Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O'Malley - review

Dear Internet,

I thought you were looking out for me! How have you not forced me to read Scott Pilgrim before now?

I ask again: HOW has someone not held me down, pried my eyes open, and shoved Scott Pilgrim into my face?

Let's review my credentials for being Scott Pilgrim's ideal audience:

I have been reading illustrated adult fiction since 1987. I'm going to call it "illustrated adult fiction" because I don't feel like having some kind of fight about "graphic novel" vs. "comic book" vs. "manga," and Scott Pilgrim is unusually likely to trigger that argument because a) it is a serial work and b) because Bryan Lee O'Malley employs some of the graphic stylistic mannerisms of manga.
I split hairs like that.
I love rock and roll.
I think I'm still a teenager.
I have read everything by Bryan Lee O'Malley's girlfriend Hope Larson. I hope the publishers of Oni Press know that if a bomb were to hit Bryan Lee O'Malley's and Hope Larson's apartment (ok they live in Canada, they probably have a house), the world of graphic novels for teens would suffer a serious blow, and so I hope they have taken steps to avert such a calamity. Bomb-sniffing dogs, titanium support beams, the like. Maybe one of those missile shields Reagan was always on about.
I am an obsessive reader of Love and Rockets, which this series, if it can be said to resemble anything, kind of resembles.
All my friends and family, yea, even unto the children of my mother's cousin, have read Scott Pilgrim.

So I spent most of Sunday morning lying on the couch reading Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life and Scott Pilgrim Versus The World. I giggled. I imagined Michael Cera as Scott. I tried to imagine anyone but Ellen Page as Ramona Flowers, and then I wondered whether Ellen Page is chagrined that she was Juno, because now she can't be Ramona Flowers, or is happier having been Juno. I was blown away by the apparent musical number at the end of Scott Pilgrim 1.

I loved the characters. I think Wallace the cool gay roommate is my favorite, but Stephen Stills's evil girlfriend Julie is a close second. I savored the juxtaposition of extremely lifelike dialogue - the line "Wait. What?" appears almost as frequently as your average clueless 23-year-old actually uses it - and kung fu movie magic action. I enjoyed the fact that Scott can be both as meta as an anthropologist and as dense as a two-year-old, sometimes in the same speech bubble.

I could not place Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who will be playing Ramona Flowers in the movie, until I imdb'd her and found out she was Royal Pain in Sky High, the most underrated family movie OF ALL TIME!! Ok we gotta watch that again tonight.

Breathe. Breathe. If your teen hasn't read this series, give it to him/her. While there is smooching, and people talk about sex, there's nothing explicit, and there's little or no swearing. Scott Pilgrim will make them feel too cool for school, even if everyone else is already on top of that.

Late to the bandwagon, but never late to the bar,
I remain,
your neighborhood librarian