Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life - Colour Edition, Bryan Lee O'Malley

'SCOTT PILGRIM

is dating a high schooler, but when Ramona Flowers starts skating through his brain, everything changes. While Scott pursures Ramona, someone else has their sights set on Scott; HER SEVEN EVIL EX-BOYFRIENDS. If he wants this relationship to work, he needs to defeat them all - but even that herculean task might not be enough!'






Scott Pilgrim vs The World is one of my all time favourite films, a wonderful distillation of Bryan Lee O'Malley's Oni Press series. The modest success of the film, along with the enduring cult status of the original books, have led to this sumptuous rerelease - a hardback colour update for the pocket sized original.

Aesthetically, its a wonderful book. The hardcover is a sturdy volume that sets it up as part one far more than the previous books did (the inclusion of the question marked boss fight section on the back is excellent), but it's the interior where the majority of work has been done. Nathan Fairbarn colours extensively for the big comic publishers, notably on Batman, Inc and for various X-Men titles, and his colouring here is excellent.

Colouring is an underrated skill, and one that's shown off to its best be updating an original black-and-white graphic novel to full colour. Considering that the movie went a long way towards creating the definitive pallette for the books it's great to see how well this fits in with both art from O'Malley and the film. It would have been easy to recolour this very differently, but it ties in as a very friendly readaptation (of the film of the book).

The colours pop of the page and serve O'Malleys exaggerated, cartoony art. The fight (and romance) scenes in particular give Fairbarn an opportunity to unleash, but the real skill here is in maintaining an interestingly coloured book in the more mundane parts - something which is integral to Scott Pilgrim, the most mumblecore of semi-mainstream original graphic novels.

It's this familiarity which ultimately elevates the story of Scott Pilgrim after all. Scott truly is an everman - a selfish, needy, idiotic, very humanly flawed individual firmly rooted in a specific place - early adulthood. This is the perfect way to enjoy Scott's adventures from the beginning, again.

Also Try:
Bill Watterson, It's a Magical World (Calvin and Hobbes)
Tsugumi Ohba, Deathnote
Bryan Lee O'Malley, Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life (OGN)