New Scott Pilgrim!! Squee!!

Everybody loves Scott Pilgrim—and if they don’t, it’s only
because they haven’t met him yet.

Scott Pilgrim is the hero of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s eponymous comic
book series, an affable, messy-haired twentysomething who lives in
Toronto; plays bass in a band; loves his girlfriend, the mysterious
Ramona Flowers; and… occasionally gets into battles with Ramona’s
seven evil ex-boyfriends. The books pair a big-eyed anime cutesiness
with a smart-assed hipster sensibility—but O’Malley’s real
innovation, and one that has endeared his books to a diverse
cross-section of fans, is that Scott Pilgrim’s slacker-y life is
utterly realistic except for the fact that it’s integrated with
fantastic videogame elements. Scott’s Toronto is riddled with secret
subspace highways, and ninja fights are liable to break out at any
moment, complete with cash bonuses for the winner. It’s exactly like
your life, if your life were a videogame—in fact, it’s exactly
what videogame-playing slackers like Scott probably wish their
lives were like, cute, barely legal Asian girls included.

Hipsters tolerate the fight sequences and videogame references;
videogame nerds will put up the ironic jokes and the New Pornographers
T-shirts; and the rest of us, falling somewhere in between, embrace the
books for their casual disregard for such pop-cultural
compartmentalization.

The complete series will total six books, and book five hits the
stores this week, released by Portland’s own Oni Press. It’s
predictably good; O’Malley’s writing is unflaggingly funny and
self-aware—though, as the title suggests, Scott Pilgrim vs.
the Universe is darker than sunny volume four (which was cheerfully
titled Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together). Evil ex-boyfriends are
fought, and Knives Chau is still crazy, but the honeymoon is over for
Scott and Ramona, and important questions are raised, if not answered,
like: Why are all of Ramona Flowers’ ex-boyfriends evil, anyway?

The new book has its Portland release party at Floating World
Comics–Oni will be on hand with books and exclusive Scott Pilgrim
swag (they’ve got great, cute T-shirts, for one). Now’s the time to
jump on this bandwagon—don’t wait until the Edgar
Wright-directed, Michael Cera-starring movie comes out.