TITLE: SCOTT PILGRIM’S PRECIOUS LITTLE LIFE
AUTHOR: Brian Lee O’ Malley
PUBLISHED BY: Oni Press
RATING: 9.2
Scott Pilgrim is like nothing you’ve ever read before. It’s a short graphic novel about a 23 year-old Canadian slacker who plays in an indie rock band. It’s a manga, or at least heavily influenced by the genre, it’s about love, it’s about growing up in the 2000s, but most of all… it’s a pulp video game. Scott lives in a world where video game standbys like grandiose, collateral-damage heavy fights with air-juggles and magic projectiles are the norm.
Being the first of a proposed six books (five have already been released) Scott Pilgrim’s similarities with J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series are much more than superficial. O’ Malley understands that regardless of how fantastical and unbelieveable your plot actually is, the needs, wants and motivations of your characters must be believable.
Scott’s world is hilariously envisioned and richly detailed in an almost Wes Anderson like fashion. More than this, Scott Pilgrim captures a truth about this generation like almost nothing else, O’Malley deserves as much credit for his keen sense of social observation as he does for his idiosyncratic and original artwork.
