BRYAN LEE O'MALLEY ON SCOTT PILGRIM 3

[MattBrady]

by Chris Arrant

My name is Scott Pilgrim! I'm 23 and I live in Toronto with my cool gay roommate, Wallace Wells. I'm in a band called Sex Bob-omb (we're not very good though), and I'm "between jobs". Some of my friends say I'm a freeloader, but I think Wallace is just really nice! Anyway, I've been having some girl troubles lately. I kind of ended up dating this girl with, uh, seven evil ex-boyfriends, apparently? Her name is Ramona Flowers and she's from New York, which makes her super extra-cool. Anyway, her ex-boyfriends keep showing up to fight me! It's really extreme and stuff!! Girls show up from my past to make things more complicated, and it's not like having a relationship is easy to begin with! I've got baggage and stuff, okay?!

Like Scott said, his story is a complicated one. Balancing his band, his love life(s), and fending off a league of seven evil ex-boyfriends of his current girlfriend Ramona Flowers is a lot to handle, but so far Scott's been successful. Two volumes of Scott Pilgrim have been released so far, and criticial acclaim has been abundant: Publishers Weekly calls it "The weirdest, funniest and coolest Western variation on the manga aesthetic to date", while the Globe and Mail calls it "Canada's Answer to Tank Girl!". It was one of the most listed items on critics' Top Comics of 2004 & 2005, and led creator Bryan Lee O'Malley to be nominated for the 2006 Eisner for "Best Writer/Artist – Humor" and won several awards including "Outstanding Writer/Artist" in the 2006 Joe Shuster Awards and "Best Emerging Talent" in the 2005 Doug Wright Awards.

This Wednesday, the third volume of this six part series of original graphic novels is released. Scott Pilgrim and The Infinite Sadness finds the intrepid Scott at odds with a former flame and her boyfriend, who also happens to be the third of current girlfriend Ramona's ex-boyfriends. Envy left an indelible mark on Scott's life, and her re-appearance into his life digs up old feelings and new resentment on behalf of Scott and Ramona.

Last week, Newsarama.com hosted the entire Free Comic Book Day comic, and now we come back with an interview with O'Malley.

Newsarama: Scott's main nemesis in this book is the third of Ramona's ex-boyfriends, Todd. But he's got more reasons than that to be out for Scott, including sharing another girlfriend at one time or another. Can you tell us what Todd is about?

Bryan Lee O'Malley: Todd Ingram is kind of like the better, faster, stronger, more attractive version of Scott. I guess the idea is almost that Envy traded up and got a better boyfriend after dumping Scott. He's more muscular and has better hair, and he has secret abilities.

NRAMA: Glimpsed at the end of volume 2, volume 3 is as much about Envy as it is Scott Pilgrim. Scott has a past with Envy, but she seems above it all now, in a new relationship and fronting a successful band called Clash at Demonhead. How would you describe her?

BLO: Envy is overcompensating for a past she's embarrassed of, and that past includes her relationship with Scott. Her method of overcompensating is to be an evil bitch, which gets blown even more out of proportion due to the way the story is told (we're kind of in Scott's universe here, so things are skewed to how he thinks).

NRAMA: Of those secret abilities, it has something to do with Todd's training at something called the 'Vegan Academy'. I may not be as in-tune with the world as I thought; what is this place?

BLO:: It's just made-up, so don't worry. It's a secret school where people learn how to be vegans.

NRAMA: A interesting new concept brought up in this volume by Scott's roommate, the indomitable Wallace Wells, is the idea of chi… although Wallace uses it merely to dry himself off after being soaked in the rain. Will this be coming into play more in future volumes?

BLO: I think I was just reading too much Naruto at the time, but I like the idea that Wallace has access to powers simply by being cool-headed. I'm leaving it open in case I want to explore it more in the future.

NRAMA: This brings up the dramatic difference between Wallace and Scott; Wallace is rather cool-headed while Scott is a bit more impulsive, to say the least; Regardless, they seem to have a unique friendship that plays off that, especially in this volume. How do you think Scott views Wallace, and vice versa?

BLO: I think Scott really sees Wallace as the coolest guy around, whereas Wallace (who is the coolest guy around) loves Scott even though he's an utter fool most of the time. I mostly mean love in a platonic sense there, although who knows…

NRAMA: One of the big scenes in the movie is a showdown at a place known as Honest Ed's. Is this a real place, and if so can you tell us about it?

BLO: It's a real place, this huge discount store in downtown Toronto. It has a gigantic circus-like sign that you can see from a mile away (especially at night). The sign is literally like three blocks long, and it also wraps around a corner. The inside of Honest Ed's is legendary for giving everyone who enters a massive headache. It's right next to my old comic store, the Beguiling, so I thought it was a nice location to use.

NRAMA: In the book you have a lot of references to real places and events, as opposed to some nondescript or made up towns like some books do. Why do you go out to incorporate these real places, when it might be easier in some respects to make it all up?

BLO: I think that's inspired by a lot of manga, or even the construction of manga in general - putting these cartoony characters in a realistic setting keeps everything grounded. Lee's Palace is real, Honest Ed's is real, the Pizza Pizza across the street is real, and most of the streets and neighbourhoods are pretty real. This book takes place over a single weekend and a small area, and some ridiculous stuff happens, so keeping that area realistic helps it to feel solid.

NRAMA: In this volume, Scott's firmly in with Ramona Flowers but his previous brief fling, Knives Chau, is still in the picture somewhat. What does Knives see in Scott, and why does she still come around with Scott being with Ramona?

BLO: I guess it's that whole thing where people fixate on that One Person Who Can Make Everything Right. Knives Chau isn't going to go away anytime soon, and I guess we'll find out whether she grows up and gets over him, or if he actually gives in to her advances.

NRAMA: Between the three volumes and the recently released FCBD comic, you've done over 500 pages on Scott Pilgrim. How has your idea of the character and the book changes from the beginning to where you are now?

BLO: Recently I was re-reading some notes from before starting Volume 1, and I realized that a lot of the stuff was already there. Some aspects I thought I'd come up with later were in place right from the start (the whole Envy story was in the initial notes, for example). Mostly my art has changed, and my approach to drawing the pages, but I think that's natural over five hundred pages.

NRAMA: Much has been said about the influence of japanese manga on English-speaking audiences, with all sorts of terminology and definitions through around. The one's that stuck with me the post has been your own 'post-manga'. Can you describe what you define 'post manga' is, and how you see it in relation to comics as a whole?

BLO: Well, I don't really like coining terminology like that - I think that's up to you guys, really. I was just thinking of post-punk as a genre, taking the basic ideas of punk and breaking it down and rebuilding it into something new but clearly rooted in punk.

Maybe "post-manga" will be more of a historical thing, as more cartoonists grow up reading manga and absorb it into their own personal, idiosyncratic style. Comics after the general American assimilation of manga - kind of like rock music after the British Invasion. I think that's apt.

NRAMA: Besides comics, Scott Pilgrim goes into some bizarre twists with some video game logic; From save points to skill points, and even some power-ups along the way. This is a relatively new development in comics of bringing it video game influence like this; when did you originally start incorporating it into your work, and what's your reasoning behind it?

BLO:Video games are some of the strongest memories I have from my youth, which is sad and pathetic but not limited to me, I think. When you spend hundreds of hours playing these things, they inevitably become part of the fabric of your life, and Scott Pilgrim reflects that. Rock music and video games were a huge part of my youth, and now I can spit them back out in the form of comics/manga, so we get all three. I'm clearly not alone in this - a lot of the readers seem to pick up every obscure NES reference, and it seems to make them really happy. Which is good.

NRAMA: In reading your work I've always been attuned to your hand-lettered effects and sounds. Probably my favorite in this volume is "GLOM!" on page 116 of Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness. What's your thoughts behind hand lettered effects versus computer-based text elements, and how do you think it influences the way people read the comic as a whole?

BLO: I think computer sound effects are essentially the worst thing to ever happen to comics. Computer lettering is fine up to a point (if I was doing all that dialogue by hand, my hand would have stopped working long ago), but sound effects are so important to the look of a page. Computer sound effects make a page look stiff and cheap. The Dark Horse reprint of Akira made me very sad in that department, for example. Most manga integrate sound effects from the get-go, which I think is crucial. Balloons and sounds should be there from the thumbnail stage.

NRAMA: In various interviews, Corey Lewis has been playing up the idea of a Scott Pilgrim / Sharknife team-up dubbed Scottknife. Any truth to this possibility?

BLO:I think he was dropping some letters, like "Scottnife"?

Uh, we've tossed the idea around. Mostly he has tossed the idea around. I wouldn't be opposed to it, but comics take a lot of time. I wouldn't mind doing it as a relatively short one-shot.

NRAMA: There are several references to the 90s band the Smashing Pumpkins in this volume, from the subtitle "& Infinite Sadness" to one of the chapters sharing a name with a Smashing Pumpkins song "Frail & Bedazzled". What led you to include these references in Scott Pilgrim, and how would you say their music is a influence on your work?

BLO: They were my favourite band in high school, so I have a weakness for them. Mostly I thought it would be hilarious to use it as a title - thinking of something like Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and subverting that whole concept by making it an emotional thing. Like most of the references, I tried to make it so that you can appreciate the title without needing to know that it's part of the title of a classic 1995 double album by the Smashing Pumpkins ['Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness']. I listened to them a lot while playing video games in high school, so for me, it's part of the same process of examining my youth.

NRAMA:Both you and your lead character Scott Pilgrim play bass guitar; even I'm a bass player. What's the draw for you in your music, and choosing the bass for Scott?

NRAMA: I think this happens a lot, but I've been roped into playing bass for stuff before (in front of people, I mean), and I'm a terrible bass player. I have this feeling that a lot of terrible bass players get sucked into being "The Bass Player", because it's relatively easy to fake your way through it. Anyway, I thought that could be Scott's position too. He's really bad at bass, but he can fake it. (Of course there are really damn good bass players too, and I've known a few. Nothing against bass players or the instrument itself.)

NRAMA: In addition to the new volume of Scott Pilgrim, you also recently released your newest CD of music. It seems your music and comics work has always been intertwined in some way; I've heard a story of you selling a 6-track EP of your songs with a mini comic in conventions long ago. How does music interact with the comics, and vice versa?

BLO: Music generally doesn't take as long to produce as a graphic novel, so in the past I had a weird tendency to be one step ahead, creatively and emotionally, with my music. I was doing music that sounded like Lost at Sea while I was working on Hopeless Savages, and I was doing music that sounded like Scott Pilgrim while working on Lost at Sea. This time they more or less coincided, since I've only been concentrating on the music in the gap between volumes - I started the new batch of songs right after finishing Volume 2, and finished it right after finishing Volume 3. The songs reflect some of the stuff I was thinking about and exploring with Volume 3, but they also look ahead a bit, and I'm sure some of those themes will pop up in Volume 4.

The 6-song "Vanilla Dome" EP you speak of was released at TCAF 2003. It came with a little Lost at Sea minicomic (the book was released later that year), but the music had Nintendo samples and rocked out in a way that my comics didn't until Scott Pilgrim Volume 1, a year later.

NRAMA: You say you were doing music that sounded like some of your comics; could you explain that further, if you're inferring the lyrics or the feel of the music or what?

BLO: Well, it's both. I don't know, it's hard to explain. The creative and emotional approach, I guess. With something like Lost at Sea I was pouring my heart out directly onto the page, and with Scott Pilgrim it's a bit more mediated, more of a pop sensibility. Songs work the same way, they just don't involve eight months of drawing time.

NRAMA: So you're saying the ability to execute your ideas is faster generally in music as compared to comics, especially when working in huge 150+ page chunks. Could you see yourself at some point in the future doing smaller, more off-the-cuff comics that can give you a more immediate use of your influences and mindset of the time?

BLO: The only way I see that happening is if the Shonen Jump style anthology would catch on with western comics. I don't see it happening in the near future because most publishers are terrified of the format, due to its poor sales history over here.

NRAMA: With the connection between your music and comics, could you point out the songs/albums of yours that directly correspond with the comics you've done?

BLO: It's not quite that direct - it's just where my head is at when I was developing certain ideas. When I was doing the Vanilla Dome EP, I was in the Scott Pilgrim headspace - I was 23 years old and living with the gay roommate and dating the American girl, and at that time I was slogging through the drawing process on Lost at Sea, but the direct headspace stuff came out in those songs. And I was taking notes for Scott Pilgrim at the same time.

NRAMA: Now that this third volume is in stores now and off your drawing board, what do you have planned next?

BLO: After some promotional art and convention visits, I'm going to get right into Volume 4. I just got my copy of Volume 3 yesterday, so I think I'm ready to start scripting. I've decided to fully concentrate on Scott Pilgrim until I'm completely finished the series.

NRAMA: There was a bit of delay with volume 3. What would you attribute this to?

BLO: We had to solicit early due to the bookstore market, and failed to do the math right, basically. I did a lot of traveling last summer and fall, and then we bought a house and moved into it. The lead time just got totally eaten up. Afterwards the book got later and later, because I decided I'd rather have a really solid book than worry about how late I was.

For Volume 4, we're not planning to solicit until it's done, which'll give us time to catch up. That way hopefully there'll be less of a gap between Volume 4 and 5.

NRAMA: Although it's a ways away, when would you estimate Vol. 4 to come out?

BLO: Hopefully the first quarter of 2007.

Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness (Vol. 3) is due in stores Wednesday, May 24th, 2006. For more information on Scott Pilgrim and Bryan Lee O'Malley, visit radiomaru.com.

[c_andrew_s]

This book rocks!!!! Thanks for the great article

[Punchy]

Holy Sh*t!

I am so excited for volume 3!!!

Can't wait to see more of Envy and all that.

Scott belongs with Kim!

[John Gallagher]

If not for FREE Scott Pilgrim on FCBD, I might never have known the rich, nutritious goodness that is Scott Pilgrim!

I love volume 1, I'll be picking up Vol II today, and definitely getting Volume III! O'Malley is a true talent!

[caleb]

Hey, "post-manga" is a pretty good term for books like SCOTT PILGRIM. I've been callling it "Canadimanga."

[Hobowatcher]

Originally Posted by John Gallagher

If not for FREE Scott Pilgrim on FCBD, I might never have known the rich, nutritious goodness that is Scott Pilgrim!

I love volume 1, I'll be picking up Vol II today, and definitely getting Volume III! O'Malley is a true talent!

If it wasn't for FCBD, I would've picked up a boring and insipid digest due to all the confusing praise this series has been getting.

[Joe Henderson]

I can't wait for tomorrow!

[NightRiver]

Originally Posted by Hobowatcher

If it wasn't for FCBD, I would've picked up a boring and insipid digest due to all the confusing praise this series has been getting.

I say boo to you!!

Great article, looking forward to Vol. 3!

[jza1218]

I cant friggin wait until tomorrow...

[GideonStargrave]

Originally Posted by Hobowatcher

If it wasn't for FCBD, I would've picked up a boring and insipid digest due to all the confusing praise this series has been getting.

Just to show that even in a story for something as fun as Scott Pilgrim, SOMEBODY has to come in and crap all over everyone else's joy. Feel better now?
And for the record, I pre-ordered this from Amazon back when it was SUPPOSED to come out in December, but I'll STILL be buying it at my LCS, and giving away the extra copy to someone who needs to be exposed to great comics.

[Hobowatcher]

Originally Posted by GideonStargrave

Just to show that even in a story for something as fun as Scott Pilgrim, SOMEBODY has to come in and crap all over everyone else's joy. Feel better now?
And for the record, I pre-ordered this from Amazon back when it was SUPPOSED to come out in December, but I'll STILL be buying it at my LCS, and giving away the extra copy to someone who needs to be exposed to great comics.

Actually, I feel great! Anonymously venting my distaste for Scott Pilgrim on an internet messageboard is just what I needed to forget my miserable excuse for a life.

If I want fun, I'll read Peter Bagge.

Althoug I will agree with him. Computer lettering is horrible. The Japanese have it right. Lettering is just as valuable as pencilling. They both carry the tone and message of the book equally. It should be laid out from the get-go.

[Arnout]

Wheeeeee!

Scott Pilgrim!

Wheeeeee!

Adam Kubert sometimes does hand-lettered sound-effects. It rules.
Oh, and totally unrelated, I'm about halfway into Castle Waiting, and that's some great story-telling, wonderful artwork & fun character writing.
More please!

[Redmond]

I can't wait! It's my favorite comic by far in years.

[KID FANTASTIC]

Right now, I'm deciding if I want buy SP vol.1 or Black Hole as my next book purchase.
I made a poll and its split even. Heres the link.

http://www.newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?t=71511

[Spaz_Monkey]

Canada's Answer to Tank Girl!

As long as there's no sex with freaky mutant kangaroo-men, I'll read it!

[McAlice]

I knew Punch would be one of the first posts on this thread lol
I think it's a good book, its apreciated more by my gf though, she loves her some O'Malley

[zombiekid]

god damn do i love scott pilgrim. best comic ever in my opinion. would love to see "scottnife" happen as i also love sharknife and loved the cameo scott had in peng. on a kinda related topic, street angel also has really good non-computer sound effects. good job, bryan. gutted i missed your signing in nottingham.

[Blisterfists]

Looks like some really good stuff......I'll definitely check it out!

I love simple, interesting concepts like this.........Post-Manga is a neat field that is really emerging (Check out "I Luv Halloween" for more!)

[Frillip]

I suspect I too will wet myself when I finally hold this in my hands. Best Thing Ever.

[Redmond]

Not to be anal, but I would argue that his style isn't manga at all. It's closer to 50s american cartooning than it is to overall manga. Though I am talking out of my ass...

Dipping Sauce Bitch, alright!!!