Yes, friends, it’s time to revisit the Scott Pilgrim comic books for the work of art they are. First published in 2004 and being both written and drawn by Bryan Lee O’Malley, the six-part series is about the eponymous title character, Scott Pilgrim, and what happened to him when he sort of started juggling two relationships at once. In this article, we will discuss the first volume “Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life”.
Recap
Scott, 23, is the bass player for the underachieving band Sex Bob-Omb which also stars Stephen Stills singing and Kim Pine on the drums. We meet Scott as he is talking about his new high school girlfriend, Knives Chau, to his friends and then to his roommate, Wallace Wells. When his sister finds out, she calls Scott and asks him why he decided to start dating someone much younger and he tells her “it’s just nice, it’s just simple”.
Being the broke young adult he is, Scott’s options for hanging out with Knives usually involve the band practice (which Knives absolutely hearts) and low budget places like Goodwill and CD stores — this was 2004, so bear with it. Their conversation flows nicely because Scott seems genuinely interested in Knives’s day-to-day high school intrigues like who-likes-who and whatever happened at the yearbook meetings. However, at one of these hangouts, Scott sees a pink-haired roller-skating woman that catches his eye because he had seen her before in his own imagination/dreams.
After some obsessing, Scott finally has the chance to introduce himself to the girl of whom not a lot is known about, with the exception of her name, Ramona Flowers, and that she left New York after a breakup with some guy named Gideon. Scott tries to make conversation, but his sheer awkwardness gets the best of him and he ends up leaving her alone.
However, Scott was still stuck on Ramona so, armed with the information that she worked doing deliveries for Amazon, he placed an order just so she would go to her house, which she eventually does, and actually agrees to go out with Scott on a date after some persuasion. We also see that, after Ramona’s introduction, Scott became distinctively uninterested in Knives’s stories which culminates in him running away after Knives make a move to kiss him.
Stephen Stills is able to set up a gig for Sex Bob-Omb against Crash and The Boys. At their date, Scott and Ramona have a nice time getting to know each other and Ramona finally explains that she uses these subspace highways to get to one place to another faster and it is because of those that Scott was having visions of her. They end up at her place, but they don’t engage in sex right away which is not only okay but preferred to Scott.
It’s showtime and everybody is there which includes Stacey and Jimmy (new boyfriend), Wallace, Ramona, and even Knives who totally got a makeover to become more “rad”. Naturally, Scott ends up freaking out about both of his girlfriends at the same place and tries to run away from the discourse. It’s worth pointing out that, at this point, pretty much everyone has told Scott to break up with Knives, but he simply can’t bring himself to do it.
Their presentations finally start and the Crash and The Boys’ last song is powerful enough to knock everybody in the audience out for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, a little after Wallace ends up kissing Jimmy and a not too far into Sex Bob-Omb’s song, the unexpected happens: a man flies from the sky, breaking the roof, and announcing himself as Matthew Patel, the first of Ramona’s Seven Evil Ex-Boyfriends.
Clueless at first, Scott picks up the thread and engages in the fight: apparently, Scott is known as the best fighter in the province and is able to turn this around. Matthew even brings out sexy demon women to help with his fighting/musical choreography, but Scott is able to flip it and reverse it to his benefit. In the end, Matthew Patel is gone leaving behind $2.10 in coins.
During the subway ride back home, Ramona and Scott finally define the relationship as she tells him that, in order for them to be a free couple, Scott will have to defeat Ramona’s League of Evil Exes. Pilgrim acquiesces to the proposal, but, upon asking whether Gideon is one of them, Ramona’s head starts glowing weirdly.
So… what was that?
Right off the bat, I’ll admit that not only the Scott Pilgrim series is one of the few comics I’ve read, but also it’s downright my favorite. The work Bryan Lee O’Malley put into each of the 180-paged issues is astonishing and, as much as I love a visual gag, I have to hand it to the self-aware and genuinely funny script: it’s tight and, from the very beginning, it serves the mission to set us up for a complex and detailed ride.
Now, if you’ve read the comics, you know what I am talking about: the drawing is purposefully inspired in Japanese manga while still having a style of its own. If I had to pick up one word to describe it, it perhaps would be “irreverent”, because the lines and coloring help the story develop even with its larger-than-life and ludicrous storytelling.
The best part about the volume is how well the world building was done. The Scott Pilgrim reality is quite obviously very whimsical and it’s only semi-grounded in reality (or maybe it is fully grounded in reality? I honestly wouldn’t know because I’ve never been to Toronto so I can’t testify to Toronto’s whimsicality). This is a story that includes a wormhole-like subspace highway that is absolutely ubiquitous to Ramona, but not for Canadians, apparently. Not only that, but Crash and The Boys physically knocked people out with music and Matthew Patel brought in demons and ended up turning to coins. It’s quite clear that Scott Pilgrim’s world is one inspired by the possible plausibilities of video games and cartoons.
As for the characters, from very early on, we see how Bryan Lee O’Malley, a half Korean man, wanted to integrate his own culture on the story as he has talked about on his Tumblr account, giving a very straight answer about the lack of POC in his story:
So anyway, I guess what I’m saying is, what I knew in the first 20 years of my life was white people and a little bit of asian people and so that’s what I put in Scott Pilgrim. I had an unexamined non-attitude towards race and I didn’t think about it until years later.
In the first volume, we do meet Knives and her friend Tamara, who appear throughout the series. Sadly, Matthew Patel bit the dust right after his introduction.
A nice point I always love when I read this comic is Wallace’s relationship with Scott and everybody else. Reading Wallace as a “gay best friend” is quite easy and he does fall victim of hypersexualization during some time, but I still love the tiny moments that include LGBT+ characters in the story and, spoiler alert, there are quite a few still to come.
It’s also nice to point out how quick everyone got concerned when Scott, 23, said he was dating a high schooler. While Scott says it is “easier” for him and Knives seems to genuinely like Scott, their relationship appears sketchy to the reader on most occasions, especially after Ramona is introduced. Knives own arc of self-discovery, independence, and love is amazing and definitely worth the price of admission on its own.
As far as Scott and Ramona, the duo still has a lot of ground to walk. One moment that usually gets praise is the non-intercourse that happens after the first date. I don’t particularly think that Ramona was aware of Scott’s anxieties regarding being intimate with someone for the first time after getting his heart broken a year before, but it was a nice touch that he ended up getting what he needed: an intimate moment, sure, but one that didn’t have to appease to pressuring dating rules. This moment also probably doubles as when the couple really started connecting, putting down the basis for the relationship to become believable.
Well, that’s about it for Vol. 1. Join me in a couple of weeks to talk about Vol. 2 Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World!
