Yep, that's right. The graphic novels. The movie. All of it.
I wasn't even aware it was a thing. When the movie came out I my kids were ages 8 and 4.5. I wasn't reading as much as I used to, and I wasn't seeing as many movies as I used to. Life kind of got in the way - not that it was a bad thing, just different.
I just recently became interested in reading the series after seeing a review of Seconds (by the same author), which I also read recently and enjoyed very much. For me, Seconds was at just about the same level as Scott McCloud's The Sculptor. I was seeing that reviews for Scott Pilgrim were even higher, and many reviews for Seconds also claimed it wasn't as good as Scott Pilgrim. Plus, Joss Whedon had good things to say about Scott Pilgrim. So, I just had to read it, and I went through it pretty quickly - all six volumes in about a week while reading some other books.
Impression: while I did enjoy Scott Pilgrim, I think I liked Seconds slightly better. Of course, I wouldn't exactly say that these works are quite the same genre. Seconds is more of a serious story, and Scott Pilgrim is more of a zany catch-all of many different things (video games, Kung Fu, twenty-something angst, relationship and self-identity issues, clubs, music, and too many other items to mention). It kind of brought me back to the days when I used to read Rumiko Takahashi's two popular series Ranma 1/2 and Maisson Ikkoku. Perhaps there is some influence there - in the afterword to one of the books I did see that Mr. O'Malley claimed to become obsessed with manga while writing the series, so its possible.
As with Seconds and The Sculptor, this series shows me yet again the importance of comics as literature (for a full definition of what this entails, you really need to read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud). Yes, you read that right - literature. This word does not only encompass those works which are commonly referred to as "classics" - you know, Moby Dick, Ivanhoe, Oliver Twist. Here's part of the definition from www.dictionary.com: "writings in which expression and form...are characteristic or essential features". The definition specifically calls out novels, biographies, and even poetry and essays - if essays can be considered literature, then comics can be as well! Graphic works like this are important because they can convey aspects of a story in ways that words simply can't handle effectively.
Comics are also a great source material for movies and TV shows - someone first imagines a concept as a comic series or a graphic novel, and then Hollywood gives it the film treatment. The graphic form is more accessible than wading through hundreds or thousands of novels ranging from 300 to 800+ pages each. And I'm not referring to Batman and The Avengers, or even Spider-Man here, as those are all related to comic books (the kind that I grew up with). I'm talking about other comics that dared to do something different. Men in Black, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Priest, The Walking Dead - they all started as a comic series, and they are quite different in nature from the comic books that I grew up with.
The comic form is an important piece of literature, and I look forward to future efforts from Mr. O'Malley.
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