Writer and Artist: Toshihiro Ono (Based on the animated series by Tsunekazu Ishihara & Satoshi Tajiri)
English Adaptation: Annette Roman
Touch-Up Art and Lettering: Cynthia Bergst
Layout: Yuki Shimotoku
Translation and Editing: William Flanagan
Single Issue
Published by Viz Comics 1999
$2.95

Reviewed by Pindaros

POKEMON: the name inspires contempt, perhaps even fear, in the heart of every "serious" comic book reader. Stores formerly devoted to grown men earnestly browsing comic racks (or examining baseball cards) are now filled with school kids, loudly trying to persuade their parents to part with outrageous sums of money for Pokemon cards. Lately, my local comic shop has had to keep an eye on various bullies who are stealing cards from other kids as they leave the store.

Moreover, everyone knows it's a craze and that soon enough they'll be selling Pokemon merchandise at half-price, along with the remaining stocks of "Tickle-me Elmo." So this would be a good opportunity to really rail about how Pokemon is just another example of how huge entertainment conglomerates shoveling lousy crap down the throats of children, instead of giving them the sort of quality entertainment that we "more intelligent" readers like.

However, since you've probably heard and read about a zillion of those rants by now, I'm going to review a Pokemon comic from a somewhat different angle, and consider whether there is a level of quality in Pokemon that deserves some respect.

I'm not in a position to critique the video game that started the whole phenomenon. But the concept (capturing and fighting with the little magical animals called Pokemon) sounds pretty good to me, inasmuch as it appears to be a pretty unique development of the whole role-playing genre, and one that isn't a retread of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS or a way to imagine that you're a character in some TV show or movie.

"The concept... appears to be a pretty unique development of the whole role-playing genre, one that isn't a retread of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS"

I have seen the TV show a number of times and have generally found it pretty engrossing. The plots are simplistic, the characters are two-dimensional. For those of you who are dead and/or don't have TV's, POKEMON tells the story of a boy named Ash, whose interactions with Pokemon happen in the world rather than in a video game; the most important of Ash's Pokemon is a yellow electric rat called Pikachu. But as a work of art it has a number of really remarkable features.

The characters are lightweight, but all have identifiable quirks that the writers of the show develop into some pretty funny routines. In particular, James from Team Rocket is one of the most genuinely bizarre characters on TV.

Given that the Pokemon are extremely simple little cartoon shapes and can only say their own names, the animators and voice actors do an excellent job of creating personalities for them. Pikachu in particular seems to have more of a personality than any other character on the show (except for James).

The show has an amazing otherworldly feel due to a weird combination of Japanese and Western references, which are combined to create a unified culture in which the most important thing is Pokemon. This can make for a particularly entertaining experience if you're in the right mood.

The show's culture manages to subvert that most annoying feature of children's cartoons: constant moralizing. The show often claims that events of a given episode offer the characters a particular moral, but that moral is always directed to becoming a good Pokemon trainer, and hence utterly irrelevant to real life.

But despite my enjoyment of the POKEMON TV show, I was worried the POKEMON comics would be pretty awful, largely because of my experience with American comics tied to animated TV shows. American comics put a huge emphasis on portraying the characters in the same way as the TV show, presumably to convince children that it's really the characters from TV. But this kind of approach tends to produce fairly wooden comics, since the movement and voices that are a big part of the appeal of the animation are gone, and you get just the very formalized drawing encouraged by the economics of animation.

Given that a big part of the appeal of the POKEMON TV show is the way that interesting voices and expressions give the minimalistically rendered Pokemon particular personalities, I was especially scared. And the comic covers were no help, since they pretty much supported that idea, showing simple drawings of the main characters and plenty of trademarked logos.

I was utterly wrong. This is probably no surprise to those of you with an extensive knowledge of manga and anime, but basically the manga was done from scratch, and uses lots of clever visual cues to put the story across. The shapes of bodies and faces, and even the style of drawing, change radically with the moods of the story and make it fairly interesting to follow.

"Despite my enjoyment of the POKEMON TV show, I was worried the POKEMON comics would be pretty awful... I was utterly wrong"

The writer and artist, Toshihiro Ono, has done a number of other manga, mainly commercial stuff and anime tie-ins, and seems to be taking pretty seriously his job to entertain within the fairly limited plot constraints of a videogame tie-in. While an American artist might take the attitude of "I'll take the money, and get back to my real work right away," Ono's work has a certain showiness that suggests that he's basically really happy to have a huge audience. Which is a pretty refreshing attitude.

Here are some of the things that entertained me in POKEMON: SURF'S UP PIKACHU #1:

Ash's emotionally overwrought incompetence is brought to the fore by making him almost formless, totally a caricature of whatever emotion is overwhelming him at the time.

A 40-foot high ovoid, bear-like monstrosity who snarfs grapefruit by the bushel and bounces from one island to another.

Ash and Pikachu snoring and drooling as they float gently over tropical seas.

Pikachu squashed flat by the grapefruit snarfer mentioned above, and revived by Ash pouring boiling hot water over him.

Now none of this is likely to make any of you reading this feel like you really need a POKEMON comic. But that in itself points to what is most significant about the whole Pokemon business. It pays absolutely no attention to teenage or adult concerns about what's important, but is extremely attentive to things that kids care about. The Pokemon are really cute, and it would be great to have one or more of them as a pet, especially if you could keep them in something that looked like a pool ball. Moreover, Ash is a shmoe, and if a shmoe like Ash can have such a fun time, then any kid can.

Look, the reason that a Charizard trading card is worth so much is not only because they're rare, but also because Charizard is what you want a fire-breathing dragon to look like. And if you're a kid, having a fire-breathing dragon is really appealing idea. There's a certain irony in the fact that some of the same people who are bitching about their kids wanting them to pay $50 for a Charizard card are happily paying more than that to take their kids to hear Peter, Paul and Mary play PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON.

They need to face the facts: the reason that kids like PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON is the same reason they like Charizard. And while the whole stage show of Peter, Paul and Mary is designed to address the concerns of the parents (three responsible, articulate adults singing with soothing harmonies, thus assuring parents that they are really concerned, caring parents by attending the show), a Charizard card gives kids what they want: an object that they can own, and look at all they want, and show off to their friends.

Pokemon is aggravating to people who think that the fantasies of others ought to fit their idea of what's proper. What really bothers them is that Pokemon is popular enough and cheap enough that it doesn't need to rely on what adults think kids ought to care about.

Trading cards, comics, videogames, are all cheap enough that they can be produced for and consumed by kids without having to pass the scrutiny of the educators, bureaucrats and politicians who decide about the access that kids have to the resources of society. Even most parents don't get that concerned about it; even a massive Pokemon obsession puts a pretty negligible dent into most families' finances.

In general, goods that are cheap for the buyer, but because of mass production can support significant investments in the quality of the work, provide a highly valued theater for the fantasies of people with limited access to wealth and power. Comics are a prime example of this sort of artifact. Any attempt to understand comics as an art form has to consider just who is paying comic book professionals to express their fantasies, and just how those fantasies meet the needs of those people. Not try to determine, in the abstract, whether the fantasy is a good fantasy.

After all, in the best fantasies, everyone acts the way you want them to, which is inherently a bad way for reality to be. Comics, because they can be produced so cheaply, are a powerful dream theater. And dreams, as the fulfillment of our most basic desires, are bound to be disturbing and often embarrassing. But they are also funny, inspiring, exciting, sexy (even children have a sense for sexiness), and above all, completely and totally engrossing. And therefore, inherently worthwhile.

"POKEMON pays no attention to adult concerns about what's important, but is extremely attentive to things that kids care about"

To get back to POKEMON, I'm guessing that if you've read this far in this review, you're going to find a POKEMON comic pretty fluffy. The plot is basically, "There are Pokemon, and Ash, and lots of other people, want to catch them and use them to fight." There are plenty of little laughs along the way, and the comic is good enough that you'll actually find them funny. But there is no way that a POKEMON comic is going to grab an adult like a comic written for adults can.

On the other hand, if you want to know where kids live - where you lived once - POKEMON has a lot to say. I have a five-year old nephew, and I'm looking forward to giving him my copy of POKEMON: SURF'S UP PIKACHU, because those panels that are little laughs for me are going to be belly laughs for him.

He's going to learn that comic books can speak to his imagination in a way that few other media can, and he's going to learn that he can find in comics what they are ultimately the best at delivering. Not character or narrative per se (which is as common as dirt on TV) but fantasy in the broadest sense: images and stories which scratch that psychic itch which, in our day-to-day lives, we often pretend isn't even there.

Since POKEMON comics are currently selling in pretty massive quantities, we all ought to be very grateful to Toshihiro Ono, for reaching out so eloquently to the comic audience of the future.

Recommended (with reservations: definitely written for children)

Pindaros is a regular contributor to PopImage.

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