Scottrospective Remastered: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life

Not too long ago in the mysterious land of Toronto Canada

This retrospective was originally posted from late 2020 to late 2021. I planned to keep it mostly as was.. but upon re reading it to copy and paste it here decided to punch it up a bit. Clean up the spelling, fix a few paragraphs to meander less, change an opinion where it’s changed since then that sorta stuff. This is all just to make this the best version of these possible for the biggest audience possible. I’ll reposting it here on and off and including a fresh review of something intended for the retrospective, The Game, at some point. So keep your eyes pealed and enjoy…

Happy Birthday To Me, as I continue my birthday celebration by taking a look at comics that have a personal connection to me.. And for our main feature, i’m taking a look at the first volume of a series that was vitally important to a teenage me, Scott Pilgrim.

Scott Pilgrim is the brainchild of Brian Lee’O’Malley. O’Malley came up with the concept from a number of things. Being a fan of the band Plumtree, O’Malley was curious about the name of their song “Scott Pilgrim” and wondered who this Scott Pilgrim guy was. So over the years he slowly built the guy up in the back of his mind using bits of his life and what not. As for why he ends up fighting 7 evil exes, that came from a discussion with his then girlfriend, later wife and currently ex-wife Hope Larson, where he threw off the joke that her exes should form some kind of League. After finishing his first solo work Lost at Sea, O’Malley decided Scotty would be his next project and the rest is history. To date while O’Malley has written two works since, Seconds which is delightful and Snotgirl which didn’t grab me but I intend to try again, Scott remains his most popular work, in large part due to it’s SUBLIME video game and movie adaptations, the former of which is finally getting a rerelease next month.

The series charm is in it’s style: A manga styled comic that combines two desperate kinds of story: Shonen Fight Manga and Slice of Life Indie Comics. The story shifts from Scott going through normal life stuff while trying to make his new relationship work and get his shit together and Scott getting into big bombastic fights with his new sweetie’s exes for the right to keep dating her and to you know, stay alive. The series effortlessly blends a video game like world with real grounded characters and is wonderful for it.

As for where I came in, one Free Comic Book day I found a little comic named Free Scott Pilgrim, which I genuinely loved and was instantly charmed by it’s humor and well done art. So I picked up the second and third volumes of the series proper and the first once I could find it and the rest ,as they say, is history. For my high school life, this was one of the most important things in it and I wrote fanfiction, which I thankfully never put online and in general enjoyed the hell out of the series. Then I just kind of.. let it sit on my shelf for a while. It wasn’t BAD, I just never got back to it and as the franchise went dormant I just sorta slept on it and the movie and that part of me…

Cut to a few weeks ago, when Comixology did a massive sale for black friday that marked a ton of Graphic Novels down to just 1 buck each, and the color editions of Scott Pilgrim happened to be part of this, though only volume 1 was that cheap. But thanks to my best friend Mars and an early Christmas/birthday present I got the rest and got to revisit the series as a whole, with me rethinking my previous thoughts of volume 1 and thus.. wanting to review it and share both why this series is so damn special and what’s good, and what’s not so good about it.

For this retrospective and for the varoius panel grabs I used the color version. While the black and white was fine and always will be, I think the impressive coloring job really adds to thing and makes the already great fight scenes pop more, as well as making certain background elements stand out a bit. While it does negate the black and white gags, the tradeoff is more than worth it. Either version is worth reading (I had the original black and whites till I gave them to my nephew), I just slightly prefer the color remasters.

So as our story starts we meet our hero: Scott Pilgrim Age 23, a charming but jobless and kind of sketchy possible college graduate whose really been adrift in his life since a breakup about a year ago. And when our story opens he’s taken a turn for a worse and decided to date sweet but naïve and inexperienced Knives Chau, a 17 year old girl. And why yes the power dynamics there are messed up and why yes Scott is pretty damn sketchy in this moment in time, and for those few weirdos who are gonna bring it up and sadly made me have to google this, yes I am aware the age of consent in Canada is 16, it dosen’t make this any less greasy and the story knows that.

And how it knows that MOST of his friends aren’t on board. The only ones who seems to is Stephen Stiles, leader of Sex Bomb-Omb, the band scott’s in with one of the best names ever and even then it’s hard to tell if he’s being sarcastic or just a total douche. Does he really want a 17 year old escape hatch from his awful relationship and closted nature or is he just a hypcoritical dick whose willing to condem scott for his behavior behind his back while pumping it up to his face. It’s hard to tell and it could just be putting a face to things.

The other, Young Neil Nordgraf, Stephen’s roomate, is well 19 or 20 and kind of a dipshit so we just ignore him. I used to use him as kind of a projection, to put myself in the adventure when I was younger as Neil kind of lacks personality in the comics but in the comics.. he’s not the best or most complex character. He is great in the movie though and Edgar Wright did an amazing job fleshing him out as the band’s enthuastic roadie and Takes Off somehow perfectly combined both, creating a delightfully dim cloud cuckoolander who steals the few scenes he gets.

The rest of his circle are .. not so permissive. His best friend, roomate and king of all gays for all time Wallace Wells very much does not want to come with Scott to school to pick her up because every part of that sentence hurt to type so you can imagine what actually hearing it in person felt like. He goes along for cute boys, but isn’t crusing and clearly has enough maturity to not do anything. Still not enough to not acompany his best friend to pick up his girlfriend from high school, but no one ever said Wallace was perfect. Just awesome. He notably does nothing and tends to be the loudest voice in Scott’s ear about this fucked up situation.

His ex and fellow bandmate Kim is clearly bothered by it and is flat out worried Scott is taking advantage of her. Kim and Wallace are easily my faviorites. I’ll grant there’s some bias as I like a good snarky red head and sarcastic energetic twink, but I like them as characters and not just fictional crushes: Wallace gets a lot of the best lines and moments across all three versions of scott that have dialogue, and Kim has a deep and engrossing character arc.

Finally Scott’s kid sister Stacey chews him out over it before genuinely wondering if he’s gone insane or he’s actually happy.

For my two cents: he’s not. He WANTS to be, but he dosen’t know how. And as someone whose both neurodivergent, which given Scott’s troubles with empathy and relating to people like yours truly I strongly suggest he is, and has struggled with depression I can relate to that. He wants to move on but he just.. can’t, he just wants to get past the haze he’s been in since Envy dumped him.. but he dosen’t know how. So instead of doing someting constructive or finding a job or anything .. he just took the first and easiest way out of his depression he could. I’ve done that with video games and stuff. Scott did that by entering a relationship that’s really easy, requires only so much effort, and is with someone who utterly adores, looks up to him and will never expect better (And also video games and stuff).

Being with Knives makes him feel better.. but it dosen’t MAKE him a better person. As i’ve made clear dating someone just for a boost makes him actively worse and had fate not intervened, I shudder to think what Scott might have become… something we will see as the comic goes on.

Thankfully fate does and Scott’s dreams, ones of him crawling through a desert alone, are interrupted by a mysterious pink haired girl on skates. The next day he’s just sort of in a daze, kind of confused, and even more so when he sees her IN REAL LIFE, while at the library with Knives. He’s understandably frazzled but ends up finding out he’s not hallucinating when talking to Michaela Cormeau.

Michael is a minor character and another artist and friend of o malley’s who represents that one guy in social circles who knows everybody. And indeed he knows the mystery girl, Ramona Flowers and that she’s there. Scott TRIES talking her up but just creeps her out, so Scott goes with plan b and decides to ask around about her. Enter Sandra and Monique, two college aquantinces of Scott, who just sorta show up at major events and aren’t that developed or intresting. They turn him to Julie who forbids him to date her. To which I say.

Yeah these reviews will not be kind to Julie. For the record she’s great in the Movie and Takes Off.. but in the comic itself she’s..

Scott does at least find out she’s a delivery girl for Amazon and decides to hone in on that. And having feelings for someone his own age.. has woken him up a bit as we get a montage of him just going through the motions with knives as he’s finally realized “Hey this is at least a little messed up’ Seeing ramona DURING all this only hammers it in: this dosen’t mean anything.

Now a mature responsible adult would break this off now: He’s having a crush on someone else, he’s not invested. Scott.. is none of those things. He mooches off his roommate (With helpful graphics showing Wallace owns everything in the apartment a gag that also shows up in the movie and anime) , and casually announces his dating a child to his friends like this isn’t a thing and jokes to deflect when Kim rightfully brings up her issues with this

He deep down KNOWS this isn’t okay.. but Scott’s main strategy and the one that’ll cause him nothing but issues as the series progresses.. is to run away. He deflects, he dodges, he ducks, he can’t actually face the fact dating knives was wrong, he’s in a depressive state, and he hurt a person in an attempt to make him feel better.

The next day though he has bigger problems: Ramona arrives and his attempt to ask her out … goes badly and she’s about to skate away as fast as possible.. when he mentions seeing her in her dreams. As will be standard for this series there’s a simple explanation.. that’s batshit insane and will be delivered as if the character is talking about sonic the hedgehog or the origin of pac man.

Ramona can travel subspace, a vast rainbow road that connects people’s subconcious. She claims it’s an American thing, and it’s left vauge if it is common or just her playing it off to avoid talking about her exes since Roxy taught her how and Gideon turns out to be a master at it as we’ll see in the final volume. The only confirmed member of the exes who isn’t American is Todd, and he’s a dumb dumb , Matthew is a bit pathetic so him not knowing tracks as does Lucas with his give no fucks attitude, and the twins could probably use it but don’t really need it having both Wily Level Robotics skills and masterful martial arts.

Ramona at least gathers that Scott is obsessed with her and finally agrees to go out with him if he signs the package he ordered. I mean a pity date is still a date right? I still have hope?

We move on to the date itself, which is charming, the two just casually chatting, while Scott casually breaks the fourth wall, saving his previous job story for volume 2, and figuring Ramonas will be in volume 3. It twas not, and it’s left unclear if she had a job between gideon or not. There’s a lot of spaces in the Scott Pilgrim Universe that simply don’t get filled in and that feels by design: You simply don’t know EVERYTHING about a person you meet: Your girlfriend, your friends, your girlfriends exes trying to murder you what good. They all have history and sometimes thoughts.

A key pillar of this work is that Scott is caught up in his own world, his own thoughts and emotions.. and as a result we get the bare minimum on some things. He dosen’t realize one of his best friends is going through a gay awakening during the back half of the series, and many a character is just a face in the crowd. We often don’t know what other people have been through till they choose to tell us. And even then we can never truly know.

But the date is really charming. It’s clear why Takes Off made it the pillar of it’s condensed version of this volume. Just a very charming evening with the two heading back to Ramona’s place via subspace after it starts to snow, with Scott having admitted it feels.. good to be obsessed. Which should be creepy especially from the guy dating a 17 year old while also going on a date with someone else, but comes off charming. Knives was a placebo, something to make him FEEL happy.. but everyone in his life can tell is a cry for help. Except Stephen but he’d have to give an actual shit about Scott than more as a casual friend he roomed with in college to be worried about his behavior.

Ramona.. is genuine sparks. It’s someone he could see being with for the rest of his life or at least for the foreseeable future. It’s the first time he’s felt this since Envy, his ex who we see in a flashback in his dream earlier, a nice bit of foreshadowing as we won’t meet her properly till the end of volume 2 and won’t get her whole deal till volume 3.

So back at Ramona’s place we get a delightful gag

I for one would love some constant comment. I have to settle for occasional comments. So she goes to get Scott a blanket since their soaked and Scott not really getting social cues follows her.. and finds her changing. And what could be creepy, she’s understandably put off becomes sweet.. she hears him say he was cold, realizes he wasn’t being a creep but just ten pounds of awkward and kisses him.

And while he suggests they go to bed and it SEEMS like their going to bang shang a lang.. they don’t. The fact they don’t.. is genuinely sweet and well done. Scott seems too nervous so she backs off and he makes it clear later he really.. didn’t want to have sex. he just needed.. this

Until re-reading for context for these remasters.. I forgot just how sweet this was. Just Scott admitting he needed this.. he needed someone to hold him. It peels back the layers of douche and awkward we’ve seen so far.. and just shows someone nervous and happy.

So Scott finds Wallace at home who says what Scott needs to hear “You need to break up with your fake highschool girlfriend scott’ Granted the entire first 40 pages could’ve been titled that, but the point stands. And I get why he picks NOW: Before Scott was defensive about this. He got into a whole argument with his sister, who Wallace told about all this, and douchiley deflected when Kim was trying to get him to admit this was a sham to make him feel things again after his last breakup and that maybe don’t use teenagers to paper over your own angst guy. Now he gets Scott will MAYBE listen. Maybe. And when he dosen’t well.. Wallace stops softballing. But more on that next time.

Scott also gets a death threat in his email he just kinda casually disregards. Respect.

He also disregards his dilemma as he has the CHANCE to break up with Knives at his next band meeting but just won’t because he assumes not facing his emotions got him into this mess maybe they’ll get him out?

Crash and the Boys, based on an NES game title because of course it is. Crash, their leader, Joel their baseplayer who scott hates because he hates all other baseplayers (”I don’t hate myself kim) and Trasha, an 8 year old prodigy they found playing Drum Mania, a konami franchise about.. playing drums in arcades.

Problem with not dumping his fake high school girlfriend is Scott did a Zack Morris and booked himself TWO dates for the show!

So Scott bravely decides to RUN, RUN AWAY, RUN FROM HIS PROBLEMS AND HIDEEEEE.

So while Scott books it while we’re introduced to Crash and the Boys. Wallace heckles them, to the band’s annoyance, until they eventually get fed up and we easly get the best gag of the volume.

Never noticed how early 2000’s Crash was before now.

Stacey bonds with Ramona while Crash and the Boys play their song which “kills everyone”.. instead it knocks them out but Kim is understandably incensed Stephen is just telling them , the band following them NOW. God Stephen sucks.

Wallace also sucks as he makes out with Stacey’s date jimmy. And apparently does this a lot. I prefer the movie’s taken on this where she just gives a loud “WALLACE AGAIN?” and dosen’t.. sit jimmy back down and tell Wallace he’s not stealing another boyfriend from her. Stacey , Jimmy had his gay, bi or pan awakening while on a date with you and decided the proper move was to make out with his girlfriend’s brother’s drunk friend. He is not worthy of you. Just kick him and then Wallace in the balls like a proper lady. I get Stacey’s 19 but even then come on. Have some respect.

So while … THAT happens, Scott prepares to play… and then… the genre shiftsAnd it’s here, at the very end of the comic the series main premise finally kicks in and the world takes it’s true shape. It’s a world where an indie comedy about a mess of a being putting his life together after finding his dream girl.. also has said mess being forced to get into fist fights with wizards, movie stars, vegans, half-ninjas, twin roboticists and a katana wielding douchenozzle record exec in order to continue to have the right to date his girlfriend.

And it’s here, over a hundred pages in the premise finally kicks in and the world takes it’s true shape. It’s a world where an indie comedy about a mess of a being putting his life together after finding his dream girl.. also has said mess being forced to get into fist fights with wizards, movie stars, vegans, half-ninjas, twin roboticists and a katana wielding douchenozzle record exec in order to continue to have the right to date his girlfriend.

It’s where the series charm comes from and really what made it a huge sucess so it’s no suprise this volume perks up immensley for the climax. I’ll get more into it’s pacing problem at the end.

For now it’s fight time and as we find out in a hilarious and awesome turn.. Scott is the best fighter in toronto.. which just makes me REALLLY want a Scott Pilgrim version of letterkenny. I mean who wouldn’t want to see wayne fight some guy who can turn his hands into dragons or see Squireely Dan do E.Honda’s hand slap move from streetfighter or see the skids all fuse into one mega emo. It’s just.. the possibilities are as endless as they are wonderous and I want this now. Doubly so since the series is now over so the room for an animated spinoff is wide open.

As the first boss, and with no evil future selves to muck about with it, Patel is pathetically easy and that was by design. O’Malley wanted a shonen style progression to this. For those less familiar with the genre, Shonen is japanese action manga and anime like Dragon Ball, Naruto, One Piece, with progression usually having the next arc’s bad guy be stronger, then even stronger and well you get it. Stronger guys, our hero has to learn new abilites to beat them, bigger fights, bigger episode counts, everyone’s happy.

It works perfectly since Scott pilgrim is the perfect cross between a shonen and a video game, using video game logic but manga style for it’s art. I also realized neatly that the stakes in Scott’s relationship go up with each fight. These first two don’t really matter, their people who Ramona had pretty brief relationships with and was a dick to. Matt was a guy she dated in Middle School because all the jocks wanted her and he was the only non-white non jock and being as much of a dick as Scott back then, she just callously tossed him aside. It’s telling while the bulk of the exes get fleshed out and more sympathetic in takes off… Matty really isn’t. He gets everything he wants thanks to a confidence boost and ends the show entirely succesful.. but he dosen’t really CHANGE. He just.. stops doing evil openly because he has a hit musical and got his life’s goal and even after beating the big bad… is utterly TERRIFIED when he finds out Scott is probably alive.

Matt has magic.. but dosen’t think to use it before his backstory is laid out, one where while Ramona ditched him after he was done being coinvent, dosen’t really seem like it left the scars her later transgressions do on everyone but Todd and Gideon, who she did nothing to as they already suck. Scott beats him with a weird space channel 5 refrence , a musical retort that dosen’t even rhyme, and a punch to the face. Matt is a joke on every conceivable level but he works as that: He sets up that Scott CAN fight, that he’s facing death matches for Ramona, that he’s entirely cool with this if he gets to date her, and that this world runs on video game logic. He does his job. I do like that Takes Off gives him more to do, has him live his best life, gives him an actual fight with gideon he wins, and lets one of the only POC Evil Exes sparkle. It was an inspried concept ot just see what happens when the biggest looser in the scott pilgrim universe gets to actually shine and gave his actor Satya Bhabha way more to do. I hope the guy goes on to do more voice work after Takes Off. He hasn’t yet but there’s plenty of time.

For now though he’s simply one down

As the happy couple .. get the hell out of there on a subway, mostly so Scott dosen’t have to face the consequences of his actions.

Ramona lays out the ground rules: He’ll have to defeat each of her evil exes. She thinks. She’s not super aware. Scott however has SOME awarness. I mean not a lot, clearly but he tries. Earlier Ramona mentioned a guy named Gideon.. and Scott picked up A) they were exes.. and now picks up he’ll probably have to fight him. And it’s here Ramona’s head glows like the statue of liberty, she deflects, makes it clear she’s still intrested in a relationship and scott stares out nervously to close out Volume 1

This ending feels weird.. but I accept it a bit more on this re-read. It does end the volume on this

But while none of it really picks up next volume, it works character wise. Framing wise it’s a weird choice to have this omnius cliffhanger you don’t really address next time.. but character wise these two’s default is run the fuck away. Given how Scott’s still picking up the pieces of his last relationship it fits he’d just.. drop the subject for now and not worry about it till the guy tries to murder him later, and that Ramona would be happy to take the out and never mention this. It’s also made clear in volume 5 Ramona.. has no idea this glow exists so when Scott asks her if she’s fine.. she dosen’t realize something weird happened and just assumes he’s worried emotionally.

Precious Little Life is a decent start to the story. There’s a reason that the movie adapts this Volume almost verbatim and that Takes Off opens with a shorter but still almost shot for shot version with only a few changes, like the now memetic Sonic Conversation. They adjust to fit their versions but Precious Little Life is soldily paced, introduces the main cast and sets up the themes so well you didn’t need to change much for it to work as a perfect intro.

There are some growing pains as you’d expect from an authors third ever work. It feels a bit sluggish and while in the original version of this review I chalked it up to the pacing and the slow build to what’s going on.. I’ve found a diffrent culprit. The pacing can be a bit padded here or there, but the comic having a lax pace.. is part of it’s charm. It lingers in life and feels like life, with these big bombastic moments, domestic and punchy, bookened with the build up getting there. The simmering over weeks or days as issues build and tension builds to the point it’s do or die time. The downtime matters.

The problem is in the art itself. It’s not horrible or even mediocre: O’Malley was on his third comic at this point and knows what he’s doing. But things feel a bit more muted and down to earth,, the characters stiffer and lankier, the expressions more muted. It fit his previous work, Lost At Sea , better. While Scott Pilgrim is down to earth.. it’s also up in the clouds fighting wizards with their demon hipster chicks. The work keeps it’s relaxed pace later but has more energy to it that makes the mundane stuff feel more real and the kung fu fighting bigger and more operatic. It’s something worth nothing.. but that I don’t hold against O’Malley. He learned from this and slowly honed his style. It only gets better from here folks and I thank you for joining me on this journey whether you were here the first time or are just jumping on. Thanks for reading and remember: i’m pulling for ya we’re all in this together.