Oh, Bug Catchers.

I characterize them in this comic kind of like the 6-year-old kid down the street who loves Pokémon but can't grasp the mechanics of the games, and keeps pestering you to tell him how to catch a level 100 Charizard in Viridian Forest.

 I highly doubt it's just coincidence that Blue happens to come strolling along right when Red wanders onto Route 22.

Also, I feel like Blue is just about the ultimate in hypocrisy and double standards; he's perfectly content to criticize Red all day long, but proves himself inferior to Red at every turn, and he basically uses his trash talk to try to disguise that fact.

It's kinda nice that later games in the series made the rival characters less ascerbic.

Also, I am so psyched to play Legends: Z-A, but I'm still trying to finish another game I've been playing over the past few months, and I'm dying trying to stay as far away from Pokémon-related things as possible so as to avoid spoilers. #gamerproblems

 I feel like anyone who insists it was sheer random chance that your Pikachu totally wrecked his Pidgey either doesn't understand Pokémon battles at all or is really, really in denial.

 Yes, I'm sure that particular nickname took a considerable amount of time and effort.

I like giving my Pokémon really nerdy nicknames that usually have to do with science. One of my favorites was in Pokémon Sword, when I named my Arctovish "Ariston", which was the nickname of a notable specimen of Leedsichthys discovered in England in 2001 which was named after a European washing machine model.

Yep, that's how I roll. (dons nerd glasses)*

*I always wear nerd glasses anyway because I'm nearsighted. So just imagine me taking my glasses off, but then putting them back on, real slow and cool-like.

 I just think it's really weird how the guy who teaches you how to catch Pokémon does his little tutorial right in the middle of Viridian City. You know, where there are no wild Pokémon. And how you can repeat the tutorial as often as you want, but it's the same Weedle every time. I feel like this guy's hobby is crafting pretend capture tutorials.

Later games actually have the capture tutorial happen out in tall grass, so it makes more sense.

I had a lot of fun just making him look so ridiculously excited about that "wild" Weedle.

 I get excited by weird things such as Mondays, cottage cheese, and making flowcharts.

In the astronomy community, I hear a lot of stories of laypeople seeing something in the night sky, not knowing what it is, and immediately jumping to the conclusion that it's aliens. Thing is, it's never aliens (as my longsuffering astro buddy Chris Lintott continually reminds us). And there's a lot of other stuff you need to rule out before you can start to think it might be aliens.

Which is why I made this handy flowchart to help you identify what you saw in the night sky! While it may never be aliens, there are a lot of fascinating objects to see in the heavens. Go out and learn more about the stars!

Sad but true story: In 1994, a large earthquake in Los Angeles in the wee hours of the morning left large parts of the city without power. Police and fire stations received frantic phone calls from people claiming that something strange was happening to the sky and wondering if the earthquake caused it.

They were seeing the Milky Way for the first time because of the greatly reduced light pollution.

Let's not have a repeat of this.

As an aside, I grew up in Los Angeles and remember that earthquake quite well. 0/10, would not recommend.

 Let's be real, Oak just really wants to chill at the lab and make other people run his errands.