Scott Pilgrim

Scott Pilgrim
Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1 cover. Art by Bryan Lee O'Malley.
Publication information
Publisher	Oni Press
Format	Digest limited series
Genre	Comedy Action Romance
Publication date	August 18, 2004 - July 20, 2010
Main character(s)	(List of characters)
Creative team
Writer(s)	Bryan Lee O'Malley
Artist(s)	Bryan Lee O'Malley
Collected editions
Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life	ISBN 1-932664-08-4
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World	ISBN 1-932664-12-2
Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness	ISBN 1-932664-22-X
Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together	ISBN 1-932664-49-1
Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe	ISBN 1-934964-10-7
Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour	ISBN 1-934964-38-7

Scott Pilgrim is a series of graphic stories by Bryan Lee O'Malley. It consists of six digest size black-and-white volumes, released between August 2004 and July 2010, by Portland-based independent comic book publisher Oni Press. It was later republished by Fourth Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins. The series is about 23-year-old Canadian Scott Pilgrim, a slacker and part-time musician who lives in Toronto and plays bass guitar in the band Sex Bob-omb. He falls in love with American delivery girl Ramona Flowers, but must defeat her seven evil exes in order to date her.

A film adaptation of the series titled Scott Pilgrim vs. the World starring actor Michael Cera in the title role was released in August 2010. A videogame of the same name developed by Ubisoft for PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade was released the same month.

Development

Bryan Lee O'Malley

Creator Bryan Lee O'Malley was inspired to create the series and eponymous character of Scott Pilgrim after listening to Canadian band Plumtree's 1998 single "Scott Pilgrim", a song then-Plumtree singer Carla Gillis describes as "positive, but...also bitter sweet." In particular, O'Malley was inspired by the lyric "I’ve liked you for a thousand years,".

O'Malley wanted to write a shōnen-style comic book series, but initially he had only read one series, Ranma 1/2; in the early 2000s the United States did not yet have a significant Japanese comic book industry. O'Malley gained inspiration from the book Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga by Koji Aihara and Kentaro Takekuma. In 2002 O'Malley's roommate, who worked in a comic book store, brought the book to him while O'Malley was working on Lost at Sea and was planning Scott Pilgrim. Upon reading the book O'Malley realized that, despite the satirical tone, it could be an effective guide on how the Japanese comic book industry worked.

To ink, O'Malley usually used brushes, including #2 and #3 brushes. He mostly used computers to build the screentone; he stated that he encountered difficulty finding screentone in North America. O'Malley himself created most of the Scott Pilgrim material. When production on Volume 6 had began, O'Malley had hired two assistants. The backgrounds in Volume 6 are more detailed than backgrounds in the previous volumes. O'Malley said that "[m]ost fans don't seem to notice the change".

O'Malley stated that he wanted to create a "hybrid" work that received inspiration from American and Japanese comics, and that he "wanted to reach towards the japanese [sic] comics from my own starting point." When asked if he considers Scott Pilgrim to be a manga, O'Malley responded by saying "Um… No, I think I was just thinking about that today. I guess I was just thinking about the whole OEL thing. I think it’s influenced… I like the term “manga-influenced comics,” but I only like it because no one else likes it."

O'Malley said that he expected Scott Pilgrim to sell around 1,000 copies. He did not expect the series to sell millions of copies and to produce a film adaptation. O'Malley cited the United States comics industry and how it differs from the Japanese comics industry; the United States comic book companies specialize in superhero comics and many newer concepts originate from underground comics. The United States also lacks weekly and monthly comic book magazines and American comic companies generally do not have the system of story editors and assistants that Japanese comic companies have.

To illustrate his reasoning for eventually ending the Scott Pilgrim series, O'Malley used a quote from famed Belgian comics writer and artist Hergé, creator, writer, and illustrator of the well-regarded The Adventures of Tintin comic book series, from 1929 until his death in 1983. Hergé told his wife "And right now, my work makes me sick. Tintin is no longer me. And I must make a terrible effort to invent (him)… If Tintin continues to live, it is through a sort of artificial respiration that I must constantly keep up and which is exhausting me." O'Malley said "If I was still doing Scott Pilgrim in ten years, I would be dead inside."

The cover of the third Japanese Scott Pilgrim volume, which includes content from the original volumes 5 and 6, was based on an illustration from Street Fighter Alpha 2 (Street Fighter Zero 2).

Plot summary

Main article: List of Scott Pilgrim characters

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life (Volume 1)

The series begins by introducing Scott Pilgrim, a 23-year-old Canadian slacker living in Toronto with his gay roommate Wallace Wells. He is the bass player for a band called Sex Bob-omb, along with his friends Stephen Stills "The Talent" (guitar) and Kim Pine (drums). He begins dating a Chinese-Canadian high-schooler, Knives Chau. Kim criticizes the relationship due to Knives' age, but Scott dismisses her complaints by pointing out that the relationship is platonic.

One night, Scott begins dreaming about a girl on Rollerblades who he has never met before. He later glimpses her in real life delivering a package to the library. Her repeated presence in his dreams, and a coincidental meeting at a party thrown by Stephen's on-off girlfriend Julie Powers, prompts him to find out more about her. He discovers that she is Ramona Flowers, a girl who works for Amazon.ca and has recently come to Toronto from New York after a rumored messy break-up with someone named Gideon.

Scott orders CDs on Amazon as a pretense to meet her again, and receives an email from someone named Matthew Patel warning him about an upcoming battle, but Scott pays it little heed. At the venue, Sex Bob-omb prepare to begin their set when Matthew Patel descends upon the stage and engages Scott in a video game-style duel. He reveals himself as the first of Ramona's evil exes, who has mystical powers allowing him to summon "demon hipster chicks." Scott defeats him in a musical battle, his final attack obliterating Matthew and leaving behind a handful of coins. On the subway home, Scott and Ramona decide to become a couple, on the proviso that Scott agree to defeat her six other evil-exes. When Scott asks if Gideon is one of them, Ramona's head glows.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Volume 2)

Vs. The World opens with a flashback to Scott Pilgrim as a transfer student to St. Joel's Catholic High School in Northern Ontario, seven years before the series begins. After getting into a short fight moments upon enrolling, Scott meets Lisa Miller who immediately befriends him. Scott and Lisa attempt to start a band, only to realize that they are missing a drummer. Meanwhile, Scott meets Kim in his geography class, noticing her ability to play drums. Lisa and Scott scheme to ask Kim to join the band, but when Scott shows up to school the following Monday, he finds out that Kim has been kidnapped by students from the rival Benvie Tech High School. Scott defeats the students and Kim's kidnapper, Simon Lee, and rescues Kim. Kim joins Scott and Lisa's band Sonic & Knuckles, and dates Scott up until they break up when he tells her he has to move to Toronto.

In the present, Scott and Wallace ride the bus together, and Wallace tells him that actor and professional skateboarder Lucas Lee, Ramona's second evil ex-boyfriend, is filming a new movie in Toronto. Wallace also tells him to break up with Knives, or he will tell Ramona about her. Scott goes to meet Knives and awkwardly breaks it off, but is cheered by thoughts of Ramona who spends the night with him while he watches several of Lucas Lee's films to "train". The next day, Scott shows up at the video store Kim works at to rent several of Lucas Lee's films to prepare for his next battle. While his friends make dinner, Knives spots Scott with Ramona.

Scott goes to meet Lucas at his filming location, Casa Loma. Lucas immediately beats Scott up, after which they take a lunch break and Lucas tells Scott about how Ramona broke his heart, and how there is a "League of Ramona's Evil Ex-Boyfriends" who have organized themselves to come after Scott. Scott then defeats Lucas by goading him into skateboarding down a dangerous set of rails, where he ends up going too fast and bursting into coins upon landing.

Infuriated with Ramona for stealing Scott from her, Knives gives herself a hipster makeover by dyeing her forelock and attacks Ramona at the Toronto Reference Library. After a short battle and various insults, Knives confirms that Scott was cheating on her by dating Ramona simultaneously and takes off. Meanwhile, Scott gets a call from Envy Adams, Scott's ex-girlfriend, who asks him to open for her band The Clash at Demonhead that weekend. Speaking with Envy reopens Scott's unresolved issues about their breakup and he becomes a mess. Nevertheless, Sex-Bob-omb show up to see Envy's band on Friday, only to discover that Knives is now dating Young Neil, Stephen Stills's roommate. The book ends with an epic opening by The Clash at Demonhead, where Ramona identifies the band's bassist as her third evil ex-boyfriend, Todd Ingram.

Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness (Volume 3)

The Infinite Sadness continues the night that The Clash at Demonhead performs. After the venue clears out, Envy invites Scott, Ramona, Kim Pine, Stephen, Julie, Knives, and Young Neil backstage with them to "chat". Knives, who idolizes Envy, blurts out that she also dated Scott, and has the highlights punched out of her hair by The Clash at Demonhead's drummer, Lynette Guycott. Knives, humiliated, leaves with Young Neil. Disgusted by Envy's new personality, Scott blames Todd for changing her and tries to attack him, but is stopped by Todd's psychic 'vegan' powers.

The story then unfolds with a series of flashbacks detailing the relationship between Scott and Envy, then known as Natalie V. Adams, a mousy girl who gradually bloomed into a confident, musical talent, finally adopting the name "Envy". She broke up with Scott once their band started to get noticed, and Scott's devastation resulted in him and Wallace becoming friends.

The next day, Scott and Todd engage in an unsuccessful challenge at Honest Ed's department store, where neither comes out the winner. They agree to fight again the following night. Ramona convinces Scott to ditch the challenge and they return to Ramona's apartment. After an unsuccessful make-out session, Ramona begins to fill Scott in about her relationship with Todd. In a flashback to their college years, Todd proves his love to Ramona by using his newly-gained vegan powers to blow a crater in the moon. Meanwhile, Todd is secretly cheating on his vegan diet (by eating gelato) as well as cheating on Envy with Lynette.

Later, that evening, before opening for Envy's band, Ramona and Envy get into an argument and begin to fight, Ramona armed with a giant mallet. As Envy starts to get the upper hand, Knives attacks her for the sake of Scott's happiness. Before Sex Bob-omb can perform, Scott sees Envy about to kill Ramona and Knives, and jumps from the stage to hit her "weak point"—the back of her knees. Envy then discovers Todd cheating on her with Lynette, but after confronting him, Todd unapologetically strikes her with his powers, shocking everyone. Todd and Scott then proceed to have a bass battle, and Scott is aided by the powers of Crash and the Boys (the opening band for the evening). Todd almost wins the battle until the Vegan Police show up and strip him of his powers for violating his vegan diet. Scott headbutts the powerless Todd, who is reduced to a pile of coins, and receives an extra life in the process. Finally, Sex Bob-omb gets to play, and Scott spots a strange character (Gideon) from the stage. The volume ends with Envy moving back home.

The Infinite Sadness also features extras, such as guest comics from Josh Lesnick, Alex Ahad, Andy Helms, John Allison, and David McGuire, as well as a map of the major characters illustrating their relations to each other. The title is a reference to the album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness by The Smashing Pumpkins.

Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together (Volume 4)

After a summer break at The Beaches for Julie's birthday, Kim moves into an apartment with her friends, Hollie and Joseph. Stephen notices Joseph has a home recording studio, and asks him to help Sex Bob-omb record an album. As Scott goes to the Dufferin Mall to escape a heat wave, he sees Lisa Miller, later re-acquainting her with Kim and introducing her to Ramona and the others. Meanwhile, at Knives's house, Knives and her friend Tamara notice that the picture of Scott on Knives's shrine is mysteriously slashed.

Annoyed with running into his daft subspace dreams in the middle of the day, Ramona recommends that Scott get a job. Kim brings him to The Happy Avocado, a vegetarian restaurant where Stephen works, where he gets a job as a dishwasher. Shortly afterward, Scott and Kim are attacked by a samurai, who slices a streetcar in half and chases them until they escape via a subspace portal. The next day, Scott and Wallace venture to the financial district to meet with their landlord, Peter, who tells them that they must re-sign the lease or leave by August 27. Wallace recommends that Scott move in with Ramona. As Scott contemplates this, he briefly encounters a female "half-ninja", who unsuccessfully attacks him and disappears. The following afternoon, Scott spots the same girl talking to Ramona at the restaurant where he works. She is revealed to be Roxie Richter, Ramona's fourth evil ex. Not keen on fighting girls or people with swords, Scott hides in Ramona's bag while she heads into a subspace portal and fights Roxie. After nearly killing Ramona, Roxie leaves. Afterward, Ramona tells Scott that he can move in with her temporarily. Later on, though, things go downhill when Ramona suspects Scott might be attracted to Lisa and kicks him out.

After walking in on Wallace having sex with someone in their apartment and being informed that he was fired from his job during the fight, Scott goes to Lisa's house to spend the night. Lisa recalls their high school friendship, asking whether Scott had any feelings for her then and if they should have an affair now. After waking up from a dream infiltrated by Roxie in an attempt to kill him, Scott cannot remember the previous night, but learns from Lisa that nothing happened between them and that he confessed that he loved Ramona. Scott gets his job back and goes to the Second Cup, where he finds Knives working there. He is suddenly attacked by the samurai, revealed to be Knives's father who was not keen on Knives dating a white boy. Scott escapes via another subspace portal and ends up in Ramona's mind, where she is a slave to a shadowy figure. Ramona kicks Scott out of her head, telling him to forget what he saw, but before he can explain his true feelings, he sees that Roxie spent the night at Ramona's and his head begins to glow. Ramona tells him to walk it off and as he does, Scott encounters his dark self and rejects it, rushing back to Ramona to find her being attacked by Mr. Chau. Scott lures him away and gets him to fight against Roxie. When Scott realizes that he has been cowardly, he plucks up the courage to confess his love for Ramona, earning the Power of Love sword, which emerges from his chest. Scott uses this to defeat Roxie, Ninja Gaiden-style, who warns him about "the twins" before dying. Scott then apologizes to Mr. Chau, who leaves having earned respect for Scott, before Scott finally moves in with Ramona. After the group gives Lisa a farewell meal, Ramona finally tells Scott her age, which is 24.

The back of Gets it Together features guest art from Steve Manale, Michael Comeau, Philip Bond, and Zander Cannon as well as a back cover illustrated by pixel artist Miguel Sternberg.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe (Volume 5)

After Scott turns 24, the gang attends a Mexican Day of the Dead themed party thrown by Julie where Ramona spots her next two evil ex-boyfriends, the twins Kyle and Ken Katayanagi. Scott approaches them and prepares to fight, but instead is forced to fight their robot, Robot-01. He defeats the robot and "wins the party." Meanwhile, Knives talks to Stephen, who has permanently broken up with Julie and who reiterates that Scott cheated on her with Ramona. She wonders if Ramona knows about it. November continues to show the deteriorating status of Scott and Ramona's relationship, with Ramona starting to appear bored and Scott stumbling onto signs that she may still be interested in Gideon. She at one point tells Scott that she doesn't like his band, which hasn't done any gigs since they started "recording," which distresses Scott (even Wallace doesn't like his band) and leaves him unable to sleep. Later, Sex Bob-omb prepares for a show at Sneaky Dee's, even though they haven't rehearsed in months due to Stephen's persistent but fruitless recording with Joseph. Their performance, which was doomed to fail anyway, is interrupted by another one of the twins' robots, which Scott defeats, breaking his bass in the process. During this time, Ramona encounters Knives in the bathroom, who tells her that Scott cheated on them at the same time. On the way home, Scott admits that he forgot his keys and Ramona refuses to let him in for the night. He ends up staying with Wallace, who has since moved in with his boyfriend Mobile, and Wallace gives him photos he has found of Gideon Graves, all of which are blurry or indistinct.

After spending the next night at Kim's, Scott arranges a setup so that he can casually bump into Kim and Ramona while they get coffee. During the conversation, Kim brings attention to Ramona's head glowing, of which she herself was unaware, although it disappears before she can see for herself. They later all attend another of Julie's parties that night where Scott is forced to fight yet another robot. Kim approaches Ramona on the balcony, and takes a picture with her camera phone of Ramona's head, which is yet again glowing. Kim and Ramona proceed to get drunk, and after defeating the robot, Scott joins them. Later, Kim takes the subway home, but is kidnapped by the twins. After some initial intimacy, Ramona confronts Scott about cheating on Knives with her and tells him he is just another evil ex-boyfriend waiting to happen, which worries Scott into thinking they might break up. While Ramona takes a shower in the early morning, Scott receives word of Kim's kidnapping, and rushes to a construction site to face the twins, despite being disadvantaged due to his hangover. During the fight, the twins explain that Ramona cheated on both of them at the same time, and imply Scott is fighting for the wrong girl. As he begins to lose the fight, Kim lies and says that Ramona text messaged her to give Scott the encouragement to defeat the twins simultaneously.

Scott rushes back to the apartment. Ramona, now with her hair cut and dyed again, tells Scott that she is a bad person and that she "had a good time." Her head begins to glow brighter and brighter until she disappears. Scott tries to look for her, but instead lets her cat out and accidentally locks himself out of her apartment. Over the next few days, Scott bed-hops while trying to get Ramona's cat to come back and constantly mistaking people for Gideon. Kim moves back home to the north, accepting Scott's apology for his behavior. After moving into a new apartment, Scott reads a note Ramona left behind addressed to Gideon, telling him she would not come back to him. While Scott wonders what this means, he receives a call from Gideon, asking when it would be convenient to die.

The end of Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe features a section called "Creating Scott Pilgrim for fun and profit." The section includes drawings and comments from Bryan Lee O'Malley detailing the development of the series, including a playlist for the fifth book.

Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour (Volume 6)

Four months after Ramona's disappearance, Scott has been wasting his life playing video games, to the chagrin of his friends. At a party, he is shocked to learn that Knives will be leaving for college soon, and later runs into Envy, who is beginning to promote her much anticipated solo album. Later talking over coffee, Envy expresses concern for Scott and points out their breakup was a result of an argument which Scott apparently started, though he cannot remember. Gideon, who is revealed to be dating Envy, appears during their conversation, but Scott ends up fleeing.

In order to reinvigorate Scott to confront Gideon, Wallace sends him on a "wilderness sabbatical" to Kim's home up north. While walking in the woods, Scott kisses Kim and sparks fly between the two. But Kim pushes Scott away in part because she doesn't want to be a "safe" alternative to Ramona and in part because she knows that they can never be together as long as Scott still has feelings for Ramona. Kim also tells Scott of the errors in his repressed memory surrounding their breakup. Scott began dating Kim after beating up Simon Lee, a wimpy kid who was dating her at the time, not a suave villain as Scott remembered. Likewise, Kim only learned that Scott would be leaving for Toronto from Lisa—Scott never told her in person that they would have to break up. Upon this revelation, Scott's head starts to glow and the NegaScott emerges. Scott becomes determined to defeat him so he can forget his relationship with Ramona and move on, but Kim reminds him he cannot keep running away from his mistakes. During the fight, Scott remembers Ramona and merges with NegaScott, fully remembering and accepting responsibility for his poor actions in his previous relationships. After receiving one last good luck kiss from Kim, Scott heads back to Toronto to earn Ramona back.

Scott arrives at the newly-opened club, the Chaos Theatre, owned by Gideon, where Envy is making her solo debut. As Envy starts her performance, Gideon attacks Scott, who is enraged to learn that Ramona is not with him. When Scott refuses to join the League of Evil Exes, Gideon steals his Power of Love sword and kills him with it. Scott awakens in a desert, where he encounters Ramona, who apologizes and attempts to explain why she left, though the reader is not privy to what she says. They reconcile, but Ramona reminds Scott that he is dead. However, he returns to life thanks to the extra life he obtained from Todd Ingram, and Ramona bursts out of his chest to confront Gideon. Gideon reveals several cryogenic capsules inside the club filled with former girlfriends, wanting Ramona to join them (despite that Gideon kept pushing her away during their time, a fact which he can't remember, either). He fights them and explains that he formed the League of Evil Exes following a drunken post on Craigslist after his breakup with Ramona.

Ramona tries to use the glow to escape into subspace, but Gideon stabs her. He explains that the Glow is an emotional weapon which seals people inside their own heads, consumed by self-loathing and personal demons. After learning from Ramona that Gideon literally has a way of getting inside her head, Scott jumps into Ramona's subspace bag and arrives in her head, where he finds and confronts Gideon. Scott's actions encourage Ramona to fully overcome his influence and oust him from her head. Ramona retrieves the Power of Love sword, healing her wounds, but breaks her bag which unleashes a torrent of junk into the real world. When Scott sees Gideon snap at Envy, he comes to understand that he has been no better than Gideon in terms of his past relationships. This realization earns him the Power of Understanding sword. As they fight him, Gideon reveals he had been watching the two via the subspace highway in Scott's head, altering some of his memories in the process. Whilst Gideon tries to turn Scott and Ramona against one another, they defeat him, causing him to explode into seven million, seven hundred and seventy-seven thousand, seven hundred and seventy-seven dollars in coins, which rain painfully on the watching crowd.

Scott and Envy reach closure and Gideon's former girlfriends are unfrozen (and they have no idea of what just happened). Ramona reveals that her disappearance was merely an unsuccessful wilderness sabbatical to find herself while at her dad's cabin. She decides to give her relationship with Scott another shot. In the closing pages, Scott is working with Stephen as co-chef, Stephen reveals that he is gay and in a relationship with Joseph, Scott and Kim start an awful new band, and Knives heads off to college. The last pages show Scott meeting up with Ramona as they affirm their desire to face the challenges of a relationship and walk hand in hand into a subspace door together.

On June 3, 2010, O'Malley announced that he had hidden the word "hipster" on Ramona's t-shirt in one panel to mark the day he finished drawing the series. This panel is on page 161 in a flashback involving Ramona and Gideon.

Publications

The main graphic novel series is:

#	Title	ISBN	Release date	Notes
1	Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life	ISBN 1-932664-08-4	August 18, 2004
2	Scott Pilgrim vs. The World	ISBN 1-932664-12-2	June 15, 2005
3	Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness	ISBN 1-932664-22-X	May 24, 2006
4	Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together	ISBN 1-932664-49-1	November 14, 2007	The format of the series' spine art is changed (original Oni Press print).
5	Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe	ISBN 1-934964-10-7	February 4, 2009	The first printing of Volume 5 features a shiny cover.
6	Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour	ISBN 1-934964-38-7	July 20, 2010

Other appearances:

• Comics Festival (40-page anthology including a one-page Scott Pilgrim comic; released on Free Comic Book Day 2005)
• PENG (72-page one-shot comic book by Corey Lewis where Scott Pilgrim appears in one panel; released in 2005)
• Free Scott Pilgrim #1 FCBD 2006 Edition (32-page comic book featuring an 17-page original Scott Pilgrim story; released on Free Comic Book Day 2006) This story is available for free online at the Scott Pilgrim Website
• Comics Festival 2007! (40-page anthology including a half-page Scott Pilgrim comic and a 4-page Wonderful World of Kim Pine comic; released on Free Comic Book Day 2007)
• Scott Pilgrim: Full Colour Odds & Ends 2008 (collects Free Scott Pilgrim #1 - newly coloured by Dean Trippe, Wonderful World of Kim Pine four-page story, Now Magazine Best of Toronto two-page strip in black-and-white, the Comics Fest 07 sushi strip, and various watercolours, pin-ups, and advertisements)

All of these ancillary stories are available to read on the Scott Pilgrim Website. A collector's box containing all six volumes and a fold-in poster was released in North America on November 3, 2010.

Critical reception

Publishers Weekly ranked the third volume, Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness, as one of the best comic books of 2006 in a critics' poll.

Scott Pilgrim was ranked 85th on Wizard magazine's 2008 list of the "200 Greatest Comic Characters of All Time".

In 2007, O'Malley was interviewed by the AV Club for the fourth volume. Written by Jason Heller, the article states that Gets It Together is "his best to date." The article goes on to praise O'Malley's consistent bold stylistic choices, saying that he "has raised the bar, art-wise: His deceptively basic style is suddenly deeper, richer, and more mature, while his eye for dynamics and graphic economy has gotten even keener." In 2011 Scott Pilgrim was ranked 69th in the Top 100 Comic books heroes.^{[citation needed]}

Japanese comics author Kentaro Takekuma said in an interview that the structure and style of Scott Pilgrim initially did not match the structure and style of Japanese comics, but when he read the battle scenes "it feels very much like a Japanese manga, especially in how you structured the panels. It develops into a very strange, neither American nor Japanese atmosphere." Comics author Koji Aihara added that "I did feel the inspiration from Japanese manga, but it did not strike me as a ripoff of manga style, but a very unique way of expression, I found it a very interesting work. I appreciated you using your own style of expression. Also, I thought your use of solid blacks was very skilled and attractive."

Awards

In 2005, O'Malley won the Doug Wright Award for Best Emerging Talent for the first volume of Scott Pilgrim and was nominated for three Harvey Awards (Best New Talent, Best Cartoonist and Best Graphic Album of Original Work).

In 2006, O'Malley was awarded Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Cartoonist (Writer/Artist) in the Joe Shuster Awards. He was previously nominated in the same category in 2005.^{[citation needed]}

O'Malley was nominated for a 2006 Eisner Award in the category Best Writer/Artist—Humor, for Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, but lost to Kyle Baker. O'Malley and Scott Pilgrim were also nominated for two 2006 Eagle Awards, and nominated for a second Wright Award (for Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World).^{[citation needed]}

In 2007, O'Malley won the Harvey Award. The series was also awarded a spot in Entertainment Weekly's 2007 A-List.^{[citation needed]}

In 2010, O'Malley won his first Eisner Award in the "Best Humor Publication" category for Scott Pilgrim Vs. The Universe.

In other media

Film

Main article: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

The film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was released on August 13, 2010. It is based on all six volumes of the graphic novel series, despite the different ending due to the sixth volume having been released after the film finished shooting. The film is directed by Edgar Wright and stars Michael Cera and Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Scott and Ramona, respectively.

The film was a critical success, but did not fare as well commercially. The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray and became popular to critical success.^{[citation needed]} The DVD includes extras such as bloopers and outtakes, deleted scenes and trailers. On the 2-disc edition, the 2nd disc includes soundtracks, animation (when Scott dates Kim), the film in the making and sound in the making.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The Animation

At the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con, Alison Pill (who plays Kim Pine in the movie), revealed that her character's past relationship with Scott will be explored in other media. "There will be a little something-something that will air on Adult Swim," she said. Creator Bryan Lee O'Malley elaborated by stating "It's gonna be like a series of short animations (to promote the movie). One of them will be the Volume 2 high school stuff with Kim and Lisa Miller. I don't know how long it will be but the rough they showed me was like 5 minutes. The stars of the movie will do the voices for the cartoons." Michael Cera and Alison Pill reprise their roles of Scott Pilgrim and Kim Pine from the movie, whilst Mae Whitman and Jason Schwartzman, who play Roxanne Richter and Gideon Graves in the movie, provide voices for Lisa Miller and Simon Lee respectively. The animated short, entitled Scott Pilgrim vs. the Animation, was produced by Titmouse Inc. and aired on Adult Swim on August 12, 2010, later being released on their website. The short is based on the flashback from the second graphic novel, elaborating on Scott's adventures in high school. The animation features the song "Post Acid" by Wavves, though it is replaced with the movie's soundtrack in the version included on the DVD/Bluray Disc of the film.

Video game

Main article: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game

A video game based on the series, also titled Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, was announced during San Diego Comic Con 2009 and was developed by Ubisoft Montreal, released alongside the film. The game is a four-player side-scroller influenced by 8-bit and 16-bit video games, with players able to play as Scott Pilgrim, Ramona Flowers, Kim Pine and Stephen Stills (Knives Chau was added later as a downloadable character). If you complete the game with Scott, Ramona, Stephen Stills, and Kim, you unlock NegaScott. Mr. Chau, Knives Chau's father, is also an unlockable assist character. The game features music by chiptune punk band Anamanaguchi and visuals by Paul Robertson, who is well known for producing stylized sprite-based animations.

The game was released on PlayStation Network on August 10, 2010 and Xbox Live Arcade on August 25, 2010.

Mobile comic

A mobile adaptation of the comic book was produced by HarperCollins and Robot Comics. The app uses movement, sound and vibration to create an original reading experience and includes extra material hidden in the scenes of the comic. It is available for iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Android.

External links

• Bryan Lee O'Malley's website
• ScottPilgrim.com
• Scott Pilgrim on Myspace
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World The Game at Ubisoft
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World at the Internet Movie Database