re:mote voices

Title: Scott Pilgrim - Volume 1: Precious Little Life
Author: Bryan O'Malley
Artist: Bryan O'Malley
Publisher: Oni Press

Scott Pilgrim is 23, he plays bass in a band, and has just started dating a 17-year-old school girl (Knives Chau). He is between jobs, and is still coming back from a bad break up. But with the band getting a gig and his relationship with Knives things are looking up.

Then one night he has a dream. He is alone, crawling through the desert, desperate for water. When a cute girl skates past on rollerblades, telling him this is not a dream. From that point he is obsessed with this girl.

The dream girl turns out to be real, an American girl called Ramona Flowers, who has just moved to Toronto. This complicates things, especially with the impressionable Knives, and the fact that someone keeps sending Scott letters challenging him to a fight.

Precious Little Life is the first volume in what is intended to be a series of books about Scott Pilgrim. Even at this stage, the characters break the "fourth wall", be referring to what will be covered in future volumes. To start with Precious Little Life is a real life drama type graphic novel, following up from O'Malley's previous novel Lost At Sea.

But as it progresses we move into the realm where dreams cross into reality, and the obsessions those represent. These aspects have a particularly Haruki Murakami feel, dream girls and obsessions being a major theme in his work. The culmination of the book is a gig by Pilgrim's band Sex Bob-omb, where Ramona and Knives are both in attendance, and Pilgrim's enemy is revealed - flipping into a greater surrealism and "fight comic" territory, making it more comparable to something like Corey Lewis's Shark Knife. Indeed, in terms of narrative energy O'Malley and Lewis are in similar territories, and to a degree both are following in the footsteps of Paul Pope - though while Shark Knife has artistic references to Pope's work, O'Malley maintains his own style.

Lost At Sea was a great work, lots of charm and fun. The kind of thing I gave as a Christmas gift the year came out. For me, Scott Pilgrim perhaps doesn't top that, but it is an energetic and enthusiastic work, with an enigmatic edge. Ironically having given Lost At Sea as a gift, I’ve just received the first 2 Scott Pilgrim books for my birthday. Having read book 1 last night, I look forward to sitting tonight and reading volume 2!