With Bryan Lee O’Malley’s pop culture venerating Scott Pilgrim saga coming to an end in July with the release of the sixth volume and a film version starring everyman du jour Michael Cera out sometime this summer, the first five volumes in the series are each being given a much deserved reprint over the next few months. As is logical, Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life is the first volume to be re-released.

Scott Pilgrim is a 23-year-old slacker living in Toronto with his gay roommate Wallace Wells. Since he doesn’t have to trouble himself unduly with the world of work, Scott’s primary activity is playing bass in a band, Sex Bob-Omb, with his friends Kim Pine (drums) and Stephen Stills (guitar). One year out of a bad break-up, Scott has recently started dating a high-schooler named Knives Chau. While his friends think this kind of inter-age romance is scandalous, they’re also pretty certain that no one in his right mind should date a girl named Knives, Scott believes it to be OK so long as all they do is go for pizza and talk about her day at school.

Scott begins to have dreams about a rollerblading girl who he then spots delivering a package to a local library. After a spot of light stalking and a chance encounter at a party thrown by Stephen Stills’ girlfriend, Scott discovers that the girl in (and of) his dreams is Ramona Flowers, an Amazon delivery girl who has recently moved to Toronto after a messy break-up with a guy by the name of Gideon. Needing to engineer a method of meeting her, Scott orders some reasonably priced but potentially poorly handled CDs from Amazon and, just as he is again dreaming of her, Ramona knocks on his door. It turns out that Ramona has been improving her delivery times by using subspace portals, one of which passes through Scott’s brain, to get to customers. Having convinced Ramona that he’s not a [complete] weirdo, Scott manages to get her to agree to go on a date with him.

Dating never goes smoothly for Scott Pilgrim. First, he must rid himself of an increasingly obsessed Knives, but must do so without making her cry since she is, after all, a high-schooler. Secondly, and potentially far more deadly, Scott must agree to fight and defeat Ramona’s seven evil exes if he is ever to become an official boyfriend. The first of these evil exes, Matthew Patel, shows up just before a Sex Bob-Omb gig and challenges Scott to a duel. Things look bleak for Scott when it transpires that Matthew has magical powers that allow him to summon demonic hipster chicks but, fortunately, Scott is the best fighter in the province and is a master of video game style combat and so can defend himself while still looking hip.

Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life (and indeed the whole Scott Pilgrim series) is a little slice of geeky heaven neatly formed into a pocket-sized graphic novel. Scott Pilgrim himself is the archetypal hipster geek; he knows every pop culture reference that has ever or will ever exist but he does what he does, namely slacking, with panache. Scott is the perfect character to inhabit a graphic novel; he’s an enigmatic nerd who manages to know what’s hot before everyone else and to appear cool without actually doing much. The supporting characters, particularly the wise-cracking roomie Wallace Wells, are brilliantly conceived too. The Toronto that they life in is a delightfully bizarre place where anything can happen and where the extraordinary rubs shoulders with the mundane on a regular basis.

Bryan Lee O’Malley has put so much work into Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life and he has created an absolute gem. The dialogue is sharp, witty and hilarious with pop culture references practically falling from the pages. There are references upon references upon references and it would take many reads to do them all justice. Even the small details are perfect – each time Scott defeats one of Ramona’s exes he receives a Mario-style bundle of cash and the occasional bonus item. There’s even a guide so that you can play along with Sex Bob-Omb (luckily they’re not a particularly proficient band). O’Malley’s drawing style is refreshing and deceptively simple looking; he borrows a lot from the manga tradition but the finished characters fit into this Western-style graphic novel perfectly.

Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life is a truly great graphic novel and is a wonderful opener to a fabulous series. In fact, I really don’t have enough superlatives to adequately convey just how much I love it.

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