Andrew and I both polished off the 6 Scott Pilgrim graphic novels within a week. The series on which the awesome Edgar Wright movie is based, the books are: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life (2004), SP vs. the World (2005), SP & the Infinite Sadness (2006), SP Gets it Together (2007), SP vs. the Universe (2009), and SP's Finest Hour (2010).
bitchin'...
It's hard having watched the movie first to separate the abiding memory of how completely fantastic the film is from the written experience. It's especially hard since whole lines of dialogue, plot points and even graphic panels are copied verbatim to the movie medium - this serves to remind me how brilliant the film is and took something away from my enjoyment of the books. I think I enjoyed the bits I knew more than the 'new' bits sometimes! Obviously, over 6 books there's a lot more backstory for Scott and his extended family of friends, and there's more meat on the relationship with Ramona, although she is still a bit of a cold fish. Each book builds to a fight with one (or two) of Ramona's evil exes and we see a little more of each of them. Knives Chau remains one of the best characters in the weird Pilgrim universe, closely followed by Scott's gay roommate Wallace who disappears a bit in later volumes. There weren't as many pop culture and video game references across the pages as I would have expected, although there was plenty of unexplained phenomena, such as Scott's fighting abilities and Gideon's weird omniscience. Ultimately, I felt that as a massive fan of the movie, the books act as an interesting added extra, providing more background and a slightly different overall flavour that probably would have had more impact on me had I read them first.
briefly...
An interesting look at how Scott Pilgrim came to be, and ultimately came to be made into one of the best comic book / computer game movies of the last decade/ever! The series reads like storyboards for the film, which is no bad thing.
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