I'm sure like most people, my awareness of Scott Pilgrim came with the Edgar Wright movie that's coming out in August. My interest was piqued and I know that the movie will either be the most awesome thing ever created or it will fail miserably because it was trying so hard to be awesome but I digress. I saw the graphic novels and I skimmed it to see what it was all about. What I saw was something akin to a kitty in that it was so adorable that I must buy it and own it and love it, theoretically of course. So did my theory of love turn into reality or did it just blow up in my face like awesome chemistry, let's find out as we dive into Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life.
Scott Pilgrim has a pretty cool life so far. He's 23, plays bass in a horrible punk band called Sex Bomb-Omb and just started going out with a cute high school girl named Knives. Sure he doesn't have real responsibilities, that pesky job thingy and the fact that the story takes place in Canada but hey, it doesn't slow him down. But one night in his dreams, this really radical chick called Ramona Flowers comes skating by and Scott is immediately smitten and then he finds out Ramona's real and then he finds her at some party where he finds out she works for Amazon.ca as a delivery girl so Scott concocts a plan to buy CD's and wait for her to deliver them where he plans to ask her out on a date...which succeeds. But then we find out that Ramona has seven evil ex-boyfriends which Scott must fight and defeat if they are to keep dating and so beings this epic tale of epic epicness.
The thing that I really love the most in this was how well-written and funny this is. There's this irreverence to it where the comic breaks the fourth-wall to provide guitar tabs for one of Sex Bomb-Ombs songs or heavily explicit foreshadowing. The other times it's a near lethal cocktail of rapid-fire jokes, video game culture references and mind-blowingly epic fights. It's pretty much like movies similar to Airplane! where if a joke fails there's another one that's coming right at you that might not fail but most of the jokes don't fail but most of all, the romance between Scott and Ramona grounds the comic with some sweet romance. If anything, the attraction between the pair may be a bit too quick since before their date it was all Scott stalking Ramona in a creepy albeit cute way but that's just nitpicking.
The artwork is in the style of those Japanese magnas which works wonders for creating the world of Scott Pilgrim. I know there's some flak on it because it's drawn in a simple manner where American comics are drawn more realistically and all that, but a realistic Scott Pilgrim would not have worked as well. In a universe where people can fly, there's 64 hit combos and summon winged babes it's a lot easier to accept with the simple cartoony art. However, there is quite a lot of detail that's hidden in these panels if you want to look for them and the art just looks fun. Plus, the character models are absolutely adorable.
This volume is almost as awesome as the comic thinks it is. The writing is sharp, clever and hilarious. The love story between Ramona and Scott is sweet even though Ramona forgives Scott a bit too quick for being all creepy and stalkerish. The fight between Scott and first evil ex-boyfriend is fun to watch. This is a great read and I'm excited to read every volume of the Scott Pilgrim saga and watch the movie.
9/10
No comments:
Post a Comment