Scott Pilgrim's Progress
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World started with a brilliant indie-rock comic book.
This week, Michael Cera stars as the hapless Scott Pilgrim in a big-screen adaptation of Bryan Lee O'Malley's original comic book series. In 2006, Dan Kois paid tribute to the indie comic with a slide show. The original article is reprinted below.
Canadian cartoonist Bryan Lee O'Malley is beloved by comics aficionados: The first two volumes of his indie-rock romantic comedy Scott Pilgrim generated plenty of insider love—and a movie deal with comics geek Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead). But the books only managed the dinky sales typical of small-press graphic novels. When Volume 3, Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness, arrived this summer, though, it received glowing attention from big-time outlets like Entertainment Weekly and the Washington Post. According to O'Malley, his publisher, Oni Press, printed 10 times as many copies as it had of the first volume.
Click here to launch a slide show on the charms of Scott Pilgrim.
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Dan Kois is a senior editor at Slate and a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine.