Pikachu Meets the Press: A Pokemon Newspaper Strip Collection

by Ashura Benimaru (Illustrator), Gerard Jones

Collects comic strips about the PokÂemon universe, recounting the adventures of characters including Pikachu, Ash, Gary, Brock, Misty, Squirtle, and Ditto.

200 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2001

Reviews

[Hourai Teahouse · Rating 1 out of 5]

Upon reading this, it’s apparent why this collection of gag-a-day comic strips is virtually never talked about: it’s pretty bad. The art’s pretty mediocre, and the writing isn’t all that much better. It stars the 1997 anime trio (but mostly Ash and Misty; Brock isn’t too prominent), as well as featuring Gary and Dahlia. But instead of being about Pokémon, the comic is focused on the human characters (minus Dahlia, due to her being Ash’s mother and all) going to an ordinary, real-world school with plenty of Pokémon thrown in, and is worse for it.

Most of the jokes are very unfunny, and seem designed for schoolkids who disliked being there (that is, almost all of them) in place of actual comedy. Only problem is…kids didn’t really read newspapers in the ‘90s unless we had no other options, which raises questions on why it was published there. The jokes don’t really work well for adults, either; the only time I laughed was in exasperation when they copied the iconic Calvin and Hobbes joke, and there was a Zubat in the panel for some reason.

If you want to read it, you can find it on the Internet Archive, provided they haven’t shot themselves in the foot a second time since posting this. But I would heavily advise against it.

[Jake Hainey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically a newspaper strip about a ten year old Ash being constantly electrocuted and set on fire by the pokemon he's trying to train, which kinda makes this the most realistic version of pokemon ever written....

These strips are pretty cute and I enjoyed the new take on the characters, though I will say, the edition I have is kinda spoiled by having nicer looking art, by other artists, that dooesn't appear in any of the strips, on the front cover....pretty weird choice...