Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O’Malley
(Oni Press, various dates)
Steve Gillies
It’s difficult to know exactly how to categorize Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series from Oni Press. It’s often described as a series of “graphic novels.” As problematic and unsatisfying a term as that usually is for people who like comic books or cartoons, it’s even more troubling here because the books are small and shaped exactly like manga. Yet while Scott Pilgrim uses plenty of stylistic and storytelling tricks seen in manga, it’s difficult to call it manga since the characters, themes and content are so American. Except, well, they’re Canadian.
So, what’s the deal with Scott Pilgrim? O’Malley doesn’t provide many clues in the opening pages. We get introduced to Scott Pilgrim, an unemployed 20-something who divides his time between playing in an indie rock band called Sex Bob-omb and looking sweet and clueless. He gets involved with two women, a young and naïve high school girl named Knives Chau who he starts dating in a moment of weakness and an aloof, mysterious woman from New York named Ramona Flowers who he thinks is the girl of his dreams.
Then, about halfway through the first volume, just when we think we’re being set up for some kind of updated, hipster version of an Archie comic, weird things start happening. Scott and Ramona travel through a magic portal. Peoples’ heads start glowing at random times. Cute, clueless, unassuming Scott Pilgrim is really good at fighting, and his fights look a lot like video game fights, complete with people turning into prizes once they’re defeated. Yet none of the characters react to any of this as if it’s weird. This is the world they live in, and O’Malley is confident enough that he never needs to explain or justify any of it. Scott Pilgrim takes place in a world full of ninjas, super powered vegans, video game logic, drummers with bionic arms and anything a 20-something would find cool [1].
It’s a testament to O’Malley’s talent that a series so chock-full of random stuff is not a complete mess. In fact, in O’Malley’s hands, these things all make a lot of sense. Sometimes spectacular first dates do seem like falling through a portal and into some alternate dimension. Why would anyone give up meat and dairy unless it led to having unbeatable superpowers?
And then there’s the series’ unifying conceit, which works on several levels. Scott must defeat Ramona’s seven evil ex-boyfriends in order to date Ramona. It resembles the form of the classical quest narrative as well as the structure of a video game. It also functions as a metaphor for dealing with a partner’s romantic history. Through the course of the series Ramona also encounters a vengeful Knives Chau and several other exes of Scott’s. Along the way Scott and Ramona also have to face up to their own shortcomings as partners and O’Malley deals with that with a maturity and humor that’s lacking in much popular fiction.
Fresh and original, with each new release Scott Pilgrim steadily grew a base of fans until it held down the top six places in the New York Times “graphic books” best sellers list. With a movie released this summer, some were hopeful of a publishing to movie phenomenon akin to Twilight, except you know, for hipsters.
The movie, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, directed by Edgar Wright, tightens up plotting that at times seemed loose and drifting over the course of six volumes, though it sacrifices some great moments with ancillary character to get there. Still, it translates the style and tone of the books remarkably well, and serves as a breath of fresh air in a historically lackluster summer movie season. Unfortunately, it bombed [2].
Like the book, the movie also stubbornly refuses to explain the world in which it inhabits. This, combined possibly with an overexposed star in Michael Cera, led moviegoers to opt for safer bets like Vampires Suck and The Expendables. Its box office failure has led to a lot of hand wringing from fans of the book and the usual questioning of the taste and mental faculties of the general American public. Yet the movie has gotten the kind of critical reaction that could lead to a cult following. The books will be lying in wait for discovery by generation upon generation of video game addicted teens. At the age of thirty-one, there is the promise of years of exciting work from Bryan Lee O’Malley to come. And besides, do hipsters really need their own Twilight anyway?
Steve Gillies is a current MFA candidate in fiction writing at the University of Pittsburgh. He was born in Brazil, raised in Alabama, and spent a considerable amount of his adult life in Chicago. One time he made a comic book that was called “the stupidest I have ever seen” by a noted environmental chemist.
[1] Except vampires. There isn’t a single vampire in this series.
[2] Note the resistance of the temptation to type “bob-ombed.” Many have shown less strength in the face of such low hanging fruit.
