FLUXBLOG INTERVIEW WITH BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY

Bryan Lee O’Malley‘s Scott Pilgrim series of digest-sized graphic novels have quickly become some of my favorite comics of all time, and that’s saying quite a lot given my lifelong history with the medium. O’Malley’s series is a giddy rush of comedy, romance, and absurd action, with a brilliant high concept — charismatic layabout Scott Pilgrim must defeat his new girlfriend Ramona Flowers’ seven evil ex-boyfriends in order to stay with her — that warps a classic video game convention into an offbeat metaphor about learning how to cope with the romantic past of both your partner and yourself. Though comics are often associated with wish fulfillment, it’s actually quite rare to find many contemporary books (mainstream, indie, or otherwise) that bother with that sort of thing, much less embrace it as O’Malley does in the series. If you don’t find yourself wanting to be Scott Pilgrim (Super cute girls love him! He’s in a band! He’s got cool friends! He’s a hero!), you’ll probably develop a crush on Kim Pine, want a cool roommate like Wallace Wells, or wish that you could have a nemesis half as fabulous as Envy Adams.

In this interview, Bryan Lee O’Malley discusses the origins of the series, his background in music, the potential film adaptation of the comic, and his tendency to conflate video games that he has played with actual lived experience.

Matthew Perpetua: I got into the series very recently and read all three volumes in rapid succession, and the main thing I was thinking after reading them was basically, “Wow, I wish my life was like Scott Pilgrim!” Were you going for a wish fulfillment sort of thing?

Bryan Lee O’Malley: I think so, in some ways. I mean, he’s kind of like sort of a personal wish fulfillment character, at least from when I was that age. I wish I was a little white indie rock kid, that sort of thing. And there’s that sense of being part of a new group of friends, the identification factor, which I guess is probably part of the reason the series is getting popular or whatever.

MP: Has the build-up of popularity been very quick recently?

BLO: It’s probably seemed more sudden than it actually was, since I was cooped up all winter drawing the third book. It seems like just a gradual spread through friends and word of mouth, and also from the other comics creators telling their own fans to pick up my books. It seems to have real pull with the writers and artists and stuff, in and out of comics. Some Daily Show guys emailed me last week saying they loved it, for example.

MP: How long have you been working on this project now?

BLO: Uh, since the beginning of 2004 officially. I had notes and sketches dating back to 2002, but I started really writing and drawing it in 2004.

MP: How did the idea for the series start out?

BLO: I started writing about Scott Pilgrim right after I had a breakup in 2002, and I was living in Toronto and had a gay roommate, and it was just sort of this mopey story without a lot of the fantastical elements. My roommate and I would just ride the bus around and talk about Scott Pilgrim as a sort of alternate version of our lives, and gradually his life got a lot weirder. It was just a sort of mood or feeling, and everything we thought of that fit the mood would go into my Scott Pilgrim notes.

MP: How did you come to include the more fantastical video game elements?

BLO: Well, later that year I started dating an American girl, and that started to solidify things. And… I don’t really know. Around that time I was thinking a lot about my youth, making friends with cool people who had nerdy skeletons in the closet, and I sort of wanted to make a book that would entertain them. And I was thinking about how I have trouble remembering if I did something for real, or if I just did it in a video game, sometimes… especially with like the newer 3D type games. Um, not to say I have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality, I’m not a sociopath, but I have a pretty bad memory.

MP: That’s very funny considering how weird video games can be.

BLO: Well, it happens to me more with the more mundane stuff, like I’m walking and it’s foggy and oh, it reminds me of that time I… no, wait, that was in Final Fantasy or Resident Evil or whatever. And yeah, so I extrapolated that feeling and included stuff like Super Mario and River City Ransom under the umbrella, because they were a huge part of the fabric of my youth, and it makes sense to me that SOMEONE would confuse their life with those games.

Plumtree “Scott Pilgrim (EP Version)” (Out of print! Good luck finding it!)

MP: You named Scott after a song by the band Plumtree, right? Did that song inspire the character and tone of the series, or just the name?

BLO: Plumtree used to be my favourite band, and I always wanted to sort of do a tribute to them in some way. So I thought about their song and, you know, who is this guy Scott Pilgrim anyway, and what’s so great about him? And like I was saying, we were riding the bus and talking about Scott Pilgrim, and a bunch of the crazy stuff we came up with ended up being some of the basis for his character and his sort of worldview.

MP: So I guess your former gay roommate is the basis for Wallace Wells?

BLO: Yeah. The starting point, anyway. The more I write him, the more he becomes his own weird person. And there’s elements of me in there too, just like all the characters, just like most writers I guess. So he’s this weird blend.

MP: Did you map out the entire series from the start?

BLO: Not really. Originally it was just going to be one book, before the seven evil ex-boyfriends even came in, but it grew and grew. The stuff I had originally planned out included a lot of the first three books. I ended up planning out the rest, to some degree, after the movie people sort of made me do it, so they had a basis for the screenplay.

MP: When did the movie people get involved?

BLO: It was pretty quick actually. It was about four months after the first book came out that Edgar Wright read it and the wheels started turning. Universal desperately wants him to do a movie in North America after he’s done with Hot Fuzz, and this one is furthest along because I think they’ve been pushing it. But yeah, it’s been quiet for the past few months, since he’s been shooting. I think I’ll hear more in the next few weeks. I think he’s done, unless they’re going over schedule, which they might be.

MP: So is the idea to do the seven evil ex-boyfriends in one movie? That seems like a lot for one film.

BLO: Yeah, it does, but I think they can probably do it. It’ll be compressed, but what I’ve seen from them so far makes me think they can handle it. It’ll have a

different effect, but it’s coming from the same place.

MP: How did you arrive at the original “seven evil ex-boyfriends” concept? I like that you’re using this video game convention as this sort of weird relationship metaphor.

BLO: I really, really don’t remember. I’m sure I was thinking about shonen manga and video games, and seven just seemed like the appropriate number, and my mind just melded it all into this concept. Yeah, it’s this big elaborate metaphor that I’m desperately trying not to fuck up, but I probably already fucked it up.

MP: Really? How do you think?

BLO: I’m not sure. I don’t want to explain it in case I’m right and the whole world comes crashing down. No, I think the Free Comic Day story was straining the metaphor, was just kind of playing the game instead of really having a lot going on to back it up. I just wanted it to be fun, and I did it in a few days. So yeah. Maybe it’s “non-canon.”

MP: So where did all the Smashing Pumpkins references in the new volume come from?

BLO: They were my other favourite band in high school and early college, so, since I was looking at that period of my life, I figured I would listen to that music again. And the Infinite Sadness is just kind of a jokey play on a Harry Potter type of title. Harry Potter and the Infinite Sadness. And it let me mash my two favourite bands together into one title, incidentally, which I hadn’t even thought about.

MP: You play in a band yourself, right?

BLO: I used to. I moved. I moved like 2000 km away. But other forces broke the band up. The guy, the leader, my friend Joel, he’s in a new band now called Brigitte. They played their first show last week, and I was there, and it was awesome. I think they might catch on.

Brigitte “Bitch Please” (Click here for Brigitte’s MySpace page.)

MP: Are you a bass player, like Scott? I love that Scott is a bassist and not a guitarist or lead singer.

BLO: Yeah, that was kind of based on… I’m shitty at bass, but I got drafted to play bass a few times, at least back in high school. It’s like this even a monkey can play bass thing. So Scott’s like me in that he’s a terrible bassist who kind of fell into it. But to answer your original question, no, I don’t actually play bass. I don’t own a bass. I have a keyboard (a Korg) and an acoustic guitar. I played keys in my Toronto bands. Imperial Otter was the first one, and Honey Dear was the second one. Kupek is my solo stuff.

Kupek “Headless Horseman” (Microphones cover) (Click here to buy it from Radio Maru.)

MP: How long have you been doing Kupek?

BLO: Since about… uh… six years ago. In the summer of 2000, after Plumtree and the Smashing Pumpkins both broke up.

MP: They had to make room in the world for Kupek, I suppose.

BLO: I guess. I mean, it’s only in retrospect that it seems like a catalyzing effect, but I didn’t seriously pick up the guitar until that summer after my two favourite bands called it quits.

MP: What do you think of Billy’s post-Pumpkins stuff?

BLO: Zwan was enjoyable but forgettable, and his recent stuff is more like you WISH you could forget it.

MP: I was a huge Smashing Pumpkins fan as a teenager too, by the way.

BLO: I think we all were. I’m weirded out by people who still list the Pumpkins as their favourite band on MySpace or whatever, though.

MP: Yeah, I think the Pumpkins are a really teen specific thing, and I still love those songs, but with a distance. There was no distance whatsoever when I was 16.

BLO: Yeah, “Soma” was like the beginning and end of everything for a while there.

MP: Oh man, don’t even get me started about “Soma”!

BLO: SIXTEEN ACOUSTIC GUITARS OR WHATEVER! But yeah, move on, you know? Other things have happened in music since 1996…

MP: How is the next volume coming along?

BLO: Oh, it’s not really coming along yet. It has a lot of notes, and most of an outline. I was hoping to start scripting it this week, but I’m under piles and piles of mailorder and outstanding art orders, so I’ll probably start after MoCCA. Which is this weekend. And I’m playing an acoustic set at their afterparty, so I need to practice. I’m a bit rusty.

MP: Do you work out the full script before drawing?

BLO: Yeah, I try to do a full script. Last time I didn’t quite make it to the end of the script, and I think it hurt the story overall. I had some delusions about how I would write the book in sketches and thumbnails, but that just didn’t work for me.

MP: Are you feeling more confident with the art? Reading all three really quickly, I definitely noticed the art and storytelling style getting slicker and more sophisticated.

BLO: Yeah, I definitely have started to feel like I know how to draw. The art is less of a chore now and I’m able to entertain myself.

MP: When do you think volume 4 will be hitting stores?

BLO: I’d say March ’07 at the earliest. I’m trying to give myself a buffer. I want to be well into Vol 5 by the time Volume 4 is out, so that there can be some kind of rhythm to these things. In comics, stuff tends to be in stores a few weeks after it’s off the drawing board, which can be nice, but it’s also a bit weird.

MP: Was there ever any pressure from Oni Press to do the series as regular comic issues rather than as complete graphic novels?

BLO: No, not at all. They were trying to make the shift, and I think Scott Pilgrim helped them along a bit. It certainly didn’t hurt, anyway. It’s doing well in indie terms, which seems like peanuts in mass media terms, but hey.

Bryan Lee O’Malley will have a booth at MoCCA’s Art Festival at the Puck building in NYC this weekend. If you live near NYC, you should go there, say hello to him, and buy his stuff. Otherwise…

Click here to buy Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life (Volume 1)
Click here to buy Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (Volu

me 2)
Click here to buy Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness (Volume 3)