I loved Archie Comics as a kid. Desperate to be older, Riverdale was perfect wish-fulfillment fodder. Archie went on dates and had his own car and had cool friends. Sure, it was all pretty wholesome, but at age six, it seemed like paradise. Now, at 37, I’ve found that same kind of escape.
I want to be Scott Pilgrim, or at least to borrow his Precious Little Life. Because Scott has it sweet, thanks to creator Bryan Lee O’Malley for Oni.
Scott is a twenty-something slacker. He’s happily unemployed, plays bass in a crappy band, has a cool gay roommate, and dates a cute high-school girl. He doesn’t have any real responsibilities, so life is nothing but possibilities. And he doesn’t even have to pursue any of them if he doesn’t feel like it.
As awesome as all that is, life throws him a twist. There’s this girl Scott (literally) can’t get out of his mind. Ramona Flowers is a roller-blading delivery girl who takes shortcuts in the subspace highways that run through Scott’s brain. It’s only natural that Scott would get a little obsessed, when you throw in the fact that Ramona’s smart, pretty, and undeniably cool.
That shortcuts through Scott’s brain make perfect sense is one of the great things about O’Malley’s story. The characters are all in such an amiable, slacker haze that nothing comes as too much of a surprise. Everything just flows effortlessly along, whether its late-night roommate gab or the arrival of one of Ramona’s seven evil ex-boyfriends. The everyday and the surreal mix perfectly.
The characters are wonderful, from ambition-free Scott to caustic roommate Wallace to adoring, adorable Knives, Scott’s sort-of girlfriend. The scenes with Scott’s band, Sex Bob-Omb, crackle with chemistry as they bust on each other in the ways that good friends do. And Scott and Ramona are a sweetly romantic pair, despite their circumstances. Those circumstances – Scott must defeat Ramona’s seven evil ex-boyfriends if he wants to date her – give the book (this is the first volume of six) a kind of quest structure, though “quest” sounds like an awful lot of commitment for this bunch.
I have to admit that slacker fiction usually makes me cringe. It seems to come in two flavors: existential whining or moronic hijinks. O’Malley neatly avoids these pitfalls. Scott and his friends are pretty happy with their circumstances, and they’ve got good reason. They’re at a place in their life when they can do precisely as much or as little as they want, and it’s refreshing that they don’t seem to view that as a crisis or a scam. It’s just how things are.
O’Malley’s illustrations perfectly suit the effortless charm of his story, and they have the same kind of everyday wonder. The characters are distinct expressive, and O’Malley does some of the best smirks in the business. Little comic flourishes fill the visuals, too, from the what-belongs-to-who layout of Scott and Wallace’s apartment to (sigh) the “Archies” logo on a drum set (sigh). It all works together seamlessly.
Enjoying comics can be a lot of work. From the shifting fates of franchise characters to stupid publisher tricks to the dozens of other frustrations large and small, the risk-reward equation can be perilous. With Scott Pilgrim, the rewards are enormous. It’s entirely engaging and deeply satisfying, and it really made me feel like that six-year-old flipping through his first comics. I can’t wait for more.