The Comics Journal Vs. Scott Pilgrim

I'm not a regular reader of The Comics Journal, nor any comic magazine for that matter. Most of the time anything I read in the mag's is a month out of date. Oh sure, the reviews are worth reading, same as the opinion pieces, but mostly I'm looking for news, not reviews. But the other day I was putting tags on the new TCJ, May 2007 (well, new to US anyway, thanks Fantagraphics!) when I saw a page from Scott Pilgrim. I'm a big O'Malley fan, I even have all of his music, and I wanted to see what they had to say, especially given that back in March they named Vol. 3 as one of the best books of 2006. What I found instead was an attack piece written by someone, who even under his own admission, did not get the series at all. If I could, I would point you to his review somewhere on the web and then respond to every part of his breakdown. Since I can't, I will just do one paragraph.

The reviewer, Tim O'Neil, had this to say "It is unfortunate, then, that the story these character inhabit is defined by such a lamentable lack of imagination. Until about four-fifths of the way through the first book, the Pilgrim series seems to be setting up a nice soap-opera narrative, touched on the edges by a few bizarre bits of magical realism but still grounded in a firm and recognizable universe of coherent motivation and restrained whimsy. But at the end of Precious Little Life the series' true focus becomes apparent, and the shock is enough to totally derail the series in one fell swoop: Scott Pilgrim is a video-game in comics form."

To the first part, the "lack of imagination" part? The story world these characters inhabit is, for all intents and purposes, the real world, even going so far as to include real life locations, complete with fun facts about each. This isn't supposed to be an imagined world, or even culture really. Just a culture where some of the things that we see in video-games are actually real. And let's get this straight once and for all, when we say "video-games" we really mean Super Mario Brothers, because that's where many, if not most of the references come from.

As to the "soap-opera narrative" bit, well, who the @#$*! wants to read a soap-opera? I'm sorry, but, most of the things that I've seen in soap-opera's, and to be frank my experience is mostly limited to magazine covers in the supermarket checkout line and the old TV show "Soap", are complete B.S. and don't happen to people in real life. Oh sure some of it might, but a rich white girl from the East Coast being kidnapped by South American guerillas because her babies daddy is the guerilla's leader and he's fallen madly in love with her and just can't be apart and if he can't.... and then she falls for him, takes him back home to the Hamptons and Daddy's house where they all live happily ever after till next season when he meets the new maid and her Wall Street broker/ex-fiance reappears, THAT'S soap-opera narrative!

God. I think my brain just melted.

Alright, I'm calling it a day here, I think you can get the idea that this review just drove me insane. Scott Pilgrim is one of the best, most original series to come out in years. O'Malley's art, pacing, characterization, and dialogue are fantastic. The only bad thing about the whole series is how long it takes to come out. But, on that front, there is some good news. I was just over at Radiomaru this weekend, and guess what? Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together, the fourth volume, comes out this September! September 19th to be exact.

-Dan