This one is based on a true story!

On my very first playthrough of Pokémon Blue (no comment on how long ago that was), I got to Silph Co. and got the Card Key, and couldn't for the life of me figure out how to use it to open the doors. I tried pressing A to one side of the doors (where one would expect a lock to be), using the Card Key straight from the inventory, and consulting the Nintendo Player's Guide which just had very vague wording like "Now that you have the Card Key, you can open all those doors! Okay so anyway..." I must have struggled for about half an hour. (This was back in the day before reliable online walkthroughs, to say nothing of YouTube playthrough videos.)

Finally, in desperation, I went to my mom (who is not the least bit interested in video games) and asked her to just try something, anything. I handed her the Game Boy, she just started pressing random buttons, and in a matter of moments figured out that you're supposed to press A while standing in front of the locked doors.

Sometimes all it takes is a fresh pair of eyes. Thanks, Mom!

 I do love me some irony.

 Throwback to when limited programming space meant that sometimes signs in the overworld had very vague wording.

 I dunno, maybe we should take Team Rocket at their word? Why do we always have to assume they're up to something nefarious? Way to be judgy.

 Super amazing wonderful exciting news!

After much good-natured pestering from my paleo buddies Ashley Hall and MaggieJo Widdicombe, I've launched a store to sell my illustrations on t-shirts and stickers and whatnot!

I'm so excited to be able to share my illustrations in a new way for people to enjoy (also it makes me a little extra money which is nice), especially since sometimes it can be hard to find good (and scientifically accurate) paleo merch of stuff besides T. rex and Velociraptor.

There's not much up there right now, but I will work on getting more designs up. For now I'll concentrate on shirts and stickers, but I'm always open to suggestions, and if there's anything else you want to see - another type of merchandise, a different shirt color, or even a whole new illustration - please don't hesitate to get in touch with me and let me know! 

 This comic was written back in the day when some people actually still used paper planners. I feel so old.

Also, you may notice that events are scooting along and I barely drew any comics in places like Celadon Gym and Pokémon Tower. That's because Trainer Wants to Battle! really focuses more on riffing on NPC dialogue than on trying to tell a cohesive story. There are about a million Pokémon webcomics detailing a Trainer's journey through a region, and I wanted to do something different. At any rate, if you're a Pokémon fan, you likely already know how the whole Kanto thing goes; I don't have to spell it out for you. By freeing itself of conventional narrative trappings, TWTB focuses more on the people of Kanto just being unhinged, and perhaps allows us to laugh at ourselves and gain insights into our own psyches.

When I wrote these comics, I literally played through the games and wrote down pieces of dialogue that I felt I could make good comics out of. That meant a lot of dialogue got skipped, but one of the cardinal rules of humor is that forced humor is never funny. I would much rather TWTB be the sort of comic where every strip is funny than fuss over narrative completeness. (At any rate, I think it sort of makes things even more unhinged than if I'd tried harder to make sure the overall plot made sense. At the end of the day, it's just about the player character trying to make their way through a world of weirdos.)

 Silly Channelers, getting their horror subgenres mixed up.