats in number of objects lifted. She could be deadly if she wielded knives, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen a single blade used by ponies, even in battle, so it might not be something that easily occurs to them, and I doubt being able to levitate a dozen or two small items at once is especially rare amongst above average unicorns.
 
Yeah, I agree that Rainbow would probably be the second deadliest of the mane six (though the Sonic Rainnuke was a one time gag, not an actual feat she could use in combat).
 
The stare driving off the dragon and the cockatrice is impressive, but it doesn’t work on everything. In addition, it was Twilight’s spell that made the bats stop eating apples not the stare, and she didn’t “subtly manipulate” Discord; she offered him straightforward friendship, and hoped that it would work.
 
Pinkie can’t use any of her gag powers in serious contexts to solve major problems, so that wouldn’t help her take over the world or in combat. If she could do all her Pinkie-isms freely, Tirek wouldn’t have caught her nearly as easily, the changelings wouldn’t have captured her, etc.

it has begun !!!!  
 
 

Twilight Sparkle has gone Anakin Skywalker on us!

@Background Pony #2ADD  

True, but it’s still a characteristic she has that works to her advantage. Plus she has other talents as well. For instance, she has a pretty uncanny ability to manipulate a large number of items at once, which is something we’ve seen Twilight struggle with a bit at times.  
 
Replace all those things with knives, and I bet people would change their tune about her a bit.
 
@Background Pony #2ADD  

I may be wrong here, but I don’t seem to recall seeing any of those ponies you mentioned ever fly so hard they caused an explosion. Rainbow, on the other hand, has the nuclear style ground attack, the in flight sonic rainboom, the buccaneer blaze, and who knows how many others at her disposal. Heck, I’d argue Lightning Dust wasn’t better, just more reckless, which is how she almost ended up killing Dash’s friends.
 
@Background Pony #2ADD  

Yeah, I guess staring down a creature that turns you to stone if you look at it isn’t all that impressive in the long run. Nor is the dragon she scolded into behaving, or the bats that live entirely on fruit that she made stop eating fruit, or subtly manipulating a 1000+ year old lord of chaos into being nice.
 
@Background Pony #2ADD  

I suppose that’s true. I mean can you imagine what would happen if she was able to just, say, ignore gravity for a bit?  
 
Or survive without the orifices she needs to breathe.  
 
Good thing neither of those things have occurred canonically in episodes.

@LuminoZero  
I don’t remember anything about that show except that it was so cool!

Evil Pinkie you say?  

@dynamicv  
Well, I could see her working well if they have the corrupting fountain as the key to her plan: just have her plan be to attack and kidnap the ponies in ponyville and drag them to the fountain to corrupt them and then conscript them into her army;
 
Keep repeating until she has a group of ponies under her large enough to pose a threat to larger settlements in equestria.
 
 
@Background Pony #A3AB  
It’d be nice if they had the fountain’s influence make the others a little more assertive and bold in their actions honestly.

If this arc actually involves Twilight having to mastermind some way to overthrow Celestia and Luna (instead of just pushing them aside with a contrivance) I will be impressed.

@Background Pony #086E  
rarity’s “manipulation” aren’t anything special to write home about: She was conned easily by suri, has been absolutely inept with anyone of worth (The dragon in dragonquest, Blueblood, trenderhoof) and is only really good at charming idiots. Supervillain material that is not.
 
 
Rainbow dash’s “Nuclear explosion” was a visual gag and nothing more, and has been shown to be easily matched IF NOT EXCEEDED by other flyers like Lightning dust (a mere CADET), Wind rider (Who’s still better than her at the current point) and spitfire.  
Given how there’s a large amount of wonderbolts, there’s MANY ponies who are her match, and there’s just ONE rainbow dash and lots of wonderbolts.
 
 
Fluttershy’s Stare has proven to be useless against anything that actually matters (Didn’t see her taking care of that Bugbear, or the spiders from the Chrysalis arc); nothing world shattering there.
 
Pinkie pie’s good for jokes but her abilities are just that: Jokes. She hasn’t exhibited any ability to actually break reality in anything besides an aside joke which can be assumed to be non-canon due to that.
 
 
Twilight’s the only one of merit in this group, and that’s due to Hax Alicorn magic and potential.