Bookends with Mattea Roach28:47Bryan Lee O’Malley: 20 years of Scott Pilgrim
Bryan talks to Mattea about the legacy of the hit comic book series, the inspiration behind some of his most iconic characters, and his nostalgia for Toronto in the early aughts.
When Bryan Lee O’Malley came up with the phrase “seven evil exes” he knew he was onto something interesting.
At the time, the Canadian cartoonist was in his 20s and living in Toronto, hoping to make something out of his comics.
Little did he know, his wacky idea would stem into the cult classic Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life — which turned into five more comics volumes, a film starring Michael Cera, a video game and a TV adaptation.
“I never thought I could lift my little finger and change the world in this kind of way,” said O’Malley on Bookends with Mattea Roach, marking 20 years since Scott Pilgrim was first published.
“I’m on this tour and meeting people every day, multi-generational fans at this point, parents and kids, [who are] getting something out of this thing I made.”
The Scott Pilgrim series is about an unemployed 23-year-old Torontonian, the titular character, who’s going through a breakup. But when he falls for the enigmatic Ramona Flowers, he must face off against her seven evil exes in order to continue their relationship.
“I found that most of these teen romances end with the guy getting the girl,” O’Malley said. The impetus for this series was starting from the “happy ending” and figuring out how to keep the girl, he said.
While O’Malley, like his character, was also experiencing a bad breakup and living in Toronto at the time he created Scott Pilgrim, he saw Scott as his antithesis.
“I’m a quiet, thoughtful, sensitive man and Scott Pilgrim is this brash fool,” said O’Malley.
“I wanted to have a character that would do all the things that I would never do or that would think things I would never think.”
Despite Scott being unsavoury at times, O’Malley “feels charitable” toward him, because he still is drawn from pieces of himself and his friends — and the lessons they learned about life and relationships during their early 20s.
“I just threw everything that I saw into the book and then used it as a playground, a weird little virtual reality,” he said.
Toronto in the pages
This reality blends the ridiculousness of the threat of seven evil exes, action-packed fighting scenes and a “mundane” slice-of-life depiction of Toronto in the early 2000s.
“There is something magical about Toronto and also something boring about it,” said O’Malley, who included real-life iconic landmarks in his representation of the city — from the Toronto Reference Library to Casa Loma.
Looking back at the series 20 years later, some of these landmarks no longer exist, making the pages a time capsule for that era of Toronto. One such spot is Honest Ed’s, a discounted department store in the Annex neighbourhood that closed in 2016 after being sold to a developer.
With its loud exterior — a massive, light-up sign — and its chaotic interior, Honest Ed’s was an optimal spot for a fight scene in the series.
In the third volume of the comics, Scott and one of the evil exes run into the store while they’re dueling and accidentally blow it up.
“I just thought it was such a unique, strange thing,” said O’Malley. “And then the interior of the store truly gave me a headache instantly and was just kind of a nightmare. But it was fun, it was like going on a carnival ride or something.”
The draw of comics
But while parts of Toronto life have changed since the series first came out, the broad appeal of the characters has remained. A one-season animated Netflix show Scott Pilgrim Takes Off was released in 2023. It wasn’t renewed for a second season, but it kept O’Malley entrenched in the world of Scott Pilgrim.
“It’s so much bigger than me, and outside of me at this point, that I do feel a little bit of responsibility to kind of keep it alive in some way and keep it kind of growing and changing,” said O’Malley. “I would like to revisit it in some form and keep expanding it.”
O’Malley is also known for his other comics including Snotgirl and Seconds, and has felt connected to the comics medium since he was a child, growing up in London, Ont., and reading Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes.
“Comics just kind of became a language that made sense to me,” said O’Malley. “So eventually, in my teens, manga and anime started to make inroads over here for the first time, really, and just kind of lit my mind on fire.”
Though comics are often read for their epic fight scenes, O’Malley appreciated how they give space for more existential questions about figuring out who you want to be and the inevitability of death.
“I wanted to have something that could have pathos and comedy and punching and kicking and all that stuff,” he said.
“There’s something about the drawings where it’s so personal. It just feels like my brain is jumping on the page.”
This interview was produced by Bridget Raymundo.
