Customer Reviews

Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life

5 star:		(65)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Fun and irreverant, Bryan Lee O'Malley's Canadian slacker is one of the most appealing fictional characters I've come across, with or without pictures, and by the end of this first volume, I had a ridiculous grin on my face as I anticipated jumping right into Volume 2. I laughed out loud several times throughout the story, but more importantly, I felt connected to each of the primary characters, interested to see what happens to them next, not because of the [insane] plot they were involved in, but because I cared about what fate had in store for them. Which is weird, because I usually hate slacker stories. Scott Pilgrim, though, is awesome!

Scott Pilgrim is the best comic I have read in years! That's really saying something. Being a comic creator myself, I read a lot of comics. No, seriously, *a lot* of comics.
Bryan O'Malley is able to blend innocence and humor and just over-the-top craziness with an art style that is deceptively simplistic and so achingly honest and perfectly expressive that, being an artist myself, it makes me want to choke him. He can do with just three lines what I -- what would take me -- what, honestly, I just can't do.
I was trying to think of a "if you like such-and-such you'll love Scott Pilgrim" comparison, but you know what, I can't imagine anyone not liking this book. It's fun. It's heart warming. It's hilarious. It's infinitely quotable. It has great characters and a great story ...
Hey, just buy it already. I swear you will not be disappointed.

Hype kills everything for me. When people started going on and on about how awesome this book was, I did my best to distance myself from it. But eventually I caved and bought it. And I'm glad I did.

Bryan Lee O'Malley is a genius. His art is so amazing, and his writing is brilliant. Scott Pilgrim is one of the coolest books to come out in a long time. This is the kind of book you read and say, "DAMMNIT! Why didn't I do this first?!"

Have you ever been in love? Have you ever been in a band? Have you ever stayed up all night playing Super Mario Bros. 3? Then this book is for you.

this is one of my favorite graphic novels--o'malley takes a 20-something jobless musician and makes you fall in love with him and his adorable and amazing life. the characters are all totally sweet--especially scott pilgrim's high school girlfriend, who is too embarrassed to kiss him--and their adventures are all about romance, rock 'n' roll and rhyming fight scenes. plus, the art is great!! really, i cannot accurately describe what a touching, sweet, and fun story this is. all i can say is--i can't wait for volume two!

I purchased these graphic novels because of the movie commercials. There, I said it. I was influenced by the blatant commercialization! Let me redeem myself, though. I wanted to read the source material that lead to the movie previews that intrigued me (it is not often, of late, that I actually see a preview and say "I want to see that movie"). A few minutes later on Amazon and my graphic novels were on their way... sans Ramona Flowers as my delivery person.

Artwork

As indicated in the product name, this graphic novel is drawn by Canadian artist Bryan Lee O'Malley. His art style is heavily influenced by Japanese Manga; to this end the body shapes and styles, as well as the action sequences, harken back to Japanese staples, a la Dragonball or Rune Soldier. For those of you unfamiliar with these references, this means that the body proportions are mostly accurate. O'Malley's art style is characterized by exaggerated eyes (taking up most of the face for most characters; narrowed eyes are rare), squared-off fingers and squarish-shaped heads. Clothing is varied for the characters in the story, and to O'Malley's credit, each character is distinctive, even limited by the black-and-white artwork.

In short, the artwork is well done, with bows to both Japanese Manga and American comics for their influences. Since I imagine that most people would pick up this book and be willing to suspend disbelief for any anatomical anomalies.

Plot/Story

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life tells the tale of Scott Pilgrim, a loafer 23-year old who is in a band, between jobs, and recently became acquainted with Ramona Flowers, the female antagonist of the series. As the story unfolds, you will follow the trials and tribulations of Scott, Ramona, his friends from his band Sex Bob-Omb, and the first of Ramona's Seven Evil Ex-Boyfriends.

The plot is simple: in order to win the right to date Ramona, Scott must defeat each of her seven evil ex-boyfriends. Seems easy, right? Unfortunately for Scott, it is not quite that simple. The graphic novel pays homage to many pop culture influences from the past twenty years, most notably video games. Whenever Scott defeats someone, they turn into a pile of coins. The series also breaks the rules of physics routinely, most notably by giving Ramona the ability to travel through "subspace".

What about the writing? I will sum it up with one word: funny. The tale that is woven for Scott Pilgrim is tongue-in-cheek, witty, and sometimes downright hysterical. Oh yea, and very, very random. The only complaint that I have about the story involves continuity: O'Malley sometimes has flashbacks for the characters without always clarifying that this is occurring within the text. While the artwork usually has clues to indicate which timeframe the characters are in, it is sometimes frustrating and confusing to mentally "switch" as you are reading along.

When reading this tale, it does help considerably to have familiarity with the pop culture references. As an example, one of the characters is named Young Neil. This is a play on Neil Young (of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young fame). Other references range from college names to video game quips.

Overall

If you want a fun romp through pop culture with a crazy storyline to boot, I highly recommend this volume. It is a very well-done graphic novel with an entertaining plot and great artwork. I especially recommend these if you plan to see the movie spinoff (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World). Some of the humor may pass over younger readers (younger meaning older than 13 but younger than 20), but even with a missed joke, there is still plenty of content to keep anyone entertained. Be willing to suspend reality for a bit while you read this one, and I guarantee that you will want to read more.

I really wish that I had read Scott Pilgrim sooner. I first heard about the book back in March or April, though I thought that Pilgrim was the author. When I learned what Scott Pilgrim really was, I couldn't believe how much I didn't want to read it. For those of you who don't know yet, Scott Pilgrim is a faux-manga series about a 23-year-old Canadian slacker who must defeat a girl's seven evil ex-boyfriends before he can date her. I came up with nearly every excuse I could think of to avoid reading this book. The plot sounded dumb, the visuals were influenced by manga, it was black and white. However, I couldn't help but notice how much praise it got from both comic reviewers and mainstream publications. Not only that, but two of my friends like it, and one of them doesn't read any other comics. Eventually, I decided that I should just give it a try, and I was barely 5 pages into Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life before I realized that all of the hype was completely true.
Scott Pilgrim is 23 years old and has no direction in life. He is "between jobs", is in a crappy band (with an awesome name), and as the series starts, he has just started dating a 17-year-old high school girl named Knives Chau. He lives with his gay roommate Wallace, whom he always introduces as being totally awesome and gay. Most of the things in the apartment belong to Wallace, and the two share a bed, but that is because they are too poor to afford a second. Based on how you look at life, Scott is either completely awesome or a total loser.
His time with Knives is just ok; the only things she can ever talk about is the high school drama she is immersed in and how her mother wants her to find a nice Chinese boy. All they ever do is get pizza or listen to Scott's band, Sex Bob-omb, practice.
However, when Scott meets Ramona Flowers, an American girl now working for Amazon.ca, his whole life is thrown into a tailspin. Suddenly, he can't get her out of his mind, and when he accidentally creeps her out at a party, he orders some CDs from Amazon (using Wallace's credit card) just so she can deliver them to him. Eventually, he gets her to go out with him, and he invites her to a Sex Bob-omb concert. Now, all this time, things have been fairly normal. Nothing too out-of-the-ordinary has occurred. But when Ramona's ex-boyfriend from high school shows up, things get bizarre, and yet the characters don't seem to notice at all. Matthew Patel, who dated Ramona for a week and a half, challenges Scott to a fight during the concert, and without missing a beat, Scott and his friends enter a melee.
Scott Pilgrim is hilarious. Before things even get weird, the dialogue and bizarre, though somewhat believable, situations keep the reader in stitches. But when outlandish events occur, the humor is ratcheted up a notch. It is helped by the fact that Scott and his friends act as if a manga-style brawl with Ramona's "evil" ex-boyfriend is as normal as going to work (though for Scott, I guess it is more normal than work). Other sources of humor include ratings when new characters are introduced, such as Scott's rating of awesome, his sister Stacey's rating of T for Teen (a video game reference), and Wallace's rating of 7.5/10. There is also the room break-down, giving us a detailed look at what belongs to Scott and what belongs to Wallace, Scott's terrible physical description of Ramona's hair, and the fact that sometimes the characters seem to be addressing the reader (Scott says that an anecdote is better for another volume). The book also introduced the term "attack hug" into my lexicon. There are also great references to comic books and video games. Scott wears an X patch on his jacket reminiscent of the X-Men, all the bands are video game references, and a discussion of dreams leads Scott to think about Super Mario Bros. 2.
I can't stress enough how great this book is. If you have any reservations, especially the ones that I mentioned above, ignore them at all costs. Scott Pilgrim is like nothing you've read before, and will definitely keep you entertained.

I have found that most of the reviews of this book thus far have been the product of either stuttering enthusiasm or unwarranted spite, an unpleasant situation owing to the fact that Scott Pilgrim is a polarizing book, a book that caters to a very specific type of person.

I am not, as it turns out, that type of person.

But, I'm not the sort of person who likes to waste time gushing mindless praise or spewing mindless vitriol either--LET'S GET EVENHANDED!

For those of you sitting on the fence about whether to read this: I was a fence-sitter too. There were aspects of this book that attracted me: the dynamic, manga-inflected art, the melding of the whimsical with the mundane, the goofy humor. But there were things I'd heard about and noticed from the previews that I found equally off-putting, namely the plethora of references to videogames and indie-rock culture.

Now, I have NO problem with either videogames or indie-rock, both things I've grown up with and enjoyed. What I DO have a problem with is this 21st century habit of fetishizing our influences and making compulsive name-drops, this way we've confused Being Cool with Mentioning Things That Are Cool. This isn't to say I'm 100% against this sort of thing, but there's a specific time and place to use it in storytelling, and there is such a thing as overkill. Like words, references are good when you're using them to say something, and bad when you're using them to show off.

This reference-heavy mentality informs Scott Pilgrim to a hefty degree, and I feel it does so against creator/artist/writer Brian O'Malley's better artistic instincts. The visual nuance (as has been stated elsewhere, his facial expressions are superb; he gets an incredible degree of emotional mileage out of very simple shapes) found in the book seemed to indicate to me somebody far cleverer than his writing and characterizations let on.

I'll state this forthrightly: the characters in this book are weak, the protagonist glaringly so. I understand that it's the first in a six-book series and so there's further character development to be had, but if a reader such as myself can't find the characters compelling enough by the end of the first book, then we aren't going to keep reading. The hero comes off as an unlikeable, emotionally immature doofus, which would be fine if he was given positive traits as well, but he isn't. Most of the other characters, with the exception of Wallace Wells, Scott's gay roommate and Knives Chau, Scott's 17-year-old "girlfriend," seem to be little more than hip-looking extras, and that extends even to the girl Scott pines after and who is the catalyst for basically the entire plot (Scott must defeat her seven evil ex-boyfriends, etc).

A lot of people have written that they were hooked by the slice-of-life tone of most of this book and then taken aback by the incredibly silly ending, but I felt just the opposite--the book works best at its silliest and most cartoony, lampooning the conventions of manga and videogames (a justified use of referencing, for once). There's a very good punch-line at the end of the "boss fight." It was the only thing in the book that made me laugh out loud, and it felt more real and more genuine to me than all the drama that had unfolded beforehand.

When you first have Scott Pilgrim Vol 1 in your hands take a breath before you open the book, as the ride you're about to take will leave you gasping for air at the end. Bryan Lee O'Malley doesn't hold back in this comedic and emotional assault. What seems so quaint from the cover and editorial blurb quickly evolves into something far deeper.

The world of Scott Pilgrim seems simple enough, he's in a band, has a high school girlfriend, and is the best fighter in the area. Coolness oozes out of every page, even when the simple everyday events are all that occur. O'Malley's art and storytelling have a subtle way of captivating the reader and keeping them deeply immersed in the world he has created.

There is no simple way to sum up the adventure that is Scott Pilgrim Vol 1. It will leave you wanting more, and if you didn't catch it earlier, grab it now. The journey that Scott and his friends begin here will stay with you and your friends for days to come.

This is an awesome book. It's fun and intelligent, and the art really conveys the emotions well. The characters are easy to relate to, and it helps them feel more human. There are all kinds of neat little things in the story you wouldn't expect to find in a comic, too (like the ratings that appear with the characters, or the interactive playalong with Sex Bob-Omb, complete with chords and lyrics). This book also had me laughing harder than any comic I've ever read. And it leaves you wanting more, and only having to wait until early 2005 to get it!

I'm not scraping the tip of the iceberg, though. Buy this book and you won't regret it for a second.

I avoided this book for a long time, no matter how great the reviews, because I thought the art looked childish.

Boy was I wrong. Bryan Lee O'Malley's art style is actually far deeper then I gave him credit for. After multiple readings I have come to the conclusion that this guy really, really knows how to do a comic book. His art is dynamic and melds effortlessly with the story. If you are put off this book by the art...don't be. Just give it a chance.

I've read the first two books three or four times (they're a quick read...Bryan is great at pacing) and I am anxiously awaiting #3, 4 and 5 from Amazon. Hurry up and get here already!!!

Don't wait...become a Scottaholic today!