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

by Bryan Lee O'Malley (Author, Artist)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Scott Pilgrim is 23 years old, lives in a cold, unnamed Canadian town, plays bass in a band called Sex Bob-Omb and has a very cute 17-year-old Chinese-Canadian girlfriend, Knives Chau. His "precious little life" is amiably unstructured, and he drifts, happily unemployed, between band practice and time spent with Knives. His relationship with Knives is chaste—walks, chats and hugs—although Knives is getting bigger ideas. "We haven't even held hands," Scott explains. "It's just nice, you know." But then he starts having dreams about Ramona Flowers, a mysterious, equally cute and perfectly legal hipster chick on Rollerblades who delivers books for Amazon.com. Ramona is anything but simple, and O'Malley's tale of adorable slackers in love is transformed into a wildly magically manga–kung fu fantasy adventure. We meet the first of Ramona's seven evil ex-boyfriends, Matthew Patel, who challenges Scott and his band to a supernatural martial arts duel right out of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. O'Malley has crafted a delightfully hybrid comics love story. It's an alt-lit, rock 'n' roll graphic novel with wonderful manga-influenced drawing and a comically mystical plot that manages to capture both the genuine intimacies and serial dishonesties of young love.
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Review
"Charming, funny, sexy and packed with creative power and the love of storytelling." -- Alan David Doane, Comic Book Galaxy

"Easily one of my favorite books of the year. It's sharp, funny, fast-paced, unpredictable, unapologetically silly and just plain fun." -- Kevin Melrose, Thought Balloons

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Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: Oni Press (August 18, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932664084
• ISBN-13: 978-1932664089
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #7,431 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 1 in The Scott Pilgrim Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome!, January 18, 2006

By	Guy L. Gonzalez "Malcontent" (Bloomfield, NJ) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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!

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic art and disappointing writing, July 15, 2008

By	Squire Jons - See all my reviews

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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why are you reading reviews? You should be reading this book!, January 22, 2006

By	J.P. Dorigo (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

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.