About

Where is the comic?

If you want to start reading, click here to go to the first page or click here to go to the most recent page. Use the arrow buttons to navigate to other pages, or scroll to the bottom of this page for a table of contents.

What does "Nuzlocke" mean?

The Nuzlocke Challenge is a set of self-imposed rules designed to add challenge and excitement to the Pokémon RPGs. You can read more about the Nuzlocke Challenge here.

Basically, it's a comic about playing a video game, with the events of the game reinterpreted as an original story.

As for what a Nuzlocke is... who knows?

All right then, what does "Bemurkled" mean?

It's a nonsense word I made up once and have since grown fond of. There are several synonyms, but none quite as vivid. Here is a sample sentence: "When studying the history of China, one often finds that the waters of history have been bemurkled by multiple civil wars and the P.R.C."

And the "Sapphire" part?

The game I played was Pokémon Sapphire.

Tell me something that will give me an idea what your comic is like.

This comic was featured on the Nuzlocke Forum in 2013. You can read the feature here.

There are a lot of different Nuzlocke comics, but I think the tone of mine is a little different than some of them. I can't promise I won't be breaking the fourth wall (that's what we have TM 31 for!), but I'm trying to make my main character someone who doesn't yet know all about the world and game of Pokémon. She doesn't already know which monsters are crummy or awesome or common or popular, although she does seem to know basic things like type matchups. Incidentally, I've never played through a Hoenn game before, so some of it's new to me as well.

Aside from that, I like to say that the early pages of my comic have awful scribbly art and obvious pop culture references, while the later pages have better scribbly art and more obscure pop culture references.

How far are you in the game?

Not all the way through yet, but a ways farther than I've drawn in the comic. So, no, I don't know how this all ends, but I do have some idea what will happen next.

How closely are you following the game?

Somewhat loosely. Captures, evolutions, deaths, and important battles will be pretty close to how they were in the game; the plot will not. I don't always take comprehensive notes, so details may not be 100% accurate. And I'm obviously not showing every minor trainer or bit of level-grinding I did, nor will I consider this all to have canonically occurred offscreen within the story of the comic.

Oh, and the in-game rival Brendan has been removed and replaced with my friend who started a Ruby Nuzlocke run at the same time as I started my Sapphire game.

Who are you?

I'm Billy. I live in Ottawa and work on computer games for a living.

On the internet I sometimes go by the name "Vivificient", which is just a word I found in the dictionary and misspelled a little. It means "alive" (so you could say it's something I aspire to be). The character Vivi in the comic is my shameless self-insertion. So in some sense, the main character Zizzy is my imaginary little sister.

Rules

Basic Rules

1. A fainted Pokémon is dead forever.
2. Catch only the first wild Pokémon encountered in each area.

The Fine Print

• An "area" is a place with the same name (e.g., all of Granite Cave is one area). If a Pokémon is captured in an area by fishing, one cannot also be captured there in the grass, and so on.
  Exception: each zone of the Safari Zone is its own area.
• No repeats: cannot capture a Pokémon belonging to the same evolutionary family as a previously captured Pokémon (including if the previous one fainted).
• Ignore the first two wild Pokémon in an area if they are repeats; if the first three Pokémon in an area are all repeats, capture nothing in that area.
• Gift Pokémon and fossil Pokémon do not count as the capture for their area, and may be used.
• In-game trades are allowed; inter-game trades are only allowed with other Nuzlockers (none anticipated though, as I don't have a link cable...)
• Legendary or fixed-encounter Pokémon count like regular encounters, so cannot be captured if another Pokémon has been encountered in the area.
• Item use is allowed (except revives, of course).
• White out is not game over; carry on unless progress becomes impossible.

Table of Contents

1. Indigo Plateau
2. Little Root Town
3. Professor Birch
4. The Challenge
5. Zigzagoon
6. Ruffles
7. Wingull
8. Benny
9. To Petalburg
10. Wally
11. Reflections
12. Woods
13. Rustboro
14. Roxanne
15. Nosepass
16. Stone Badge
17. Premier Ball
18. Rusturf
19. Devon
20. Mr. Stone
21. Children
22. Maddy
23. Steven Stone
24. Old Rod
25. Marina
26. Hot Chocolate
27. Brawly
28. Machop
29. Knuckle Badge
30. Sailing
31. Slateport Beach
32. Babysitting
33. Blackest Depths
34. Ice Cream
35. Grand Opening
36. Captain Stern
37. Thieves
38. Pirates
39. Mistakes
40. Ninja
41. Triathlon
42. Triki
43. Leviathan
44. Graves
45. Mud
46. Plusle
47. Playground
48. Coins
49. Manners
50. Nobody Home (I)
51. Nobody Home (II)
52. Roses
53. Full Moon
54. Mr. Wattson
55. Old Man Problems
56. High Energy Luxatrope
57. Toast
58. Short Out
59. Reconnaissance
60. Nothing to See
61. New Mauville
62. Lights Out
63. Groceries
64. The Plan
65. Tomorrow Morning
66. Officer Jenny
67. Pretty Brave
68. Dynamo Badge
69. Cycle
70. Mudbert
71. Marshtomp Contest
72. Winstrate
73. Rollout
74. Picnic
75. Fiery Path
76. Rumbles
77. Getting Away
78. Bamboo
79. Super Contest
80. Skarmory
81. Superhero
82. Fossil Hunters
83. Someone
84. Bat Cave
85. Meteor Falls
86. Icebergs
87. Mountain Bike
88. Motive
89. Historic Ride
90. Spooked
91. Cable Car
92. Mt. Chimney
93. Meteorite
94. Lavaridge
95. Overheat
96. Weakness
97. Hiker
98. Blues
99. Pickup
100. Keeping Busy
101. Flannery
102. Torkoal
103. Heat Badge
104. Sandstorm
105. Lost
106. Found
107. Show-Off
108. Something Nefarious
109. Secret Machine
110. Return