Bug Catcher returns for another battle against Pokemon Trainer! I rather like the overeager kid, and his excitement about his favorite Pokemon getting in the way of basic strategy was a very childlike aspect that was fun to cover in a comic. At the risk of inciting ire from Pokefans, I never was too impressed with Charizard. Despite his fairly immense popularity, he’s always been pretty generic to me–just your standard fire-breathing dragon. Not all that special compared with a massive plant-dinosaur hybrid, or a tank-like turtle with cannons on its back.

The Pokemon nitpicker in me considered having a Rock-type move instead of Bubblebeam (4x damage to Charizard’s Fire/Flying self), but 1) Rock doesn’t seem as immediately debilitating as Water > Fire, and 2) I couldn’t think of any Rock moves that were funnier sounding than “Bubblebeam.”

-By Matthew