Welcome back! If you missed Part One of this narrative, click here. Otherwise, click HERE to download the second half of the issues so you can read along with me.
Writing wholly original stories can be frustrating. You can create the most intricate lore imaginable, but you don't truly know what will work and what won't until you've played around in your world for some time. And it's discouraging to discover seven stories deep that something about it isn't working, or doesn't work as well as you theorized it would.
With fanfic, you don't have to worry about that. The concept you're borrowing is already proven. You already know the characters work and have chemistry. All the dials, levers and knobs are already set up -- all you have to do to tell a story is manipulate them in the right way. You can jump right to the storytelling part and that's why, I believe, fanfics are a good exercise. I know they've helped ME grow a lot.
After issue #11, Pokemon went on hiatus for three months. I don't remember the exact reason, but it could have been that the lesser quality of the "Zelda" issue dampened my enthusiasm a little bit and prompted a break. Within that time, I finally got my scanner hooked up to the family computer and fully entered the "digital age" of cartooning....well, almost.
I wouldn't get my first drawing tablet for several more years, and the comics still had to originate on paper. But before this, I could only add elements like photos and printed text by going to an office copier business like Kinko's and running the layout through a machine. The last time I had to do that was the "Future Schlock" issue of The Boxcar Children that started all this. But no more! I could finally add computer elements to my art without having to pay to splice it together. (It was my parents that would pay now, as they were the ones who had to replace the ink in the printer.)
The first thing I scanned into my computer was the cover to my Pokemon Player's Guide, and I made the rookie mistake of selecting the highest DPI I possibly could. It took an incredibly long time to generate, and equally as long to edit on a 1999 eMachines PC. I tried to block out everything around the logo so I could use it on my comic covers. I'd color a white blob, wait for it to appear, then color the next white blob. There was no Google Image Search and no place I knew of online to download a high-res Pokemon logo on a 56K modem. It was this or nothing. I'm embarrased now at how bad that hack job looks, but at the time, I felt blown away I could have a real logo instead of a tracing. The future was now!
As for what the subject of the first digital issue of Pokemon would be, I had the perfect opportunity to make the most of it. We were going to HAWAII.
My family would be staying on Oahu for a week in early June. While we were there, I wrote and drew Pokemon #12, taking pictures of things I planned to use as backgrounds and story elements later. Unfortunately our budget extended to staying there, eating out and buying lots of souvenirs, and did NOT include the price of a rental car. We couldn't get very far outside Honolulu, leading to Ash's comment in the issue that "this is like Seattle, only more humid." I'm sure there were some beautiful sights on the opposite end of the island that would have changed my mind.
Issue #12 / June 2000
Poi Story
Since pencil lines didn't transfer clean when scanned in, we're
back to ballpoint pen art. Ash and the gang think it would be a
good idea to do an issue on location. The Head Executive seems to
agree, but only if the kids pay the bill. So they swipe his
wallet and leave for Hawaii.
Misty is singing Abba on page five because I just heard "Fernando" for the first time at a local supermarket, and had it in my head. Pikachu is surfing because I unlocked the "Surfin' Pikachu" minigame in Pokemon Yellow and wanted to show off my score (I thought we'd seen the last of the Game Boy Printer stickers, but...here we are). "When he shoots the tube, the tunes hit the groove!" is what an NPC tells you during that minigame. Ash derisively calls Pikachu "Charlton Heston" but in the next panel Pikachu is imitating John Wayne.
The Hard Rock Cafe in Honolulu allegedly had Elvis's car hanging from the ceiling, but that claim was dubious as, like Misty points out, it really did have a South Park decal on it. Hilo Hattie's is an actual tourist trap, and we found out the hard way there's a "free" bus that deposits you there. The summer of 2000 was Peak Powerpuff in terms of merchandising, and McCracken's girls were all over Hawaii. I didn't make up the moose restaurant or part of the beach being "under construction" either. I also watched a LOT of Cartoon Network in the hotel room, as this was one of those rare times I had access to it. I saw Gundam Wing, the "Lost Cartoons" episode of Toon Heads, and about 10,000 Scooby Doos.
And now we get to the "controversial" part of this story. Or at least it would be if anybody actually saw this. Ash's mother always seemed so unnaturally cheery, it felt to me like she was suppressing something. Like she was in an abusive relationship, and his father is MIA because he ran out on them, and Ash was simply too naive and clueless to notice any of that. Ash is going to be the world's greatest Pokemon Master, but to his own father, he's nothing. Misty never tells him about the encounter.
Pokemon U-Missed
The only reason this short exists seems to be to pick on Britney
Spears. "Bad To The Bone" was not an Ozzy song.
Issue #13 / July 2000
The "cold opener" to the issue, if that's what it can
be called, is Harry Potter hiding from a Merchandising Giant who
wants to exploit him. Mr. Potter wasn't newly popular, of course
-- he arrived in the States a year before Pokemon did. This may
have been related to Warner Bros purchasing the movie and TV
rights, because after seeing what they did with Pokemon...
Gary Oak's advice column mentions the GS Ball. That plot thread is infamous among fans of the anime. Ash found this Poke Ball called the GS Ball that no one could figure out how to open. He couldn't open it either. I guess no one could because after a few more appearances, it vanished with no follow-up. It was believed that it would open in a future movie and that Legendary Pokemon Celebi, the Mew of Gold and Silver, would pop out. That didn't happen. Gary says it will, but Gary is usually wrong.
Ash's Ashes
Title and in-story spoof are riffing on "Angela's
Ashes," a popular biography at the time. Ash has an ego
problem today, because he just directed Pokemon The Movie
2000, a film where he alone saves the world. When he walks
into a new town and hears about an elite group of trainers called
the "Poke-Society," he becomes obsessed with joining
them to stay on top. The unidentified trainers, shown only in
shadow, reveal the qualifications: a humiliating round of
frathouse-style initiation pranks. Ash does all of them, and
after making a complete fool of himself, the true identity of the
Poke-Society is revealed. If you didn't see it coming, you really
should have (this is also their last appearance in this comic).
Two Guys, A Girl And A Pikachu
With this story, the comic truly kicked into gear. I started
experimenting with a new story technique that really took off for
me. It was a "building blocks" style of serialized
writing, where something happens, which leads to something else,
which inspires something ELSE...and on ad infintium. Some might
just call that "continuity," but it was more than that.
Using this technique, with each story, the world expanded further
and became richer. Stories were now inspiring other stories, and
mining the depths of my head this way felt amazing. The Stranger
Things comic would later adopt this same technique to build
its own world. I also suspect The Venture Bros was
written this way.
After the Hawaii trip, Misty has the bug to go someplace else tropical. They pick the island of Bula-Bula, and Snorkel Bob (yes, he appeared here before he became a character in Keiki) sends them on his cruise ship. While on the ship, Ash runs into another trainer named Karin whom he is immediately entranced by...to Misty's horror. She's an expert trainer, in the running to be the next Elite, and even has her own Ho-oh to fly on! Misty runs through a gamut of emotions from jealousy to depression...but she doesn't know the worst of it. Once they're on the island, it turns out Karin lives there...and she invites Ash to stay there with her. What will he do?
Talk show host Kathie Lee Gifford was also the spokeswoman for Carnival Cruise Ships, where she would stand on the deck and sing "If They Could See Me Now." She was well-known for telling rambling stories abou her family on the air, most often her son Cody. I have to wonder how Cody turned out; having your mother gab about every embarrassing thing you ever did to millions of people can't have been good for his psyche. Snorkel Bob mentions a "hot new series called Liver" -- the word is a play on "Survivor." There will be many Survivor references in the near future. And I don't have to explain what the mounted singing Magikarp is about, do I?
Brock Report #1
Here I begin to write Brock back into the comic. The dot-com
business went bust, of course, but the ledge stunt that appears
afterward....this has to be based on something that happened
locally, otherwise mayor Vera Katz and other Portland elements
wouldn't be appearing. I don't remember what it was, though.
Issue #14 / August 2000
Brock Report #2
Brock's time stuck on the ledge gets worse as some kind of spacey
New Age-y celebrity decides to join him in his "cause."
As far as I know she was not based on anyone specific.
Commit Random Moltres And Senseless
Acts Of Charizard
This title was derived from a popular bumper sticker at the time
that said "Commit Random Acts Of Kindness And Senseless
Beauty." No one would get it now. Trendy bumper stickers
seem to make themselves unavoidable for a few years and then
vanish without a trace. "Mean People Suck" was a
popular 90s bumper sticker and I don't know why it went away.
Mean people still suck!
It doesn't take long for Ash to decide if he wants to stay with Karin on the island or not. After hearing Karin wants to see a movie about a young Pokemon trainer who wins the heart of a Gym Leader, Ash realizes he can't do it. He HAS the affection of a Gym Leader, he says, and he can't give that up. Karin understands, and guesses correctly that it's Misty -- which freaks Ash out, as he was not supposed to tell. To make matters worse, at that moment Misty gets a threatening letter from someone who seems to know her secret. When Ash gets back he has to admit he told Karin, which makes Misty furious with him. Tracey has a talk with her and directs her anger to Karin instead. Maybe he shouldn't have done that. Misty charges over to where Karin is and things get ugly.
What it builds up to is that Marill is back, has built a giant machine to amplify his powers, and he wants to use it to take away Misty's powers. What should be a straightforward plan to destroy it is derailed by one complication after another. Ultimately, the machine is reset to its original function: blowing up the island. The gang has seconds to escape, but thanks to Karin's Ho-oh, they make it. The issue ends on another cliffhanger: Karin is currently knocked out and has no idea her home and everyone on it has just been annihilated.
This is a very fast-paced story with emotions flying and a LOT happening. Tension is high in the climactic scene and victory doesn't come easy -- in fact, in terms of the island, it doesn't come at all. Humor was still an element, but the series was evolving beyond its foundation of gags and satire into a true adventure. I was now officially 100% hooked. And it was about to get even better.
Brock Report #3
Now hiding in a trash can, Brock is found by the Head Executive,
who has some good news: he's decided to fire Tracey and let him
back into the comic.
Issue #15 / August 2000
Here's what's going on with this cover: those are the Three
Legendary Birds Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres on the wire, that's
Professor Oak's CAR, and that panicking man is Professor Oak.
"Well, aren't YOU creative," my art teacher derisively
remarked when she saw this one.
The Legend Of Pikachu: Karin's
Awakening
The gang now has to deal with the aftermath and fallout from the
previous issue. Karin now knows she has lost her island home and
is devastated. The only possession of hers that remains is her
backpack, which contains her Pokemon. Lorelei comes over to
Ash's house to console Karin and show her the protoype for the
beanbag figure of her, because she's now been named an Elite.
Everyone is surprised to hear this except Misty, who heard it
from Karin in issue 14.
Karin now has one goal: to represent her late country in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia...and win in its honor. They take her out to get some new clothes (as all she currently owns are what she has on). Karin selects a loud tropical shirr that becomes her signature piece of clothing, not that you can really tell since she never appears in color.
Lorelei suggests that Ash let Karin join his group, so she has a place to belong. I did NOT start this story with the intent of introducing Karin as a fourth party member. It just flowed into that and I shrugged and said, "let's just see where this goes." Karin remained part of the gang until the end.
Like I said last time, I've forgotten a lot of what I wrote here. I laughed pretty hard at the beginning when Brock asked to be filled in on what was going on and Ash just said "Well, we're back in Pallet Town, in my house." That's so Ash.
How They Did Pokemon
If you didn't know this, Ash's name in Japan is Satoshi, after
the creator of the Pokemon game, Satoshi Tajiri. His rival's name
is Shigeru, after Tajiri's boss...yes, that guy. The
idea of Gary actually being named for Shigeru Miyamoto was so
funny that I had to do something with it, and here it is: a
documentary about the careers of both people and how they came to
create Pokemon as we know it. Hosted by actor Troy McClure!
Some of the dates in here are wrong -- the Famicom launched in 1983, not 1985, and Pokemon started in early 1996 in Japan, America in fall 1998 (why'd I say 1999?) As a huge fan of Link's Awakening (see the previous story's title), I wanted a hi-res version of the Japanese box art very badly, but this being the dial-up days of the Internet, all I could find was a blurry GIF. I put it in the documentary with the explanation that it was "scrambled so Americans couldn't enjoy it." More saltiness: Gary Miyamoto says he refuses to allow a new sequel to Metroid because he's just a stinker. Two would happen in 2002.
Issue #16 / September 2000
Never Say Goodbye
It's the Sydney Olympics. As the sole survivor of her island
country, it's Karin's one shot to bring home the Gold
("home" in the metaphorical sense, of course). Can she
pull it off? This is the ONLY issue in the entire run to feature
actual Pokemon battling as the core of its plot. Interesting that
there's more than one Mew in my world.
Most of Karin's "new" Pokemon are from Gold and Silver, which was due for release the following month. I think this is some of the best material for Gary I had written to date. He got me to laugh out loud multiple times.
This is the second time I set a record in Pokemon Pinball and named the initials after a character from my comic so I could work it in. "LOR" appears as #3, implying Lorelei is also good at the machine. You may recognize the tidbits from Ash's "book of Olympic facts" as coming from my old TAG class notes in elementary school. Or maybe you won't...upon trying to search for that ancient article, I discovered it had been accidentally delinked from the site since 2007! It's repaired now...it may be new to you.
A lot of shade is thrown at NBC's Olympics coverage, and most of the problems I made fun of are still problems they have today. Their aggressive overpromotion of "The Brian Snorky Show" is one of the 2000-era running gags that stayed completely fresh. All you find out is that Brian Snorky lives with a crabby aunt and an Irish girlfriend named "Deidre," but you can just sense it's terrible.
Issue #17 / September 2000
So something horrible happened. I started shipping Ash and Misty.
Thanks to my writing these stories, it started to bother me whenever she would smack him on the show. How could she do that; couldn't they see they were meant to be?? Of course these were the days when there was still hope. The anime almost never threw us a bone, but there was the wild exception of "Misty Meets Her Match," an Orange Islands episode where Misty runs into a handsome trainer who invites her to stay with him. In the end she rejects his offer and the man tells him "You're a lucky guy, Ash!" "Why?" he says. "You'll find out someday!" he replies. No, Ash will not.
I don't know if it's possible to write fanfiction without shipping, but I would think it'd be very hard to avoid. When you write for other people's characters (or your own characters, really), you get inside those characters' heads. You connect with them on an emotional level that you wouldn't reach otherwise. And when you've been writing a romance and really getting into it, really FEELING that love, and then in the canon universe it doesn't actually happen, or it ends badly...well, it hurts. It can hurt just as much as an actual breakup. I understand there are some people who actually ship pairings that are non-canon ON PURPOSE. What kind of madness would one have to be afflicted with?
Doctor Dolittle
For those who have never seen any of the many incarnations of
Doctor Dolittle, he's a professor who can talk to animals and
understand their speech. So when he does this with Pokemon, what
will happen? It turns out they have a surprisingly wide spectrum
of political opinions.
Karin For Gary
Uh-oh! Gary has hacked this entire story in an effort to prevent
you from reading it! It must've been pretty embarrassing for him.
It's printed upside down AND backwards...what will you do? Well,
you could just extract the images, open them in a viewer and
change them back with a couple clicks. Or you could use a mirror.
Or you could attempt to read the pages the way they are. The
choice is yours.
"Voyeurism" was a word the media used a lot in those days, as a scold term in response to the explosion of mindless reality shows in 2000. The word refers to a fascination with watching the private lives of others. A show called "Big Brother" had just premiered on CBS that catered directly to the idea of voyeurism. Anyway, though many of the reality shows that debuted that year are still running today, I doubt there is anyone under the age of 30 that can decipher the sentence "Survivor Rich Married Darva Conger."
Karin's animal call that puts Pokemon to sleep was inspired by "Son Of Godzilla," where a similar call was used by a similar character to bond with kaiju.
Ash Has A Nightmare
It was more than just the Ash / Misty thing that was bothering
me. By this point, the anime had settled into the Johto era,
which as anyone watching will tell you, was a steep dropoff in
quality. The show was once wildly unpredictable and had a sense
of high adventure, but it had settled into a strict formula: the
gang walks somewhere, they meet someone with a specific Pokemon,
the Pokemon has a problem and the gang tries to solve it, Team
Rocket shows up and tries to take either the Pokemon or Pikachu,
they're blasting off again, the gang waves goodbye and walks
away. And then somewhere in there Brock might come on to a girl
and his ear might get yanked. It had just become a job for the
staff; they were punching a clock and Mad Libbing the scripts and
little more.
In the most meta story the comic ever had, Ash has a nightmare that Pokemon has become so soulless that they're selling the names of some of the new monsters as paid advertisements. Furret has been renamed "Moons Over My Hammy" due to a money exchange with Denny's. When Ash wakes up, he finds everything from his dream was real. They go to a market convention and find Nintendo's next console is named "Prozac-Cube" because they want to suggest happiness (interesting, because this was the thought behind the name "Wii" five years later). They also find the new boss of 4Kids is independent prosecutor Ken Starr, who reads off a list of bland plots for the Johto season in a Ben Stein voice. Then the suits all have a good laugh over how stupid they think kids are. It's all too much for Misty to take and she erupts into a two-page-long extended rant on how the creative potential for Pokemon is being wasted.
At this time, the frontier days were over. Pokemon had settled into what it would always be, which was something completely different from what I'd been writing. I still loved making it, and with each issue, I loved it more. But it had also become very isolating. I didn't know who it would ever be for other than myself. Its very name would now serve as a barrier against any future readers. It's not uncommon now for people who grew up with Pokemon to wish it grew up with them, which is why things like "Palworld" exist. But at the time, I loved a version of Pokemon that only existed in my mind, and that made me feel very alone.
If the series had gone on long enough, I would have kept the names "Moons Over My Hammy" and "Screaming Yellow Zonker" for Furret and Celebi respectively. Would've been great if Celebi appeared floating before them in a dramatic scene and Brock yelled while pointing, "LOOK! IT'S SCREAMING YELLOW ZONKER!!" What we missed.
Issue 18 / October 2000
I'm Okay, You're Ingmar: Part One
The comic was about to reach its greatest height. This two-part
story is legendary in my headspace; it was not only the point
where the comic really, truly caught fire for me, but it remains
one of my favorite self-written stories of all time. My personal
rank goes like this:
Ash and the gang are visiting Saffron City, and they've split up to check out the shops. Misty is alone in a clothing store when the lights go out and the doors auto-lock themselves. She guesses correctly that this is the work of Marill again. But Matill says this encounter will be different, and will eliminate her as an obstacle once and for all...and he doesn't need a giant machine to do it. In fact all he has to do is touch her. Misty has a bad feeling about this but can't avoid Marill, and when they touch, she blacks out.
When Misty wakes up...she's in Marill's body! Marill has Freaky Fridayed with her. He's decided the powers of a Gym Leader would be more fun to mess with than the powers of a Pokemon. Marill-Misty stuffs Misty-Marill into the sewer and runs off to break into an ice cream shop. But Marill starts to feel that his actions aren't being controlled by him. Almost like...there's someone in there with him.
It turns out the absence of Misty has spawned a new personality, who calls herself Ingmar (yes, the name comes from the mute butler on Freakazoid). Marill cannot fully take over a Gym Leader's body if he is a Pokemon, so Ingmar appeared to fill the void. Worse yet, Ingmar is an evil, creepy, power-hungry girl who abuses her command over Pokemon to wreak havoc in Saffron City. When Misty-as-Marill finally confronts Ingmar to touch her and switch them back, she gets the body-swap wrong...Misty and Marill return to their original bodies, bur Ingmar splits off into her own being.
From there, Ingmar takes over the local branch of Team Rocket, and then the entirety of Saffron. Ash and the gang can only watch from a distance, as being Pokemon trainers there isn't much they can do against someone who can control their Pokemon. But Giovanni shows up enraged, and drops the bomb that he's a Gym Leader too (canon in the games, and way more signficant here). He's about to shoot Ingmar dead when Marill comes fron behind and attacks him (wait...Marill can't attack a Gym Leader, whoops).
Marill and Ingmar realize they have a lot in common. Instead of fighting, they become best friends...and even harder to deal with together than they were apart. The issue ends with Ingmar finding out Karin has a Ho-Oh and demanding she give her the Poke Ball. Karin refuses, because Ho-Oh is from her native island and means a lot to her. Ingmar yells that if Karin doesn't, Ingmar will order Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres to create a gigantic storm and destroy them all. Karin still refuses. Ingmar raises her hands to the sky and starts yelling. The wind kicks up and....TO BE CONTINUED.
Please appreciate that the opening page predates Google Image and those photos had to be sourced from piles and piles of National Geographics. Took some time. Emporium was a regional clothing store chain that was in decline at the time and would soon vanish; my mother stopped shopping there because "they got too expensive." Janet Reno was the current, highly controversial leader of the FBI. The cover predicts the wrong name for Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire (not that it was trying to be correct), but somehow nails the release year. There would eventually be a Pokemon Platinum, but not until 2009.
Issue 19 / October 2000
I'm Okay, You're Ingmar: Part Two
If the cover doesn't make it obvious, Majora's Mask had just come
out at the time I was drawing this...or maybe just after. There's
a page that mentions the date as October 21, 2000, likely the day
I drew it, and the game was released on October 26. But I
actually had the game in my hands on the night of October 23. I
got a call from Gamestop that said the shipment would be arriving
on the truck that evening, and since I preordered, they would
sell it to me right then. Envy me, for I once lived in a world
where this was possible.
Caught in the middle of a destructive storm, the gang has no choice but to give Ho-Oh's Poke Ball to Ingmar. She stops the storm and walks off haughtily, while Marill attempts to give a little apology for her. It is only then, when it's too late, that Misty realizes she could have taken command of Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres and stopped the storm herself. Darn! Realizing she may be the only one who can challenge Ingmar directly, she walks into town. She tells Ash to stay behind for his own safety, but he doesn't listen.
Misty tries to talk some sense into Ingmar, but she won't listen either. Then Marill thinks of a loophole and uses Ice Beam to freeze Misty -- since it is nonviolent it doesn't count as hurting her. At that point they both leave to conquer other cities, and Ash sneaks around to their freezer to attempt to save Misty.
Ingmar prepares to fly to Celadon City, but realizes...Ho-oh's Poke Ball is gone. Misty took it! They have to go back, but once they do they discover Misty has escaped with Ash. Ingmar isn't too far behind, and commands an army of Beedrills to come after them. Ash and Misty try to escape in a van (even though Ash can't drive), but there are a line of Pokemon barricading the city borders. Ingmar now has them cornered...until Misty orders all the Pokemon to leave.
Ingmar orders them to come back. Misty orders them to leave again. They go back and forth like this until all the Pokemon become confused, and start attacking things randomly. When in a state of confusion they can't be ordered around by anyone. Nothing can stop the destruction of Saffron now...except Karin, who makes her island call, which sends them all to sleep.
With no Pokemon around for Ingmar to manipulate, they almost catch her at this point, but Marill comes out of nowhere and stops them from doing so. Ingmar is amazed at Karin's island call and doesn't just want Ho-Oh...she now wants Karin, and Karin's island secrets. She forces Karin to go with them...and now the others have to think of a new plan.
Ingmar and Marill arrive at Celadon City to find it deserted. It was evacuated in anticipation of her arrival, which she finds disappointing...will conquering the world be this easy? At that moment Ho-Oh, commanded by Misty, flies in from the sky and snatches Ingmar away. Ingmar attempts to take control of Ho-Oh but Ash simply puts duct tape over her mouth. They think for a second they've won, until they realize Karin is still with Marill and being attacked by him.
They go back for Karin, but Marill is able to nail Ho-Oh with an energy beam this time. Realizing how close she came to defeat, Ingmar decides to eliminate the gang once and for all by burying them in a massive earthquake. As they're struggling to hold on, Misty notices Ingmar is standing next to a flagpole -- and she orders Zapdos to shock it!
Days later, Ingmar -- now heavily sedated with prescription drugs -- is a guest at the Loona The Tuna House (parody of the Ronald McDonald House). She'll be entering the foster system soon, and Misty points out no matter what she's like, she'll always be a Gym Leader. Marill, who got lost in the earthquake, is watching the house from afar. He vows to rescue Ingmar from her fate...eventually.
I'm Okay, You're Ingmar was a watershed moment. It was the kind of story I had wanted to write since the very first issue. I had always desired to graduate from my usual schtick of jokes and pop-culture satire and weave together a TRUE ADVENTURE, something as thrilling as the anime's best episodes, like the Psychic Trilogy or the St. Anne Trilogy. And I had done it. I got the same feeling from this that I got from the series at its best. I was mesmerized by this story and I couldn't wait to find out what happened next.
The comic would be over in just four issues.
Issue 20 / October 2000
Our 20th Anniversary
My world record for completing an issue of a comic book from
start to finish is two days, for an issue of Scrambled Eggs from
1994. I completed THIS issue in ONE day, but I don't count it
because it wasn't done via traditional means. It's mostly
screenshots, because as the Head Executive explains in the
opener, the regular cast wasn't available so he's decided to run
the entire banned Electric Soldier Porygon episode instead -- the
real thing. The embellished and barely accurate English
translation is my own.
I had avoided using Jessie and James because I was so sick of them on the cartoon, but there was no getting out of having them in this issue. And a funny thing happened when I was coming up with their dialogue...I started enjoying it. I decided I was going to have the goofy pair start showing up more often from that point forward. Of course there weren't many issues left for them to appear in.
"I'm a survivor! But I want to be a millionaire..." is another joke only people at the time would get. In 2000 those were the two biggest shows in the country. Today Millionaire drifts in and out of existence and Survivor is this quiet background show that feels like it's always been there, but every show like that was once a #1 megahit when it started. If you can believe it, I can remember a time when America's Funniest Home Videos was the trendiest show on TV. Nurse Joy's remark about Firestone Tires is related to their 2000 PR disaster where many of their new tires were self-destructing on the road.
Issue 21 / November 2000
It was rare for me at the time to credit something I stole, but
sure enough, the "Poke Gear Solid" cover drawing
originated on a site called PokemonAbode.com.
Team Gary
Professor Oak makes a suggestion to his grandson that he should
be more like Ash and start traveling with companions. So Gary
ventures over to a rough town and confidently asks a gang of
outlaw bikers to be his teammates. It goes about as well as can
be expected, and in the end, Gary is framed for all their crimes.
He's doomed to be sentenced to reform school unless he can shift
the blame to someone else...so he pins it all on Ash.
The next thing Ash knows, he's stuck in reform school. And the next thing he knows after THAT, he's stuck bunking with Jessie and James. He has to take humiliating classes about how to behave in society, and if he steps out of line they'll shock his electrified underwear. Jessie claims to have invented the Internet, one of several Bush/Gore jokes because it was almost Election Day.
One of the funniest gags in the entire comic is when Ash gets his mugshot taken and it comes out as this real photo of a doofy-looking kid in a Halloween costume (which was scanned from the October 2000 issue of Nintendo Power). The portrait of Ash and Misty from page 2 is actually one of the images that was on the promotional CD-ROM Gamestop gave you for preordering Pokemon Gold and Silver (and I still have that CD).
Ask Gary Oak Super Special
Some of the issues have no Gary Oak column, while others have
more than one. I haven't highlighted them except in this case,
because this is the only "super-sized" Gary column in
the run. It's pointed out here that Karin is derived from
"Karen," one of the Elite bosses in Gold and
Silver...but I no longer consider there to be a connection. I was
going off a blurry screenshot of her game sprite and had to
invent everything else. Karen was a blonde woman, while Karin is
a Pacific Islander. There is barely anything in common between
the two...as far as I'm concerned Karin is an OC.
Why would Al Gore's running mate Joseph Lieberman be mad about a cosplay photo? I don't get that one. Maybe the point was just to mention Lieberman because it was Election Season. Mitch Wazoo was the fictional creator of the fictional 80s cartoon "Awesome Blossom," which was part of the lore in Scrambled Eggs, not here. Jennifer Villarreal was one of the staff writers for Nintendo Power magazine. 1-800-JENNY2000 was the phone number to sign up for Jenny Craig (the company would change its number every year, to match the current year).
Issue 22 / November 2000
The Evils Of Truth And Love
The Pokeshipping is laid on pretty thick in this one. I had to
wonder how seeing Ash and Misty this lovey-dovey would affect
someone like Brock, a girl-obsessed, perpetually thirsty teenager
who NEVER gets lucky with anyone. Sure enough, he snaps.
Ash agrees to teach Brock how to properly socialize with girls, since the man lacks tact, to put it mildly. Ash approaches someone named Gwen and uses a pick-up line about how shorts are comfy and easy to wear. She instantly swoons. Brock tries something similar with no success. Everyone else is able to attract suitors without even trying, even Pikachu (especially Pikachu). Just when he's about to give up, he meets someone named Ellen who he seems to naturally click with.
But there had to be a catch, didn't there? Ellen belongs to a group of activists who are against Pokemon training and battling. This puts Brock into an awkward position. He'd like to see how things go with Ellen -- the first girl that's expressed true interest in him since...ever! -- but if he leaps to her side of the fence, he could lose his friends. It comes to a head when Misty finds out how the group feels about Gym Leaders, a rebuttal to their beliefs from nature itself. Some believe they should be drugged, imprisoned or even euthanized. When Brock seemingly still can't make up his mind after hearing this, his friends leave him -- but a minute later he can't bring himself to continue and breaks up with Ellen.
But it may be too late. Brock is now all alone....end of Part One.
I think "WHAT'S WRONG? HOT FLASHES?" is bar-none THE funniest thing my Ash ever said. One of Gary's letter writers engages in 1337-speak (leet-speak), a garbled manner of "hacker culture" lingo popular on the Internet in the early 2000s. He even throws in an "All Your Base" ref, so we got THAT in before the end. Arvydas Sabonis was a Portland Trail Blazer.
The Evils Of Truth And Love Part Two:
Brock's Isolation
Brock is now looking for his (former?) friends, but will they
take him back? After getting Ash Ketchum mixed up with Ashton
Kutcher (could happen to anyone!) Brock finally reunites with Ash
and Misty. But they look and act...different. Brock has wandered
into the Johto-era Pokemon anime.
He's unnerved by their cult-like behavior and flat fixation on all things Pokemon. They seem to have no social lives of their own nor feelings for one another. In the middle of the story, Misty is unexplainably replaced by a Middle Eastern man in a turban and Ash doesn't seem to care. Ultimately Brock loses it (again) and yells that he's into Pokemon too, but there has to be something to their lives beyond that. In response he gets called a witch and is chased out of the area.
Back when I first attempted to draw these characters, I tried emulating the anime / Sugimori style, but found it was too difficult. But by the end, my art lessons had advanced to the point where I could pull the style off. Brock complains about sports teams being named after Pokemon when they have nothing to do with Pokemon, which is a direct criticism of a Johto episode where they meet a girl obsessed with a baseball team called the "Electabuzz." Now that I think about it, though, aren't a lot of sports teams in the real world named after animals? They'd be named after Pokemon too if they existed. It DOES make sense. Shut up, Brock.
The endless blather about "shiny Pokemon" is not related to the ACTUAL phenomenon of Shiny Pokemon, which started in Gold and Silver. That was a pretty well-hidden Easter egg that not many people knew was in the game yet.
Issue 23 / December 2000
The Bozone Layer
This is where it all stopped. Everything that had been bothering
me came to a head and led to one fateful decision.
At this point in my life, I had been finally clued into the fact that places like Geocities would give you a free website. I was preparing to launch Platypus Comix on the World Wide Web. The site would need content, and I planned to create one new feature cartoon every week. I didn't know what those cartoons would be yet, but the fact that my best work was being done for a series I couldn't show people was a big problem. I didn't think it was something anyone wanted other than myself. And it was making me ship a couple that, by this point, was obviously never happening in canon. Also, remember the one person who'd been this comic's audience, my art teacher? She was moving to New Zealand. I loved the comic dearly, but I had to face facts: "whatever you're going to do from this point forward, it can't be THIS."
If I'd found out about free websites earlier, and also had access to a scanner earlier, things might've turned out different. Back in 1999 I might have started my own Pokemon fansite, and my debut to the world would have been this series. Maybe it might've attracted a fanbase, and maybe what was about to happen wouldn't have happened.
So it's at this point when things get suddenly grim. First, Nintendo gives up on all video games that aren't Pokemon. Gary Miyamoto is forced to work for Sony on "Rascal 2." Then the terrible Johto episodes take their toll and Pokemon as a whole hits a sales slump, making what Nintendo just did a disastrous bet. They pivot to making pet products (complete with a Pets.com sock puppet mascot) and throw Ash and his friends out on the street. That all happens in six pages.
While Ash is at the unemployment office, he finds out Sony botched the Playstation 2 launch (they really did, but in this case they don't recover). This means the new X-Box wins by default, and Bill Gates marches into the room to tell everyone they'll have jobs only if they work for him. Gates now has the monopoly and Pokemon quickly en(poop)ifies, releasing one lousy rushed sequel every hour. Ash and Misty are imprisoned in his factory with no hope of escape.
Ash's boss reprimands him for the lousy sales of their cheap games. Ash wonders if it really is his fault and prepares to throw himself into Portland's Willamette River, but is stopped by his guardian angel (this was technically a Christmas issue). He shows Ash an alternate world where he was never born, and Karin is dead (since Ash was the one who suggested they travel to her island), and Misty is alone and friendless. Ash is convinced of his worth now and when Misty catches up with him, he's thrilled to see her. In the final two panels Ash and Misty finally say "I love you" to each other, and then they walk off into the distance. Fade to black.
In December of 2000, I quit the Pokemon series cold turkey.
It was very hard on me. At that point, I had become so attached to the series that separating myself from it was like ripping off an arm. I missed following these characters very much. Leaving things like the Ingmar situation unresolved was painful. Add to this, college so far was not the nonstop social party fest the movies had promised me...it was the same situation as always with no one wanting anything to do with me, whether I was drawing Pokemon cartoons or not. We look at the early 2000s as the last idyllic time in modern American history before 9/11 slapped everyone in the face, but I remember just being horribly depressed at this time of my life.
And this is why the first few months of Platypus Comix were pretty aimless, full of experiments, quickly abandoned ideas and things I'd drawn years ago. The site did not have a center until the invention of Mulberry in late 2003. But the characters I'd left behind in 2000 continued to haunt me, month after month.....until eventually, two years later, I relented.
In January of 2003 I wrote one more issue.
Issue 24 / January 2003
The Last Emperors
Ash and the gang are just lounging around on a lazy day when
suddenly, dozens of Rockets leap out of the bushes and surround
them! They're under orders to capture the kids and take them to
Team Rocket HQ, under the command of their new leaders...Jessie
and James! Yes, it's the J & J centric adventure we were
denied for so long.
A flashback reveals what happened. They were to be evaluated by "the boss," but accidentally discovered his true identity: Gym Leader Giovanni. He says he'll give them anything to keep quiet, and Jessie says "We want to take your place." Curiously, he gives them exactly that and leaves. Now chained to the wall medieval style, their Pokemon taken away, and J & J with all the power, the gang is completely helpless...unless Misty uses her powers. It's a giant risk as it could expose her identity to Team Rocket...but she may have no choice...
Remember the extended motto from the previous issue? It was written to mock how tedious hearing it every day had become, but as I wrote the extra verses, I thought "I may be onto something here." Team Rocket would have had a different motto in every issue, similar to Darkwing Duck's variable entrance taunts. "To infect your dog with rabid fleas, to spoil your pizza with rotten cheese." Woulda been great. Also, "starting" with this issue, there would've been a running gag where, whenever Jessie was in a deep mess of her own making, she would raise her head to the sky and scream at the top of her lungs, "OOOHHHHHHHHH CRAAAAAAAAAAAPPP!!" Would have sounded hilarious coming from the great Rachael Lillis (RIP), even if it would be a bit too spicy for Kids WB.
The good news is, this is a MUCH better sendoff than Issue 23 would have been. It's a tightly packed adventure that holds up to the best from 2000 (though in my judgment, the Ingmar story still edges it out). The bad news is, instead of resolving any of the cliffhangers from two yeats ago, it introduces a hundred more. At the end of this story, Team Rocket has fragmented into two groups, one calling themselves Team Magma (which were introduced in Ruby / Sapphire). Giovanni reveals he knows Misty's secret, knows she has been there, and will come after her if she interferes again. And after years of getting stuck with lemon Pokemon, Jessie and James are now the proud owners of LUGIA. The scene where they give him soda and he belches in their faces is a cruel tease -- this would have been so much fun to explore.
Ingmar does not return, Marill does not come back, and I guess Canada is flooded. Everything is cliffhung a thousandfold. And that is where it was all left...forever.
With one exception. I liked writing Gary enough that I transferred him over to Marin Meadow, a comic strip I was attempting. I used the same design and renamed him "Jack Dynamo." But he completely changed after a few weeks, the "Dynamo" was dropped, and he became a different character entirely, especially when a hazel-haired heiress showed up near the end of the strip's run to take all the attention away. Today Jack's purpose is mainly to react to things Mulberry does, but it's true -- he started as Gary Oak. And now you know that!
I suppose part of the reason I've been so absorbed in making the Stranger Things comic is because it's like getting my Pokemon comic back. I feel the same way about it. I love playing in that world and exploring those characters. Stranger Things is written with the same "building blocks" continuity technique that the best issues of Pokemon had, where stories inspire more stories, and used to better effect. I feel like every issue is an Ingmar issue. And I suppose, at their core, both comics are about an awkward but well-meaning boy finding young love with a girl in suspenders who has secret powers.
Like Pokemon, I feel my best writing lately has been here. This is "bleeding edge" for me -- I'm able to do things with it I've never been able to do before, and I'm constantly surprising myself with what I come up with. You'd think, of the two properties, this one would be an easier sell. But for a series that supposedly "EVERYONE" watches, you'd be surprised how many people have told me they've never seen an episode so they can't follow my version.
Even though it's my best work, it's not the first thing I show people. It's the same bittersweet problem where I feel I have to hide what I'm most proud of. I feel like fanfic still has a stigma attached to it. But that's not the worst of it...the most painful thing is that, once again, I'm at the mercy of whatever the folks in charge wind up doing; I can't really control what happens to these characters that I've come to love.
When I first felt the urge to write Stranger Things I tried to fight it. I remembered my experience with Pokemon. I didn't want to go through it again. But I couldn't hold that first comic back. It was actually disrupting my sleep that I couldn't get it out of me. I was forced to put digital pen to digital paper, all the while listening to the conscience in my head: "If you do this, you're going to become attached to the show on a level you wouldn't be otherwise, and creative decisions beyond your control will start affecting you emotionally. You know what? You know what's gonna happen? You're gonna start shipping Mike and Eleven, THAT'S what's gonna happen! AND YOU KNOW THIS SHOW IS GONNA END WITH THE DEATH OF EL."
I will gladly edit this page if I'm proven wrong. But I have yet to see anything that proves this series doesn't end with Eleven sacrificing herself. I've been anticipating and dreading it for a long time. It has cast a pall over the entire comic series, stretching back to the barn scene in the first story where El is weeping because she wants to promise Mike she will always be there for him, but...she can't. When I wrote this I knew it was too late for me, because damn, I felt it.
What I like about writing this couple is there are no gimmicks here. Here are two people, they're in love, that's it. That's all you really need. I appreciate that the Duffers let us have this. Other relationships on the show have been traditional WT/WT setups. But I feel in this case, they're only letting us have our cake so they can then smash that cake with a sledgehammer.
Illustration by Joanna Davidovich
Of course, when shows do this, people tend to not like it.
They don't like it and they complain in comment sections for years after the finale, and they write "fix-fics" where Han and Leia stay together and Willow doesn't lose Tara and Logan Echolls doesn't get into the car and Samurai Jack's wife doesn't fade away. In that sense, I'd be years ahead of the curve here. But the pain of it is, you can write all the stories you want where Newt lives and grows up to fight Xenomorphs alongside her adopted mother Ripley, but at the end of the day, you can't change the fact that Alien 3 exists.
So here I sit, as of this writing just weeks away from learning the true fate of this character I adopted, a character I've become attached to, a character I've identified with in many ways as an autistic person. I'm strapped to a time bomb of my own making, staring as the clock ticks down. And in this perilous situation, I have to ask myself: was it worth it?
I look back at Pokemon, and realize....I was right. I was right the whole time. I should have trusted my instincts; I never should have quit it. Misty's rant about the premise having potential that was untapped was correct, and I had proven it. The twist I put on Gym Leaders made the world a lot more captivating. Many of these issues were a blast to read, and there's really nothing like them across official Pokemon media, except maybe the Detective Pikachu movie. And I suspect that, many years from now, I'll feel the same way about Stranger Things and I will be glad I took that chance, even if it wrecks me come January.
This comic may have been unappreciated, but at least it existed. At least it existed.
